Most people in Las Vegas have no real choice but to drive everywhere.

For a lot of families, that's thousands of dollars a year in gas and insurance they can't easily spare. The people who can't drive have it worse. A kid waits at school with no way home until a parent clocks out. Someone without a car spends two hours on the bus to get to work or a doctor's appointment. Around a hundred people die in traffic on our roads every year, and most of those deaths are preventable.

It doesn't have to stay like this. In other cities, change came when residents understood what was possible and worked together to ask for it. We started Las Vegans for Better Transit to advocate for world-class public transportation in a city that is known throughout the world.

What we do

We help Las Vegans understand their own city more clearly, and the value in better transportation and the way our neighborhoods get built.

Our mission starts with bringing people together. We host a book club for anyone curious about how cities work, ride the bus alongside the people who count on it, and walk the neighborhoods where getting around without a car is hardest. The events are low-key and open to anyone, and they're meant to turn a private frustration into something people can name and work on together.

We document what's broken. We walk the corridors and record the missing sidewalks, the bus stops with no shade, the crossings that aren't safe to cross, and gather it into a public record that neighbors, reporters, and officials can point to. We tell the stories behind it too, the people who ride, walk, and bike here, because the conditions matter more when you can see who lives with them.

Local transportation and land-use decisions get made in public meetings that almost nobody attends. We follow those meetings and put what's happening into plain language so that residents know what's on the table and how to weigh in. Most people have no idea these choices are being made, let alone that they're allowed in the room.

The more people who understand what's at stake, and feel like they have a say, the more our leaders have a real community to answer to. That community is what we're building.

Why now?

Las Vegas is running out of room to sprawl.

For decades the valley just grew outward, and now it's reaching the edge of the desert and the limits of that pattern. The bills are coming due, on roads we can't afford to maintain, on neighborhoods you can't get around without a car, on streets that are among the deadliest in the country for people on foot. The choices we make in the next few years decide whether the next chapter looks like the last one.

For the first time, the conversation is actually moving. The state is studying passenger rail for our region with the Regional Rail Transit Advisory Working Group. There's new transit being planned along corridors people actually use like Maryland Parkway, and private money building a high-speed rail connection to Southern California via Brightline West. However, none of that projects mean much for daily life unless the pieces connect or are something a regular family can reach and use. Those decisions are being made right now, and most residents don't know they have a say. We're here so they do.

There's also a foundation to protect. The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC), which runs the buses thousands of people depend on every day, is facing a funding crisis. We want to make sure it has what it needs, and that a crisis like this never happens again.

What your gift pays for

Your gift covers the events we put on, the community outreach we do, and the work of keeping residents informed about what's happening downtown. It also keeps us independent. We answer to the residents who fund us, not to a single big donor or a government grant, and that's what lets us tell the truth about our streets and our budgets. The more people who join, the more this becomes a community that shapes what gets built here.

Right now we're raising our first $1,000 to get going. Give today and you'll have been part of this from the start.

Become a Founding Member