Sarah Feldberg
On Dec. 20, 2015, 24-year-old Lakeisha Holloway drove her car onto the sidewalk in front of Planet Hollywood and Paris Las Vegas, ramming into tourists strolling alongside the Las Vegas Strip. As people scrambled for safety, the car returned to the sidewalk two or more times. By the time Holloway fled the scene and asked a staff member at the Tuscany casino to call the police, she had killed one person and injured 35 others.
While the incident has not been called terrorism, Holloway has been accused of an intentional act. The incident fits into a disturbing pattern of vehicle-based attacks in the U.S. and abroad --in Nice, Berlin, London and most recently Barcelona.
It's also exactly the kind of episode that new pedestrian safety measures along the Strip are meant to prevent.
"Obviously with the tragedies that have occurred around the world with vehicles being used as weapons, we want to do everything we can," said Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, who has led a push to add steel bollards to Las Vegas Boulevard that would separate road traffic from pedestrian-packed walkways.
Over the past five years, various projects have aimed to make the Strip safer for walkers by widening the distance between the roadway and sidewalk or removing obstacles from the pedestrian thoroughfare that restricted movement or created chokepoints.
The bollards are the latest effort at improving pedestrian safety along the casino corridor, where approximately 700 posts are expected to be installed starting in October. Previously, adding similar barriers along Las Vegas Boulevard wasn't an option because of the volume of fiber and cable running under the street.
But Sisolak said that Clark County will be using a new type of bollard where the posts are strengthened not by deep anchoring but by being connected to each other beneath the ground and distributing the impact of a crash over multiple bollards. Rather than digging a hole to place each barrier, they're installed in a shallow trench so they don't interfere with the guts of the Strip just below the roadway.
The Clark County Sheriff's Department has determined the locations for the first phase of installations, but Sisolak said he plans to raise the issue of expanding the bollards at the next commission meeting.
"I think it's that effective," he said.
When Clark County began thinking about pedestrian safety issues along Las Vegas Boulevard some years ago, Sisolak was worried about the impact of drunk drivers or medical episodes behind the wheel. Today, his concerns are far broader, but the bollards are intended to protect visitors either way.
"There have been so many incidents, and they continue," he said. "This is the best way to keep the pedestrians separated from the traffic."