First of all, the monorail’s in the county, so the city has no authority over it. Second, it’s privately owned, so unless the county conducts eminent-domain proceedings through the courts, they can’t tear it down either. And third, plenty of people are riding it. So much for one cab driver’s information -- though it’s certainly wishful thinking on his part.
It’s true that not enough people are riding it -- yet. Initial projections that called for 50,000 daily passengers have proved to be too high by 20,000-30,000. The monorail needs 27,300 paying passengers a day to break even, but it’s been averaging little more than 20,000 a day since the beginning of this year (2006), when the base price to ride was raised from $3 to $5. The monorail has yet to earn a profit and its bond rating has fallen to junk status. It’s struggling, but it has a cash reserve that can see it through hard times till the end of 2008.
Having said all that, however, we’re still optimistic about this elevated transportation system. A similar system, the 45-year-old Seattle Center Monorail, is the nation's only fully self-sufficient public-transit system. The Las Vegas Strip Monorail has the same potential, we believe, once the four-mile route is extended to the airport and, possibly, to the west side of the Strip. The Seattle monorail carries 2.5 million passengers a year, or less than 7,000 a day. The Las Vegas Monorail is already carrying more than seven million passengers a year.
A recent interview with Curtis Myles, the monorail’s 43-year-old president and CEO, revealed a few interesting tidbits. Myles said that the original vision for the monorail was to connect seven resort-casinos to the Convention Center and that most of the marketing, especially selling bulk tickets to convention sponsors, was supposed to focus on that. But when the system was seven months late in opening, then shut down for another 110 days, the marketing campaign got derailed. That campaign and other are now gearing up again. In addition, the monorail continues to pursue big-money sponsorships and plans for the airport extension are ongoing.
But the bottom line is this: The way the tourist corridor is about to grow, with Project CityCenter, Echelon Place, Palazzo, Encore, and Cosmopolitan, to name just a few, all opening in the next few years, automobile traffic promises to turn into even more of a nightmare than it already is. According to the Regional Transportation Commission, 225,000 vehicles make trips along the resort corridor daily; in the next four years, that figure will increase by nearly 25% (50,000 more vehicles) -- from the hotel rooms alone. Add another 75,000 condo units announced for the Strip and you've got another 100,000 vehicles per day. That's a total of 375,000 cars traveling the length of the Strip daily, 60% more than today.
So it might take a few more years for the monorail to come into its own, but with Las Vegas growing by leaps and bounds over those same years, the monorail should grow right along with it.
