Here’s How Long It’ll Take Employees To Commute During Las Vegas F1
F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix is getting underway in less than a week. On Thursday employees had a dry run of what the commute will be like for employees. Needless to say, workers may want to pack their patience.
The Formula 1 course will essentially make an island out of many Las Vegas properties. From the Venetian down to Planet Hollywood, a giant swath of the east end of Las Vegas Boulevard will be cut off, with their parking lots inaccessible for workers. Properties on the west side of the Strip will certainly have their challenges, but Frank Sinatra Drive has options. On the east side, Koval would typically give easy access to the rear of many properties, but that’ll be part of the 3.85 mile course. So that is off the table.
F1 Las Vegas does what others couldn’t: get the Las Vegas Monorail business
The plan is to run the monorail and have displaced employees park at Las Vegas Convention Center to “hitch a ride” to as close to their property as possible. Beginning Tuesday, November 14th at 7am, the Las Vegas Monorail will run 24 hours a day through Monday, November 20th at 3am. Workers who have no access to parking due to closures will get free passes to ride.
During peak times, the system will be able to move up to 3,000 people per hour. Considering we learned the Culinary Union has 35,000 employees at Wynn, Caesars and MGM Resorts properties, that does seem a little low. That’ll be further complicated by the fact that the Monorail will also be selling $1 tickets to locals during this time as well. Yeah, they’ll be serving regular customers too.
How bad will the commute be? Depends on where you work.
Not all casino properties are served equally by the Las Vegas Monorail system. For some workers, the commute will be a cake walk. For others, it will be a long walk.
Harrah’s, The LINQ, Flamingo, Horseshoe and Paris all get a pretty easy go. All of those properties are served with direct stops on the monorail system. It’s the “others” that will have the issue.
Properties like The Venetian and The Palazzo, along with Planet Hollywood, are not so lucky. Employees that are trying to head to the former will have to get off at The LINQ and walk for upwards of 15 minutes just to get to Venetian/Palazzo. The same complication will go for Planet Hollywood employees, but they will have a better go of things considering they’ll get to walk indoors.
So for the racers… start your engines! And for the employees, wear your pedometer.
