This was the process used by the Nevada Highway Patrol on Interstate 15, U.S. Highway 95 and state Route 160 following last week's record snowfall.

On Wednesday evening there was not one Henderson police vehicle to be seen on Anthem Parkway or Eastern Avenue for hours. A police agency that should have been closing Eastern and Anthem and directing traffic away until they were safe and passable was not visible to any driver. Instead, by the hundreds, cars headed uphill to become part of the parking lot, where they could no longer gain traction, not go forward and no longer go backward.

One lone Henderson Police Department truck was seen pulling over a vehicle and issuing a ticket on a side road far from the mess.

Parts of Eastern and Anthem should have been shut down until the roads could be made safe and passable. That would have been much better than making stranded drivers spend three hours in their cars until their batteries died or their anti-lock braking systems gave out from the spinning, trying to climb to the top, having no idea that they would then end up in a lake of cars that could no longer move. These drivers were left to walk the rest of the way home.

In fact, on their own, many cars began to go across to the downhill side of Eastern and Anthem in the wrong direction, toward downhill traffic on the same side, still with no law enforcement presence.

Trying to reach the Henderson Police Department was even worse, as calls to the 311 line went to a fast busy signal and never made it to a dispatcher.

All Henderson residents in the Anthem area now hope that the Henderson Police Department conducts a post-mortem review and creates a plan so that this will never happen again.

R. Gill

HENDERSON

The transfer hustle

To the editor:

Jay D'Angelo's Friday letter to the editor, which stated that bus passengers jaywalk because the stops are too far from intersections and crosswalks, might be correct. But I think there's a more urgent reason people risk life and limb.

At every major intersection along Maryland Parkway, from Charleston Boulevard to Tropicana Avenue, I see passengers pour out of a bus in the middle of the block and make a mad dash across Maryland, dodging in and out of speeding traffic to catch a connecting bus that's a half a block down the street. It looks like the running of the bulls.

I guess this insane policy of stopping the bus half a block past the intersection will continue till a few people get killed. Then maybe the Regional Transportation Commission will consider a customer's life a higher priority than a driver's convenience.

I don't believe any driver would be indifferent to the sight of someone's blood splattered all over his or her car.

I know, some might say, why don't they just catch the next bus. Sounds reasonable, except long delays on Citizens Area Transit routes are all too common. Jobs have been lost for missing that earlier bus.

Employers don't like excuses. They expect you to be on time.

Bill Cramer

LAS VEGAS

Subsidy realities

To the editor:

Duke Energy's plan to build a wind farm in Searchlight ("Wind farm floated in state," Friday Review-Journal) raises some interesting points.

For example, after employing "hundreds during six to eight months of construction," the operation will then "provide permanent employment for 15 workers." These numbers are consistent with many other media reports about wind and solar power plants.

So, let's say you build 100 of these things. No, wait. Let's say 1,000 of them. After the one-shot construction jobs lasting less than a year, you'll have an "industry" generating 300,000 megawatts of electricity with permanent employment of 15,000. That barely matches the level of employment in the natural resources and mining industry, which represents less than 1 percent of Nevada's total employment.

I don't have a problem "going green" if that's what the majority wants, but I think we need to stop believing this is an industry that's going to create millions of jobs.

One other thing: We all know we are "investing" hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies in this "industry," but no one seems to be willing to tell us what the subsidized cost of that energy is going to be to us in electricity rates. Our current per-kilowatt-hour rate is .1068800 cents. What rate per-kilowatt-hour rate will Duke Energy charge NV Energy (us) for that wind power? More? Less? By how much? No one seems to be willing to say, and that should make everyone concerned about the NV Energy's proposed 17.5 percent rate increase very nervous.

KNIGHT ALLEN

LAS VEGAS