Driving

Taking your own car to work is one of the most popular options for those who have a regular commute. You should no doubt be familiar with the benefits of driving: you can go directly to wherever you want on your own time. If you need to stop somewhere on the way to or from work, you have the freedom to easily do so. There’s no need to plan on multiple bus rides that might drive an indirect route that takes you unnecessarily out of the way.

Of course, driving is not without its disadvantages. With Las Vegas’ ever-increasing focus on sustainability, you must be conscious about your car’s use of fossil fuels and its carbon output. More personally and immediately, there are also some obvious and not-so-obvious costs of driving. While you’ll have to pay for gas, there are also the costs of keeping your registration up-to-date, having driver’s insurance, and making the inevitable repairs to your car. However, finding someone to carpool with to work can help cut down on costs quite a bit.

Public Transportation

Having a car can end up being quite expensive, and because you must keep your attention on the road at all times while driving, it’s not a great option if you’d rather be passive during your commute times. For those who can’t or won’t drive themselves, there’s a bus system that runs throughout the city and residential areas. You can check out the bus routes and pass prices at the website for the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, or RTC for short.

Is riding the bus cheaper or more expensive than driving yourself? If you buy a 30-day bus pass in advance, you’ll be paying a few dollars each day for the privilege to ride the public system. Whether or not that comes out to be cheaper than driving is going to depend on your car, your travel route, and what buses you would plan on taking. You’ll have to do that research yourself.

Biking

One option that’s less popular, yet still a viable option in some cases, is taking your bike to work. Biking is a great way to get some daily exercise, and perhaps better, it’s almost completely free. Your employer or health insurance provider may even provide incentives for you to bike to work. Las Vegas is also making a greater effort to promote biking in the city by introducing a bike share program later this year.

Quite obviously, there are a few cons to biking to work. For one, it’s a pretty unreasonable option if you need to commute all the way across the city. To do so would take a couple of hours, and you’d have to face hills, weather, and traffic. While the city is making efforts to make roads more bike-friendly, not all roads have bike lanes, so you might have to share the road with vehicles. This can be intimidating–or even dangerous–for riders. You can view bike maps of the city at the RTC website.

Which transportation method you choose is going to depend on your budget, the time you want to spend commuting, and how you want to spend your time commuting. Hopefully, by considering the benefits and drawbacks of each option, you can make a more informed decision on how you’ll get to work.