The Sierra Club lost the battle but it still may win the war.

At first glance, it looks like the environmental group came out on the losing end in last week's settlement of its lawsuit over the U.S. Highway 95 widening. After all, the agreement focuses almost entirely on improving air quality for students at three schools next to the highway. It doesn't address the health of thousands of other people living along the busy thoroughfare, nor does it deal with larger issues the Sierra Club has raised about inadequate long-range transportation planning in the valley.

But a little perspective is needed to understand why the Sierra Club didn't exactly throw in the towel with this settlement deal. When the group filed its lawsuit three years ago, the local transportation picture was different. Back then, there was very little public discussion of expanding mass transit in the valley. From the perspective of the Sierra Club and other advocates of smart growth, Las Vegas was not considering aggressive measures to combat traffic congestion, air pollution and sprawl.

But things started to change more than a year ago when County Commissioners Rory Reid and Bruce Woodbury spearheaded the formation of a task force to study the valley's growth and make recommendations. With 17 diverse members, including the Sierra Club's Jane Feldman, the Clark County Community Growth Task Force set to work building a consensus about the best strategies to improve the quality of life in fast-growing Las Vegas.

One of the task force's primary recommendations: better mass transit. In its hefty report released in April, the group advocates an "integrated multi-modal transportation system," which, in English, is an endorsement of a commuter-oriented light rail network. Not coincidentally, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada recently proposed just such a project that would traverse 33 miles from Henderson through the resort corridor to North Las Vegas.

So, in short, the holistic, long-range transportation planning the Sierra Club was demanding through its lawsuit is starting to occur. It doesn't matter whether the lawsuit forced it to happen. The fact that it's happening is a victory for the Sierra Club and others who believe Las Vegas must evolve beyond a single transportation option: the almighty car (or, more likely in Las Vegas, the four-wheel-drive pickup).

About 1.7 million people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Add 200,000 tourists on most weekends and we're close to the 2 million mark. No matter how you look at it, that's a lot of people. But we're just getting started. All signs point to Las Vegas growing well beyond 2 million. Experts conservatively estimate we will hit 3 million by 2025.

In the past, Las Vegas planners and politicians have been surprised by the community's rapid and sustained growth. Again and again, you hear old-timers say they never imagined Las Vegas would reach 1 million people, let alone 2 million. So, perhaps they can be excused for not putting the proper facilities in place to handle the influx.

Today, there is no excuse. We know very well that Las Vegas is going to continue expanding. We will hit 2 million, then 3 million, then march toward 4 million people. National demographic, social and economic trends all but guarantee it.

Because we know this, we must plan for the future, and one of the most important issues is transportation.

Congestion is a daily fact on the valley's three highways -- Interstate 15, U.S. 95 and the Beltway. Morning and afternoon rush hours can become a vein-popping nightmare if one little thing goes wrong: a stalled vehicle, a fender-bender, a jagged row of construction cones. While several larger cities have more severe commuter delays, Las Vegas is bad and getting worse.

Now, just imagine what our three highways will look like 10 years from now, when we've added 100 cars a day for a decade. Needless to say, traffic flow is not going to get better.

When the Sierra Club's lawsuit put a large chunk of the U.S. 95 widening project on hold, local politicians and frustrated motorists called for the heads of those granola-munching activists. A few neanderthals even called Sierra Club members and threatened violence.

Motorists had a right to be upset -- but not with the Sierra Club. The anger should have been directed at politicians who had failed to come up with a real plan to cope with the valley's growing traffic congestion.

In an interview last summer, Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, argued that "you can't solve gridlock just by paving. You need to have an intelligent and diverse solution. That's what we haven't been able to get from the Federal Highway Administration."

First off, contrary to the optimism expressed last week by Gov. Kenny Guinn, it's folly to believe that widening U.S. 95 to 10 lanes is going to solve anything. Anyone who drives here knows that traffic tie-ups occur primarily because of bottlenecks. More lanes might create some breathing room in the straightaways, but they won't address the inevitable chokepoints at the dreaded Rainbow Curve, where Summerlin Parkway merges with U.S. 95, or the Spaghetti Bowl, where U.S. 95 crosses I-15. As the northwest valley's population balloons, widening U.S. 95 is, at best, a stopgap measure.

Second, there are better ways to battle congestion. For example, we know many northwest residents work on the south Strip. Perhaps a program could be set up -- it's been done successfully elsewhere -- to entice those workers to park their cars at a designated lot or two in the northwest and ride an express bus to work.

To its credit, the Regional Transportation Commission is genuinely trying to plan ahead. Its proposed commuter rail is an ambitious project. Its success will require that thousands of car-minded valley residents get over the idea that mass transit is just for the other guy. Las Vegans love their cars, but so do people in cities such as Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City that are developing popular light rail networks.

The odds are hugely in favor of light rail working here, says the Sierra Club's Feldman. "The example is Salt Lake City," she says. "Salt Lake put light rail into place and ridership in the first six months was twice what they expected. It's not a question of whether it will work. Light rail will work if you design it to work."

Feldman, a member of the RTC's Regional Fixed Guideway Steering Committee, notes that 45 percent of valley jobs are in the resort corridor. "The fact that we have such a big concentration of our jobs in the resort corridor should make it relatively easy to decide where people need to go," she says. "That's also where we go for much of our entertainment. So it makes sense to design a system that would service those areas."

Nevada has a boom-and-bust history, with dozens of ghost towns dotting the basin and range. But that pattern doesn't apply to modern Las Vegas. This place just isn't going to dry up and blow away. Las Vegas has become one of the Southwest's major metropolitan hubs, important not only for its tourism appeal but as a business and population center. We need to abandon our antiquated boomtown mind-set and make real plans for the community in which our children and grandchildren will live.

Geoff Schumacher is director of community publications for the Stephens Media Group and author of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas."