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Driving and rental cars
If you're happy to see no more of Las Vegas than the Strip and perhaps downtown
- and on a short visit, there's no great reason to venture any further - then
it's perfectly possible to survive without a car. Bear in mind, though, that
even the Strip is too long to explore comfortably on foot; walking more than a
couple of blocks in summer is exhausting, so you can expect to make heavy use of
taxis, shuttle buses, and the monorail links. Ranging further a field, the
metropolitan area is very large, so driving is the only practical way to explore
it in any detail, while all the excursions to the vicinity of Las Vegas require
the use of your own vehicle.
Las Vegas as a whole is plagued by severe traffic problems, and nowhere more so
than the Strip. That said, so long as you're not in a hurry to get anywhere,
driving along the Strip is an exhilarating sensory blast, and worth experiencing
both by day and by night. For trips on which speed is your main priority, it's
usually worth using I-15 where possible, even for short hops. The fastest
east-west route across town tends to be Desert Inn Road , which passes under the
Strip and over I-15, with connections to neither.
All the Strip casinos except Bellagio offer free parking to guests and
non-guests alike, usually in huge garages around the back of the entire complex.
The snag is that the walk from your car to wherever you actually want to go -
your hotel room, for example - can be as much as a mile in places like Caesars
Palace or the MGM Grand . If you're spending a day touring the Strip, you may
prefer to go through the rigmarole of parking once only, somewhere central like
Harrah's . Valet parking , usually available at the main casino entrance, can
save a lot of stress; it's nominally free, although a tip of around $2 is all
but obligatory.
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Typical car rental rates in Las Vegas, including taxes, are $30 per day, $150
per week. All the major chains have outlets at the airport, and nearly every
sizeable hotel is affiliated with at least one car rental outfit. Among the most
ubiquitous are Dollar (phone 1-800/826-9911) and Avis (phone 1-800/822-3131);
Allstate (phone 1-800/634-6186) is an inexpensive local alternative.
Taxis
Every casino has a line of taxis waiting at its front entrance. Standard fares
are $2.20 for the first mile and $1.50 for each additional mile, but the meter
continues to run when you're caught in traffic. A $1.20 surcharge is added for
trips to the airport; we've listed sample fares for the airport run. Tip the
driver between fifteen and twenty percent. If you need to call a cab, try ABC
(phone 736-8444); Ace (phone 736-8383); or Checker and Star (both phone
873-2227)
Buses
CAT buses (phone 228-7433, ) serve the entire city from their hub at the
Downtown Transportation Center (daily 6am-10pm), a couple of blocks north of
Fremont Street at Stewart Avenue and Casino Center Boulevard.
Two routes, #301 and the express #302 , run the length of the Strip and continue
to downtown, with services every ten minutes between 5.30am and 12.30am, and
every fifteen minutes from 12.30am until 5.30am. The flat fare is $2. Services
in the rest of town operate between 5.30am and 1.30am only, for a flat fare of
$1.25. A monthly pass for all CAT buses, sold at the Downtown Transportation
Center, costs $30. more...
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