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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

The first time I went to Vegas I decided a casino I wanted to go to wasn’t that far away from where I was. You could see it, it looked “just over there”.

Turns out I walked over a mile in the desert sun. Taxis and that rail after that.

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Tricks me every time. Also the hotel name signage is disproportionately huge, which from a distance make it seems like the hotel is close enough for a walk, but turns out it is not.

Given how pedestrian unfriendly the Strip is, it surprises me that you even managed this at all.

On the other hand, I was also surprised how much better public transit seemed in vegas than in most us cities.

That makes sense. Lots of tourists there who travelled by plane and may not know how to drive or be unwilling to rent a car. The casinos would still like these people to drop by though

Also people get drunk a lot in Vegas and casinos encourage it.

Are you calling it unfriendly because it's set up to make jaywalking hard? We got tired of drunk tourists getting creamed because they wandered into traffic. And the crowds are heavy enough that turning across a pedestrian flow is problematic in peak hours. Thus it has been engineered to as much as possible separate pedestrians from cars.

I'm calling it unfriendly because it's a highway cutting through an area fully suited to being entirely pedestrianised. You can't even drive to the front of casinos (they have car park entrances at the back), yet the vast majority of real estate outside them is given up to traffic lanes, with precious little left to the people wandering around them spending.

There isn't even that much traffic on the strip, the road-to-footpath ratio of land allpocation is absurd.

It's unfriendly because you have to walk so damn far to get around lanes that have little business existing in the first place.

I have walked between various casinos at times--and never have I felt I was being made to walk unduly out of my way to do so. The games they play with scale make you think things are closer than they are.

And, yes, parking is generally in back--that's actually being pedestrian friendly! If parking was in front a pedestrian would have to cross a lot more parking lot to reach the casino.

And if you think there isn't much traffic on the strip you've just been there at the wrong time.

Maybe it should be set up for pedestrians first and cars second…

There are whole networks of pedestrian paths connecting buildings. You can walk from A to B just fine without having to step outside and leave the air conditioned zone. The outside temperature in Las Vegas in the summer isn't very suitable for pedestrian use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas#Climate

Yeah, I'm kinda surprised at the comments. The Strip is way more pedestrian friendly than most cities it's size.

I'm European so I must admit my experience of US cities is relatively limited. I know in general US cities have a terrible reputation for pedestrian-centric planning but even by US standards I found the Strip bad.

The Strip is even bad by Vegas standards: not only is Fremont entirely pedestrianised, Downtown in general is very walkable: pavement width matches foot traffic, amenities are close together, & traffic moves much more slowly than on the Strip / crossing-timing is relatively frequent.

For comparison, I've only really visited SoCal extensively (SD is super walkable, SF is as long as you're fit/not disabled, LA is worst than downtown LV but still nowhere near as bad as the Strip imo). East US I've seen Philly & Chicago which were both even better than CA.

Fremont is 4 blocks, the Strip is the better part of 4 miles. Fremont has no meaningful cross traffic beyond those going there, the Strip is crossed by 3 major streets that most certainly carry cross traffic. (There's also one more that is bridged/tunneled so you do not interact with the Strip--that one would be unaffected.) And if you take out the Strip the properties on the west side are going to scream because it's now hard for customers to reach them.

I don't see your point. You seem to be making excuses for the Strip being the way it is (i.e. "it's bad for these reasons") whereas the gp was arguing it's not that bad actually.

I never said there weren't reasons behind it, just that it is very bad.

> if you take out the Strip the properties on the west side are going to scream because it's now hard for customers to reach them.

I mean if you blindly remove something from any badly designed system without replacing it or providing some alternative then yes, it'll probably get worse. That seems uncontroversial.

Most hotels are not connected to each other. A handful are, but if you want to walk across the strip it’s actually quite hard. I visit Vegas yearly in the summer and this fact makes me somewhat upset :)

You can separate cars away without making short distances into massive hikes for pedestrians.

> Are you calling it unfriendly because it's set up to make jaywalking hard?

You can give priority to pedestrians, slow down the cars and put in obstacles for cars. You can build large roads to go around and up in places where pedestrians are likely to want to go.

In other words, kill the casinos on the west side. They would not survive the loss of customers this would cause. Priority to pedestrians = gridlock. I've sat through multiple light cycles as it is because of pedestrians.

For the US, I find it quite pedestrian friendly. I walked from Luxor to Fremont (essentially spanning everywhere you'll go as a tourist) with no issue. It took a while, but it was a nice and safe walk, with protected sidewalks, overpasses and galeries.

It’s hot. Have you visited in the summer?

Mid June, not exactly summer but still hot. But that's not something you can really do much about, same thing for cities build on hills, or where it rains/snows a lot. For example, cities in Portugal are both hot and hilly, and like many European cities, are nice to walk in.

Yet, in the case of Vegas, you can walk indoors in nice air-conditioned galleries and casinos for good sections of the strip. There are bodies of water and some vegetation, more than there should be considering the climate. Maybe could be better in terms of shade but not terrible either. It is also easy to find refreshment and drinks. Of course the intention of all that is for you to spend and gamble as much as possible, but if that's a problem for you, why are you visiting Vegas in the first place? That's what defines Vegas.

Eh the hardest part is dodging folks handing out flyers or trying to hustle you off-strip to a timeshare hard sell. I kind of like getting some air and sun outside the casinos and stretching my legs.

I had the same experience when I went to Vegas for the first time. I wanted to walk from building to building but they all felt so much further away than they appeared. It never occurred to me it was because of this bit of visual trickery.

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