Traffic slows to a crawl Wednesday in a northbound Swenson Street road work zone approaching Harmon Avenue, between McCarran International Airport and the Strip. Without relief from road work, some Las Vegas Valley cabbies fear next month's NBA All-Star Game at the Thomas & Mack Center near that intersection only will worsen gridlock. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Civic leaders are hoping that next month's NBA All-Star Game at the Thomas & Mack Center will give the world a little taste of Las Vegas-style glitz and glamour.

But some local cabbies fear that fans instead will get a huge dose of valley-style gridlock.

That's because of ongoing road work projects around the Thomas & Mack and McCarran International Airport that have pinched lanes and made it tough going to and from the Strip taking the usual surface streets.

"It took me 45 minutes the other day from the airport, taking the surface streets, to get to the Treasure Island" hotel, normally a much shorter trip, said Greg Bambic, a cabby and president of the Professional Drivers Association, an advocacy group. "They've got all these cabs coming out, they can't get through that crap."

Much of the troubles revolve around a $6.8 million Clark County project that's reconfiguring Paradise Road and Swenson Street south of Harmon Avenue, and widening Harmon between those two byways. The project, which started late last summer, won't finish before late July.

That's choking a typical airport-to-Strip route along Swenson to Harmon to Paradise to Flamingo Road, as well as the Thomas & Mack entrance along Swenson. Especially troublesome is the corner of Swenson and Harmon, drivers say.

"When you come off the airport, everything funnels by the Thomas & Mack," Bambic said. "They have the road construction going from four lanes to two lanes. You take a left onto Harmon, with the traffic coming out of UNLV, it's taking 15 or 20 minutes to come off the airport and get down to the Hard Rock" hotel, which is less than two miles from the airport's terminal. "It's nuts."

Agreed, said Karla Hiropolous, a cabby and official with the Industrial Technical Professional Employees union, the valley's largest labor representative of cabbies. "You cannot get past there," she said.

It's just one of a number of choke points that have raised the ire of cabbies over the past few months. McCarran's passenger dropoff area is a scrum; Russell Road near the airport is torn up; Paradise near the Las Vegas Convention Center gets slower every day; and we all know the Strip basically doesn't move after 10 a.m.

Those resort corridor driving conditions likely will be worse during All-Star Weekend Feb. 17-18, when as many as 150,000 people are expected to descend here.

"If they don't have somebody who actually wants to control the traffic, we're going to flop as far as (getting fans) in and out of there," Hiropolous said.

The Nevada Taxicab Authority is considering adding up to 320 extra cabs to the valley's 1,600-cab fleet, but drivers fear those cabs will just add to the traffic jam.

"It's going to be a nightmare," said Gene Brady, a driver and steward with the United Steelworkers Union, which also represents cab drivers here. They're going to be sitting in traffic."

That's not all. Around the same time as All-Star Weekend is the Men's Apparel Guild in California show, known as MAGIC, where 115,000 showgoers are expected at the Convention Center; there's an expected influx of Valentine's Day couples and Chinese New Year's revelers; and did we mention it's a three-day weekend for folks who have Presidents Day off?

"We have all those conventioneers coming in, plus the NBA game," Bambic said. "We can't get the cabs, limos and buses through that."

Stephen Patterson, transit operations supervisor of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, recently told the Taxicab Authority that All-Star Weekend will be a "perfect storm" of overlapping tourist draws. "The city's going to be buzzing," he said.

Privately, some drivers say that "tunneling" visitors, that is, taking the airport tunnel to Interstate 15, normally considered a longer than necessary and illegal "long-hauling" route that gouges tourists, could actually be much faster than traditional routes, given the headaches on surface streets these days.

"Somebody needs to call the county and get all that construction done," Bambic said.

So we made a call to the county's public works department, where officials said they'll try to open up as many Swenson, Paradise and Harmon lanes as possible in time for the game. But that's no panacea.

"Obviously, it's a concern to us. Anytime you have restrictions and closures, there's concern," said Bobby Shelton, a public works spokesman. "But this is a several months-long project. Do you delay the project for one event, and then have it during other events?"

Indeed, the county is considering additional traffic restrictions on other weekends preceding All-Star Weekend, including closing parts of Paradise and Harmon in that area, in hopes of getting some work done early.

But that could impact other busy tourist times, like the upcoming Super Bowl weekend Feb. 3-4 (one of the Paradise/Harmon closures will be from Feb. 4-8; the other will be Feb. 28-March 1).

"There's no good time when you have a project that extends over several months. You can't do part of a project, and then leave it," Shelton said. "When's a good time for a 330-day project to be done? You'll impact events, regardless.

"The biggest issue is, people will have to have patience to get in and out of that area because of the limited access to the Thomas & Mack," Shelton said. "We realize it's an inconvenience. But when the work is done, it'll be much, much better."

True. But where will All-Star fans be then?

Back home, telling the world about the awful Vegas traffic.

Welcome to our world, hoop fans.

If you have a question, tip or tirade, call the Road Warrior at 387-2904, or e-mail him at roadwarrior@reviewjournal.com or OSofradzija@reviewjournal.com. Please include your phone number.