Las Vegas Heat Calls for More Buses. A Federal Rule Prohibits it.

This article was originally published in Nevada Current. It has been shortened.

Extreme heat, long operation hours, and an influx of millions of tourists a year creates a perfect storm for bus fleets in Las Vegas, leading to rapid wear-and-tear and more service outages.

Those service outages are exacerbated by a federal rule that caps the number of spare buses a transit agency can maintain at 20% of their overall bus fleet, regardless of how many more buses a transit service needs to maintain reliable service.

Transit agencies that keep more spare buses than allowed risk losing federal funding if they aren’t granted an exemption from the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) for additional spare buses. However, the federal agency has never granted a waiver for additional buses to any state.

Southern Nevada’s congressional delegation is now asking the FTA to remove or increase its cap on the number of spare buses the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) can maintain in Las Vegas.

Southern Nevada’s transit authority operates a fleet of over 400 buses and relies on FTA funding to purchase both active and spare buses, but federal limits on spare buses have strained operations.

In a letter Thursday Democratic U.S. Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto – along with Reps. Susie Lee, Steven Horsford, and Dina Titus – said “transit agencies across the country face a variety of operational and environmental challenges that often require maintaining spare bus ratios above the current 20% cap.”

High transit demand and the extreme desert climate leads to rapid wear and tear on buses in Las Vegas, especially for high-mileage buses operating routes with long hours. 

Unlike many other cities, tourism and a non-traditional workforce in Las Vegas creates high peak demand for transit service throughout the day, with some routes operating 24 hours daily.

Frequent special events that attract thousands of tourists at a time also complicates bus management, placing further strain on an already stretched fleet. 

Southern Nevada’s transit authority said they have worked to address frequent breakdowns in their fleet by prioritizing preventative maintenance, including regularly performing cooling system checks and addressing common wear-and-tear issues like battery and alternator failures exacerbated by the intense heat. 

But more flexibility on spare buses allowed in a fleet is needed so “agencies like RTC of Southern Nevada to better maintain reliable, safe, and equitable service for their communities,” reads the letter.