Question of the Day - 29 August 2022

The saga of the Las Vegas Monorail is long and winding.

The short version is that the Monorail was founded as a nonprofit (because it's a public service), so it was never meant to be profitable, at least not in the commercial scheme of things. Still, it wasn’t meant to lose as much money as it did over the years. And it was meant to repay the bondholders from operating revenues over and above expenses.

But from the very start in 2004, the number of paying passengers, plus advertising on the trains and in stations, fell far short of projections. A lot had to do with the location of the stations, long walks through the casinos to the Strip. 

By 2009, Monorail administrators were starting to talk about bankruptcy, which was filed in early 2010. According to the company's own financial estimates at that time, the Monorail would never generate enough revenue to pay off its debts and without financial relief to deal with looming bills, necessary train replacements, and other equipment costs, its ability to continue operating beyond 2019 was “questionable.”

Sure enough, even though virtually all of the Monorail’s debts were erased by 2013 at the expense of the bondholders, the ill-fated transportation system was back in bankruptcy territory again as the 2020s approached. It might have survived on its own, but the pandemic shutdown was the final nail in the coffin. The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority stepped in and bought it in order to control the Monorail’s non-compete clause.  

Which brings us to your second question, about the Las Vegas Loop. Those plans keep expanding and though it's still very early in the process, so far at least, there's no reason to believe that they won't come to fruition. In mid-June, the city approved plans for Boring Company to dig under Las Vegas Boulevard to bring the Loop downtown. And only a few weeks ago, it was announced that the Clark County Commission will vote on Sept. 7 on a new Boring proposal to build a 56th station along the Strip on a 2.2-acre parcel of land at 4613 Las Vegas Blvd. South, across from Mandalay Bay. 

At the moment, plans are in place and some construction is going on for the Tropicana Loop, Caesars Loop, and a short tunnel to the Westgate. Some of these are scheduled to be in operation next year.