Use of the buses has been put on hold, thanks to a construction delay that has moved the opening of McCarran's $180 million rental center at Warm Springs Road and Gillespie Street to November.

Originally, the center was to have opened in June and 10 car rental companies were to have moved in by now.

But a series of delays by general contractor PCL Construction Services has put the project behind and has the buses idle instead of idling.

"It's always been part of the plan to bring everything together at the same time," said Randy Walker, Clark County Aviation director. "We originally thought the rental center was going to be done by June, so we planned to get the buses here a little earlier so they could be checked out and run a little, but that didn't happen."

Walker said an abundance of rain muddied the construction site in the early phases and got PCL behind to the point that it couldn't recover.

"We always build weather delays into the contract, and I remember the rain we got because it happened at the same time we were dealing with roof leaks at the (Regional) Justice Center," said Walker, who was asked to oversee the final stages of development of that building. "We got more rain than normal. It's nobody's fault, really."

But Walker said some other delays have occurred since the rain, requiring some construction coordination to finish the job. Walker said he has heard that 5,000 square feet of tile for the building "is still in Italy" and some of the ceiling fixtures haven't been completed. Walker said he hopes to know by mid-September when car rental companies can move in.

If that occurs in November, the rental facility could be running in time for one of the busiest convention times of the year, January, when the monstrous Consumer Electronics Show is in town.

Walker isn't just anxious for the facility to be open to better accommodate car-rental companies and rental customers. And that's where the buses come in.

As McCarran continues to grow, traffic flow around the airport has become increasingly gnarly, and firing up the buses will help solve some congestion problems that have been brewing on airport circulation roads and on Paradise Road, where several rental companies currently are based.

Under the existing car-rental system, every company has its own shuttle bus to take customers to their respective offices. Every company has its own curb location to pick up those customers.

Under the new system, the 40 shuttle buses, to be operated by a subcontracted concession and not McCarran employees, will have their own curb location at the airport and run on a regular schedule moving all car-rental companies to the new facility and back. Walker hopes the new system will remove 6 million vehicle trips from McCarran-area streets a year.

It also will free up curb space that would help solve another problem: how to manage taxicab lines during peak traffic periods.

Each bus will have a capacity of 15 passangers and their suitcases.

Walker explained that when passenger traffic is particularly high, cab lines grow so long that they impede passenger movement at the airport's baggage claim area. By adding a new cab staging location during peak periods, some of that congestion can be relieved, he said.

"I've seen these car-rental buses operating — I call them 'moving billboards' — and a lot of the time, these big buses have three or four people in them," Walker said. "And all 10 companies have them.

"Under the new system, one bus will pick up customers for all the companies. It may get a little crowded once in a while, but it will take a lot of traffic off those curbs and it will help everybody else out."

Several airports across the nation operate a common car-rental facility and shuttle bus systems. Earlier this year, Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport opened such a facility and it has received rave reviews from rental customers.

Walker said that while the buses haven't been in service since they were delivered to Las Vegas in mid-spring, their engines have been run regularly and the vehicles driven for short distances to avoid mechanical problems caused by sitting dormant in desert heat.