Las Vegas Weekly

The airport connector ain’t the tunnel of love

The second most irritating thing about the two-year reconstruction on the airport connector tunnel—which will pinch off a vital route between Henderson and the UNLV district (that pinching: the first most irritating thing)—is the tone of chiding possessiveness adopted by airport director Randall Walker and his team as they warn off non-airport traffic: “these roadways were built ... for the specific purpose of moving airport users more easily in and out of McCarran”; “... paid for using airport revenue, not local tax dollars ...”; “... has become a popular shortcut ...” (Quoting from McCarran’s press release.)

Golly, old man Walker, sorry for cutting across your lawn on the way to school!

Look, it didn’t take a nickel’s worth of foresight to see that the tunnel would be this heavily used. Because it’s not a shortcut, with that word’s connotations of unearned convenience; it’s an incredibly useful service. (I’ll stimulate Midtown’s economy a lot less now because it’s too hard to get to.) If you didn’t want us to use it that way, you should have designed it differently.

You gotta do what you gotta do, McCarran, to accommodate the new $2.4 billion terminal, in case the tourists ever come back, but it would be nice if you seemed more aware of the fact that this isn’t just about you.