How monorail’s fate might have been different
By Richard N. Velotta
I’ve always maintained that the Las Vegas Monorail had little chance for success because it has operated despite being incomplete.
Critics have continually battered the 3.9-mile elevated work-in-progress transportation system because it doesn’t go where most people want to be.
Instead of being delivered to the shiny entrances of Strip resort properties, passengers are dumped off in the back like an after-hours delivery.
The best that can be said of the monorail is that it is a convenient transportation option for major trade shows and conventions at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
When more than 100,000 people make their way to the Consumer Electronics Show, and parking garages at the Las Vegas Hilton charge $20 a pop for people trying to park their cars within walking distance of the show, the monorail rocks. It’s worth the $5 one-way ticket or $28 three-day pass.
But it was clear from the beginning that the monorail would not thrive by selling tickets only to conventioneers attending high-occupancy shows.
Many critics of the system have repeatedly asked why the monorail wasn’t built down the center of Las Vegas Boulevard to be more functional to the traveling public. Even more ask why the line wasn’t built out to McCarran International Airport in the first place to provide easily accessible transportation to air travelers.
While some view extending the line to McCarran as the salvation of the system, others, including Clark County Aviation Department Director Randall Walker, are skeptical about whether arriving passengers would really want to haul their suitcases through the airport, onto a train and then through the back way into a resort.
Robert Broadbent, one of the ramrods of the monorail project and the brunt of many critics, had a far better vision of the monorail than what was eventually built.
Broadbent ran into roadblock after roadblock in his quest to build the system down the median of the Strip. He told me before his death in 2003 that his efforts to build on the Strip were torpedoed by resort power brokers who viewed the system as a means to leave their properties instead of get to them.
They also held the mind-set that the large concrete guideways would be a distraction to sightlines on the Strip. In short, they said the monorail would be a heap of ugly in front of their beautiful buildings.
Broadbent had some other interesting ideas. For example, the original plans for the Bally’s stop included a design for the track running through the building instead of around it. He was one of the first to roll out the idea of having companies sponsor monorail stations and the trains themselves.
In the early days, there were two sponsored stations and several wrapped train sets that generated revenue beyond the fare box. That revenue source dried up during the recession as advertisers who had the money to do it backed away from the moving billboard concept.
Now, it appears that the days of a privately operated monorail are numbered. A bankruptcy court judge is expected to rule on its fate next year, but bondholders aren’t pressing for a speedy resolution.
There are several scenarios for how that will play out, including getting public funding involved. The monorail’s leadership swore up and down that it would never become a taxpayer burden.
For the system to become eligible for a federal transportation grant for capital improvements, the monorail company would have to contract with the state or county to be eligible to apply for federal funding.
The monorail generates enough revenue to cover operation and maintenance but has fallen short of being able to pay off debt or spend for capital improvements, like upgrading trains (which will be essential in a few years), doing track maintenance or even extending the line to the airport.
Meanwhile, the Regional Transportation Commission is looking at developing a rapid transit system that would put buses or, eventually, light rail down the center of the Strip, exactly the way Broadbent drew it up.
Maybe the RTC will have more success than Broadbent in developing a functional transportation system on the Strip. Maybe we’ll get a tourism transit system right given a second chance.
But what then would become of the monorail?
It would most likely go away, as so many of its critics hope.
