Sin City Streets

 One thing that I think is often overlooked in discussions around urban mobility and alternative transportation is that the car is a truly versatile transportation tool. If you have a well-maintained car in your garage, you can decide, on a moment's notice, to travel any distance, from around the block to across the country, and you can generally expect to find maintained high-speed roads going direct from where you are to where you want to be. The car is a Swiss Army knife of transportation, a tool for any purpose. If you have one, you probably don't even think about using anything else to get around, and this results in a common response to proposals to diminish cars' presence in our lives-- "You can't seriously expect everyone  to ride a bike/take the bus/walk/etc. everywhere ." And you're right! I can't! There are a lot of reasons why a particular mode might be unsuitable for a particular trip. In Las Vegas, for example, summer heat can often be in

Just in case you've been living under a rock for the last several years, the Colorado River basin is in the midst of the worst drought in at least a millenium and a half, and the water levels in Lake Mead have been dropping to record lows . There's speculation that the reservoir might soon reach "dead pool" , the point at which water can no longer flow out of the lake, and a lot of local residents are convinced that their taps will soon run dry. That leads me to write this post, busting some of the myths around the lake, the river, and the water that keeps our city alive. 1. Las Vegas is draining the Colorado dry Many people look at Las Vegas, sitting as close as we do to Lake Mead and depending almost exclusively on its waters, as the main culprit in the draining of the Colorado River. It makes sense: our city is known for extravagance, the fountains of the Bellagio being an iconic image of the Strip, and it's easy to see the water intakes in the lake itself and