Las Vegas, Nevada

According to ehuacom.com, Las Vegas is the largest city in the US state of Nevada. The city has 647,000 inhabitants, with 2,292,000 inhabitants in the agglomeration (2021). The metropolitan region is one of the fastest growing in the United States, growing 22% from 2000 to 2010. Las Vegas is the center of the American gambling industry.

Introduction

According to mcat-test-centers, the metropolitan area is located in southern Nevada, not far from the Colorado River and Lake Mead, which supplies the region with water. The town itself is located in the Mojave Desert, between mountain ridges. The urban area is one of the warmest in the United States, with temperatures above 40°C in the summer.

Las Vegas is remarkable because the suburbs are very large, almost all suburbs have more than 100,000 inhabitants. Despite its population, Las Vegas is still quite compact, measuring 30 kilometers from west to east and 40 kilometers from north to south. The population density is therefore quite high.

Along the Las Vegas Strip are many building activities for hotels and casinos. Most of Las Vegas is suburban, with large residential areas that are fairly densely built. Las Vegas has a large airport. Nearby are military installations such as Area 51, the Nevada Test Site, and Nellis Air Force Base. There are also many golf courses in the desert and around the city. The gambling winnings are so high that Nevada has no income tax.

Las Vegas has been one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the United States for decades. In 1950 it was an insignificant city of 25,000, much less important than Salt Lake City and Phoenix, which were also relatively small desert cities at the time. From the 1960s the area started to grow enormously, in 1970 the agglomeration, consisting of Clark County, already had 275,000 inhabitants. This grew to 740,000 inhabitants in 1990, 1,375,000 inhabitants in 2000, 1,951,000 inhabitants in 2010 and 2,316,000 inhabitants in 2020. The urban area grew by about 60,000 inhabitants per year. That’s less than some Texas metropolitan areas, but the difference is that those agglomerations are two to three times as large. Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States in percentage terms. Three quarters of Nevada residents live in and around Las Vegas.

Big cities

De Interstate 15 in Las Vegas.

Road network

The highway network of Las Vegas.

Las Vegas has the least developed highway network of any US city and the lowest number of lane miles per 100,000 residents. The limited highway network is compensated by an extensive network of urban arterials. Las Vegas also has relatively little through traffic, outside the urban core there are virtually no distant suburbs and exurbs that generate traffic to the city. Most highways have no more than 2×3 or 2×4 lanes, although I-15 has some 2×6 lanes. A ring road is not yet complete and in fact the highway network consists of three highways: I-15, I-215 and US 95, which is double-numbered with I-515.

Las Vegas is a young city. That is why there is no fine-meshed grid pattern in the city, the neighborhoods are divided into a grid of 1 by 1 mile, containing the residential streets. Most major boulevards have as many as 4 or 6 lanes, so that commuter traffic can use the underlying road network.

History

I-15 was built through Las Vegas in the early 1960s, mostly between 1960 and 1967, only in North Las Vegas a section opened in 1974, the last section of I-15 completed by the state. Las Vegas was little more than a regional town without any significant importance. This changed during the 1970s and 1980s as the city grew very rapidly. The highway network grew only very slowly and the only reason that it has not completely come to a standstill is that the city has a well-developed secondary road network with wide avenues and boulevards, often with 3 lanes in each direction. In 1984, the first section of I-515 opened in downtown Las Vegas. I-515 was completed as far as Henderson in 1994. In 1996, the first section of I-215 was built on the south side of the city and the beltway was completed as a freeway on the south side of Las Vegas around 2000. Later, the west side of the city also followed. In recent years, particularly between 2005 and 2010, Interstate 15 has been widened and modernized. Almost all connections and nodes have a high capacity, often with flyovers. The secondary road network is quite capable of handling traffic from I-15.

Congestion

Although the highway network is underdeveloped, the compactness of Las Vegas means that there are not as many traffic jams as one would expect. In addition, Las Vegas has a strong 24-hour economy, so there are not typical rush hours around 8 and 5. Traffic jams are usually limited to a number of short delays on the various highways.