A Visitor’s Las Vegas Transit Guide
Navigating the Strip
Strip View Diorama (Paradise, NV: Dec. 2022)
While I was walking down the Strip recently, I overheard a stranger in the throng say to her companions, “How much farther? I’m over this walk.”
Amid that gauntlet of bodies shuffling through the maze of construction near the Grand Bazaar Shops, I realized that I, too, was over the walk. We had made the mistake of trying to use the Strip as a route, rather than as a space to wander around while blissfully drunk.
You see, on the Strip, distances are much farther than they appear, foot traffic is always worse than expected, and distractions along the way try to kidnap your attention and take all your money before you can reach your true destination.
As you journey from your hotel to point B – for example, from the Signature at the MGM Grand All Suites to the LINQ Promenade – you might even feel a bit like Odysseus trying to reach Ithaca.
The Depraved Odyssey: Walking Las Vegas Blvd
Oh, the tourists! Engorged on Nevada freedom, they love to galumph five abreast, merging into blubbery masses that eat up the public sidewalk. Those who try to scurry past will get swallowed too – suffocated by American obliviousness. Instead, bide your time and wait for the performers to reel these Laestrygonians in, then slip through the hole in the crowd like a minnow through coral.
You won’t have to wait long, because dozens of buskers embroider the Strip like Scylla multiplied. There’s break-dancers and bucket bongo players, guitarists and MCs, mimes and actors. Nobody is particularly talented, but everybody is very loud and knows at least one chord.
Even more intrusive are the 360-degree selfie platform swindlers. Like some eBay version of Charybdis, they blast high-treble beats from bad boomboxes and whirl on their strange soapboxes, trying to suck in passerby to pay $30 for a few photos from the rotating selfie stick.
Keep your head down and don’t stop. Don’t even look. Thread the needle through the paused crowd and let the hustlers pick off the curious tourists instead, who will quickly be charged for their admission to this public theater.
Next comes one of the strangest trials on your journey: the siren call of the “snappers.” These illegal escort promoters stand at Strip throttle-points and crack their shiny cards together in a cacophony of snapping, then press the papers at people’s hands and faces.
Keep your hands in your pockets and your eyes down, and let the ads for the bulbous-boobed women tumble to the ground like booty call rainfall. They puddle on the sidewalk, asterisk-covered areolas slowly scuffed into murky modesty by a thousand footsteps.
You’re getting closer to the Linq Promenade restaurants, but don’t let your guard down yet. Ahead, the fake “showgirls” wait in duos, their exposed butt-cheeks magically clapping beneath their wispy peacock tail feathers.
These 21st-century Calypsos choose outfits that occupy as much sidewalk real estate as possible, creating a web of fluff that walkers have to wade through. Those who peek or reach to touch will get pulled aside and forced to pay a heavy price: $40 for a photo-op, not including tip.
Best to keep looking down, for there are also hazards in the Underworld. People down on their luck curl up in nooks and crannies, battening down their tired bodies against the elements. Most ignore the tourists, but on certain corners, you’ll find a bitter Teiresias, screaming psalms and salty remarks at those who pass and do not pay.
Also be wary of corners less traveled – they contain dark secrets. Along with excess expelled from whichever carnal hole was most convenient, you’ll find unconscious bodies stretched across the path, containing too much of something – of everything – like casualties in the Land of the Lotus Eaters.
Then there are the winds – the startling desert winds that will blow you off-course and into the nearest casino – right through the doors and into the seat of the Wheel of Fortune slot machine, as if you opened the sac of Aeolus in search of treasure.
Indeed, the entire Strip is a test of your will against the Circean enchantment of the casinos. You can lose whole days – whole years – in those swiveling black chairs that are just waiting for your bum warmth.
But you continue, navigating escalators, bridges, detours, and traffic lights in a route as slow and circuitous as the squiggles of Odysseus’ long-ago journey, until you see it, Ithaca-esque: the LINQ Promenade.
I took this very same voyage and discovered three things at the end of it: Gordon Ramsay’s Fish & Chips has drastically declined in edibility; next time, I’ll eat before I go to eat; and I needed a drink, or three, for the long walk back.
Driving the Las Vegas Strip
After such a dicey pilgrimage, you might be tempted to drive to your Strip destination next time. Don’t even think about it. As you learned on foot, the Strip is not a route: it’s a clog bedazzled in quartz-bright signs and red lights like cheap garnets.
It also takes at least 15 minutes to walk from a room in any Strip resort to its connected self-parking garage. It’s always a long haul of long halls, elevators, slot machines, and sudden echoing concrete after paisley carpet patterns that whoosh 20th-century smoke with each footstep.
Then comes the squealing descent through the Dante’s Inferno parking garage levels and into the line waiting to turn into the line of Strip side road traffic, which will continue all the way to the next parking spot.
From this new parking garage, it’s an even more disorienting 15-minute journey into the new casino and then onto the Strip, where you will likely still have to meander a ways to reach where you want to go.
Las Vegas Strip Parking
On top of all of the above, you have to worry about paying for parking again. Treasure Island is the only remaining casino with completely free parking directly on the Strip. The Wynn & Encore parking garages also offer free parking for the first 3 hours to all visitors, after which they charge $25/day.
Nearly every other Las Vegas Strip parking garage now charges a self-parking fee for even a brief tenancy, in addition to what you already paid at your home base resort. However, you can reduce your expenses with some planning.
MGM and Ceasar’s Parking
For example, all MGM properties charge their peon hotel guests (a.k.a. anybody who hasn’t reached MGM Rewards Pearl status) $20 per day (Mon-Thu) and $25 per day (Fri-Sun) to self-park. That parking fee covers in-and-out privileges across all Las Vegas MGM Resort garages “within the same 24 hour period.”
So, if you’re already vacationing at an MGM property, and insist on driving and parking elsewhere on the Strip, at least choose another MGM property (there are many). The same goes for Caesar’s Entertainment properties, since they follow the same model.
The two Strip monopolies clearly devised these incestuous policies to give the illusion of a benefit (after reaming hotel guests with a parking fee on top of a resort fee), and to entice guests to stick to their properties, but might as well milk it while you can.
The Las Vegas Monorail
There is another way to travel the Strip. It glides along just east of S. Las Vegas Boulevard from the MGM Grand all the way to the Sahara, and vice versa, like a sleek, white caterpillar. At a mere $5.50 for a single ride, or $13.45 for a one- day pass (as of Jan. 2025), the Las Vegas Monorail is the second best deal on the Strip (see below for #1).
Heading north, the four-mile monorail route starts at the MGM Grand Station, then pauses at the Horseshoe/Paris, then Flamingo/Caesar’s Palace, Harrah’s/The LINQ, Boingo Station (Las Vegas Convention Center), Westgate Station, and finally, the Sahara Las Vegas Station.
While the Monorail itself is quick, regular, and clean, and certainly better than driving, the station entrances are buried in the casinos’ bowels, which leads to the same conundrum as above: long, labyrinthine treks through the resorts’ intestines.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So, what’s the solution if every transport option around the Strip is cumbersome? Why, just leave it behind and go to Fremont Street instead!
Getting to Fremont Street
That Yeehaw Feeling aka The Spur of this Moment (Las Vegas, NV: Dec. 2024)
For Fremont Street dwellers, the thick of the wicked action is a mere elevator ride and block walk away.
But Strip patrons will have to cross the vast badlands that surround S. Las Vegas Boulevard after Sahara Ave. Do not attempt the journey on foot: the round trip covers at least six miles and that’s only when starting from the Strip’s northern end near Treasure Island. During the day, the route scrolls past blushing desert plants and people prickling with the raw heat of life, but at night, the scenery settles into a feverish chatter of low light and wheat-pasted posters nit-picked by impish winds.
Although the parking is cheap and bountiful on Fremont Street, so is the liquor. Thus, driving your own car there will kill your entertainment options and potentially other people if you decide to motor back drunk. Better to hail a rideshare, which costs around $20 one way during off-peak hours. You’ll sit on a backseat that emanates Little Trees “Vanillaroma” and watch the darkening desert city flicker by as the driver skirts the meatiest traffic.
Riding the Deuce Las Vegas
Or there’s the Deuce. The Regional Transport Commission of Southern Nevada operates this double-decker bus that lurches up and down Las Vegas Boulevard from the South Strip Transit Terminal to the Fremont Street Experience, with 26 stops in-between, 24/7, endlessly, like the world’s slowest sequel to Speed. Sisyphean and utilitarian, the Deuce costs $6 for a 2-hour pass and a mere $8 for a 24-hour ticket to ride, making it the best deal on the Strip.
Sick of walking the Strip, “B” and I took the Deuce to Fremont Street during our stay at the Signature at MGM Grand, which sits near the Strip’s southern end. I prepared by downloading the RTC app, adding credit, and then applying the credit to two 24-hour passes. The final step was to activate the passes, but since they have a time limit, I didn’t do this until we were almost boarding.
Our closest boarding point was a long block away, right outside Planet Hollywood and the alcohol-serving Taco Bell Cantina. We quickly spotted the Deuce route sign and texted the posted number for the next bus’s arrival time. Moments later, the bus puffed to a halt in front of us as if we had invoked it; we scanned our just-activated QR codes at the door and then foraged for seats.
Despite the Deuce being the promptest, easiest public transit I’ve ever ridden, once we were seated on the upper level, I realized it was bus-ness as usual. There were those familiar fluorescent overheads. The wheezing fabric cushions patterned in blue, pink, and yellow phantasms. The trash that scuttles out from under the seats at each stop and start. The long-winded pauses at lights. And the butts that drag ass air right past your face as new passengers settle into their own seats.
But in Las Vegas, the bus also grants you one free ticket to all those street performers on the Strip, since the route parallels the sidewalk. We watched the b-boy crew backflipping; we left them in mid-air. A lone “showgirl” leaned over a railing, revealing her plume-framed cheeks. Someone in a giant baby suit slouched along while a child gawped in horror and awe at this monstrous avatar.
The tourist mobs pulsed around these spectacles, filled with that jittery lethargy that rises after large lunches. En masse, people began to tilt, their backs sinking toward the ground and their bellies toward the sky as they fought to hold themselves up against the growing hunk of food and alcohol in their guts.
Flitting in between this all like pearly hummingbirds were the someones who needed to be somewhere – otherwise drinks wouldn’t be served, cards wouldn’t be dealt, steaks wouldn’t be cooked, Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas.
Near Fremont Street
The Deuce is an enjoyable ride during the day, when sights are still visible, but soon enough we reached that point after the Wynn where the twinkles shrink.
The desert begins to win against the window-washers. The structures deflate, spreading horizontally in search of shadows, oozing toward the sundial shade of the Stratosphere. Slowly the Strip’s rich caretakers are slurping up this stretch with air-conditioned havens like Resorts World, but for now, vacancy occupies the land. Around here, sunburnt men on tiny bikes race the Deuce, wheeling off around the corner to get lost before they can lose.
Bus riders can disembark at the Arts District or stay on until Fremont Street. We got off early to stop at the only Chase for miles around. We passed the 5th Street School, tidy and historical and landscaped with succulents whose edges glowed as red as the terracotta roof, then reached the bank.
Money in Las Vegas magically morphs from cash and coins into the strange currency of chips and spins. It rapidly changes from change into chance at the many generic ATMs that stand on the casino floors, just waiting to be fed debit cards. And then it gets swept up and stashed away by the dealers and algorithms before players even know they lost.
So how strange to see an ATM in broad daylight, unadorned by the digital clatter of slot machines, like a fur-less bear crouched in the parking lot. We withdrew $100 each, which we’d pool together over the evening to maximize our gambling time. I tucked my cash inside a pocket inside a bag inside a bag, as much to hide it from myself as potential pick-pockets, and we hurried toward the commotion, ready to experience Fremont Street.
On Fremont Street
Panning for Fun (Las Vegas, NV: Dec. 2024)
“The Fremont Street Experience” is a pedestrian’s dream and a drunk pedestrian’s heaven.
As its name implies, it’s a boundless time within a space, as opposed to the Strip’s linear debauchery. The Fremont Street Experience proper is four blocks of namesake street that have been converted into an adult playground ornamented with a massive overhead screen, live music stages, merchandise booths, bars, and casinos waiting with bated smoker’s breath. Cars can pass through the Experience on one latitudinal road (Casino Center Blvd), but the rest is tarmac-turned-burnished-sidewalk.
From the Fremont Street Experience, it’s an easy walk to the other historic casinos on the adjacent blocks, such as the Downtown Grand, the Main Street Station, and the El Cortez. There’s much to do beyond the core Experience, such as dance and lap at ube ice cream at the night club, or visit the Container Park Shopping Mall a few blocks away. Go a bit farther, and you’ll enter the realm of the classic motels, which sit real low and emit a simmering, simpering glimmering that both invites and repulses.
As a whole, Downtown Las Vegas is large enough to feel like there’s a lot to do, and small enough that you won’t get tired of tootling. Everything is just around the corner. Thus, the best way to get around is to wander and loiter. For supplies you’ll need only some comfy shoes, a wad of cash snuggled close to your skin, your ID and phone, and room in your pocket to accumulate a deck of Player’s Cards loaded with free slot play.
Within the core 400 meters of the Fremont Street Experience, you’ll have front door access to the D Casino, the Four Queens, the Golden Nugget, the Golden Gate, the Plaza, Circa, Binion’s Gambling Hall, and the Fremont – more than enough spaces filled with the florid, warbling machines that you came for, that call for More, MORE!
Fremont Street Parking
Alas, even Downtown Las Vegas has entered the era of parking fees. They’re not as exorbitant as the Strip overall, but you still have to pay attention. For example, if you park at the Golden Nugget any time from Friday at noon through Sunday, and you forget to validate your ticket at one of their restaurants, you’re going to pay $50.99 to drive back through the gate.
Better to not even gamble on that high of a rate and instead park at the 4 Queens Hotel & Casino or Binion’s. They’re notoriously liberal with their parking garage validations if you dine or wager even a small amount at their establishments.
If you’d rather not deal with validation, which we all need, but which is frequently hard to get, the best bet is the Neonopolis parking garage on 4th Street, which charges a neat and easy maximum of $9 per day.
For the true penny pinchers, it’s a miracle you’ve survived this long in Las Vegas, but yes, there is free street parking within walking distance of the Fremont Street Experience. Proximity comes at a premium during specific hours. Spots in the immediate area are metered until 10 pm. A few more blocks out and the meters click off at 6 pm. And once you’ve reached the sulking houses, the underpasses, the chain-link-caged lacunae, then the only countdown is to how long it will take for your car to get jacked.
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