Vegas tops Census metro population charts

WASHINGTON - Besides bright lights and a ton of hotels, New York and Las Vegas share at least one other characteristic: lots of traffic.

New Yorkers are used to it, living in the country's most populous metropolitan area, a fact reconfirmed by the Census Bureau in a report being released Friday.

Residents of Las Vegas and its environs - the nation's fastest-growing metro area in the 1990s but nowhere near the largest - still have to get accustomed to congested roads as a fact of life.

''Traffic is just ...,'' Las Vegas resident Sharolyn Croft said before tailing off in frustration. What was a 20-minute, 1-mile commute for her in 1986 now takes close to an hour many days, she said.

''And we can't keep up with construction. They almost named the (construction) crane the state bird,'' she joked.

Such is life when population grows in the Las Vegas metro area by 62 percent between April 1990 and July 1999 to 1,381,086 million, the largest percentage growth for any metro area in the country, according to the Census Bureau's annual estimates.

Two suburbs in the Las Vegas metro area, Henderson and North Las Vegas, were the fastest-growing cities of at least 100,000 population. Henderson grew 155.6 percent to 166,399, and North Las Vegas grew 112.4 percent to 101,841.

''The population explosion is brought about by an expansion in the casino industry, which then brings in small business,'' said Croft, director of the University of Las Vegas Nevada Small Business Development Center.

Frankie Wunderink moved to Henderson from Allendale, Mich., two years ago and joined the Desert Newcomers Club, a support group for women new to the area.

''The cost of living is higher for us, but if you are a self-starter and willing to move out of your comfort zone, there are some unusual opportunities here that you wouldn't get in a small-town,'' Wunderink said.

Las Vegas was followed in the top five by two Texas metro areas: Laredo (up 45 percent), and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission (up 39.5 percent); then Boise, Idaho (up 37.9 percent), and Naples, Fla. (up 36.1 percent).

''The two Texas metros are getting an extreme amount of immigration from Mexico. Boise has been led throughout the decade by expansion of high-tech industries primarily,'' said Alan Porter of the Idaho Department of Commerce.

For sheer numbers, the Big Apple and its suburbs remain tops. The New York metro area, which encompasses the city, Long Island, northern New Jersey and slivers of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, had 20,196,649 people in 1999, up 3.2 percent from 1990.

The four next-biggest metro areas were: Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County in California (16 million); Chicago-Gary, Ind.-Kenosha, Wis. (8.8 million); the Washington-Baltimore area, which also encompasses parts of Virginia and West Virginia (7.3 million); and California's San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose (6.8 million).

Nationwide, the population of central cities within metropolitan areas grew 4 percent in the '90s, while the areas outside central cities grew 14.1 percent.

The Grand Forks, N.D., metro area, which includes suburbs in Minnesota, had the biggest decline, down 7.6 percent to 95,461. North Dakota state demographer Richard Rathge said the departures were due primarily to devastating floods that gutted Grand Forks in 1997.

''There was a fair amount of displacement with businesses, and a fair amount of waiting time of where dikes would be and where they could relocate,'' Rathge said. ''All that extended out the recovery time.''

The next largest declines were in Utica-Rome in New York (-7.4 percent); Steubenville, Ohio-Weirton, W.Va. (-6.5 percent); Binghamton, N.Y. (-6.4 percent); and Pittsfield, Mass. (-5.8 percent).

Other findings from the report:

-After Henderson and North Las Vegas, the next three cities of 100,000 people or more with the greatest increases in the '90s were: Chandler, Ariz. (up 86.4 percent); Pembroke Pines, Fla. (up 85.3 percent); and Plano, Tex. (up 81.2 percent).

-Among the same class cities, St. Louis had the biggest decline, down 15.8 percent to 333,960. It was followed by four East Coast cities: Washington (-14.5 percent); Baltimore (-14 percent); Norfolk, Va. (-13.5 percent); and Philadelphia (-10.6 percent).

''These are the patterns that we've been seeing over the past few years,'' Census geographer Paul Mackun said, referring to population shifts south and west.

---

On the Net: Report available after 12:01 a.m. EDT at Census Web site: http://www.census.gov/

Census Bureau embargo policy: http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/embargopolicy.html