Sunday, October 05, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ROAD WARRIOR: Pedicab proliferation on Strip brings calls for prohibition

Americab cyclist Matthew Bowen gives Al and Donna Beachy from Plain City, Ohio, a ride Friday morning on Las Vegas Boulevard. "As long as you're careful and watch where you're going you don't bother anyone," Bowen said. "It's all about courtesy and being polite." Photo by Clint Karlsen.

San Diegan Bill Purcell was walking along the Strip when he got in a standoff of sorts.

It was NASCAR weekend. The broadcast engineer was working his way north along Las Vegas Boulevard when a member of the burgeoning pedicab industry pulled up behind him and demanded he step aside.

"He's driving through like he owns the sidewalk and we're inconveniencing him," Purcell recalls. "It was pretty crowded all the way around so I told him, `Where do you want me to go?' "

I should note, Purcell had watched with disgust as pedicabs proliferated in his hometown. They're a menace, operating recklessly and tying up traffic, and have become as entrenched as a cancer, in his opinion.

Now, here they were killing his vacation buzz in Vegas.

Purcell and the pedicab exchanged harsher words.

"You're lucky I'm working," the pedicab peddler said.

"If you're making a threat I will meet force with force," Purcell retorted.

It never came to blows. Purcell found a gap in which to step and the pedicab snaked past.

But his experience prompted Purcell to warn Las Vegas to get a handle on its pedicabs.

"Trust me when I say Las Vegas does not want or need these parasites operating," he said. "You need to stop this now."

Were existing laws enforced, they wouldn't be operating, at least not on sidewalks. State law prohibits riding bikes on sidewalks and requires that cyclists adhere to the same rules that govern motorists.

But UNLV marketing student and part-time pedicab driver Ryan McMahon said the pedicab-peddling set has no desire to go into the street.

"It's not safe out there with all the traffic on the boulevard," he said.

When they do venture into traffic, they're just as unwelcome as they are on the sidewalk.

"I've seen them going the wrong way on the Strip and on side streets; they cross without the light signal," said cabbie Oren Hampton.

Clark County won't license pedicabs.

The pedicabs skirt the prohibition by obtaining licenses as equipment rental businesses. They rent their rickshaws to independent contractors, who then offer tourists "free rides."

Ostensibly these are just guys riding bikes they rent for about $40 a day.

The free rides are, of course, not free. As one operator described it to a tourist last week, "just show me some love when we get where you're going."

Others explicitly set fares.

"I hear all the time guys quoting money," McMahon said.

Clark County officials aren't entirely oblivious to the situation that has festered for months. Last week they sent out letters warning pedicab operators they will begin citing drivers caught giving rides for hire.

Jacqueline Holloway, director of Clark County Business Licensing, said the county is also aiming to get the pedicabs off the sidewalk.

"If we're going to allow them to operate in traffic there will be some restrictions and training," she said.

There's talk among the pedicab drivers that they might get their own lane of Las Vegas Boulevard.

"We're trying to see if it's feasible," Holloway said.

But if anyone bothers to ask that question of the motorists who spend most of their driving day on the Strip, the cabdrivers, the answer is no. They say their objections aren't about money. Pedicab customers aren't the type to take taxicabs, they reason.

The growing pedicab controversy reminds veteran cabbie Eddie Markhouse of an episode in the mid-1980s when the county briefly allowed horse-drawn carriages onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

A team bolted into a vacant field throwing the two drivers and two passengers off, leaving a Connecticut woman in a coma. The county eventually banned them.

"We say, `Here we go again, another brainstorm by the county,' " Markhouse said. "It's just amazing that these things are allowed out there."

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