When it launched in 2004 the Las Vegas Monorail was touted as the future of transportation in the city, with projections that it would carry as many as 50,000 riders a day, quickly turn a profit, and expand around The Strip, to Downtown, and the airport. To say that it hasn’t quite worked out that way is, perhaps, the understatement of the century thus far and while it may not be quite as much of a disaster as the monorail they built in Springfield in that classic episode of “The Simpsons,” every month news comes out that slides it closer and closer to that level of misadventure at least in terms of public perception.
Figures were released recently for ridership on the line for 2006 and it wasn’t good. The average daily riders for the year were around 19,000 and in December of 2006 that number was only 15,430. That’s down by almost a third from the 2005 numbers and well short of projections and what it needs to turn a profit.
So what’s the problem? Why aren’t people riding the monorail? This is strictly my opinion, mind you, but I think it suffers as a transportation choice for two primary reasons: convenience and cost.
The route of the monorail is great if you happen to be going where it goes. So for instance if you are in town for a trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center and are staying at the MGM Grand there is probably no better, faster, or cheaper way to get to and fro. But if, on the other hand, you are staying at New York-New York and are having dinner at Bellagio, by the time you walked across the street, through the MGM Grand all the way to the train station, waited for a train, took the train to Bally’s, walked all the way through Bally’s to The Strip and across the street to Bellagio you could’ve just walked up The Strip and already be seated comfortably, sipping a pre-dinner cocktail.
And even if you’re going to the hotels the monorail currently services, the hike back to the stations can be daunting. When there are taxi-cabs galore and the double-decker Deuce busses trolling The Strip 24 hours a day, the convenience factor dims considerably.
The second factor is the cost. When the monorail opened a one-way ticket cost $3. Now it’s up to $5, which is not a lot of money to be sure, but consider the fact that you can take a couple steps out the front door of the MGM Grand and catch the Deuce all the way to Downtown Las Vegas for the same amount of money (AND you get to cruise The Strip instead of watching the backs of the hotels whiz by). That makes that $5 seem like less of a bargain that it probably is.
All of this puts some big question marks around the future of the monorail. The operators of the line and their small army of spokespeople remain upbeat, insisting that the cash reserves of the line will keep it running at a deficit well into 2008 and that the proposed airport extension is a “go” even though no one is quite sure how they are going to pay for it.
But set aside where the money is going to come from for a moment and also set aside that even in a perfect world it would be 2011 before the airport extension could be up and running, let’s go back to that convenience factor of such a plan.
Again, it’ll be great if you happen to be staying at one of the hotels that the monorail stops at, but let’s pretend you’re staying at Caesars Palace or The Mirage. Are you really going to schlep your luggage on a train, get off at the back of The Flamingo, walk with that heavy luggage all the way through The Flamingo and across the street to your hotel to save yourself a couple of bucks? I don’t see it happening and I think the extension will suffer the same problems the existing one does – it is only going to attract the subset of visitors for whom it happens to be convenient and that subset will not be large enough to put it in the black.
Airport extension or not, the big question is what will happen to the monorail if it can’t turn things around by 2008 when it is projected to run out of money?
The whole thing was privately financed and there is absolutely no obligation from the city or county to step in to try to rescue it at taxpayer expense. The attitude from most local residents seems to be that anyone in the government who would suggest such a thing would very quickly get ridden out on a rail, mono or otherwise.
The casinos could step in and either subsidize or buy the entire thing, but since the six hotel stops along the route are at places that are owned by five different companies, none of whom are famous for playing nicely with each other, that option seems like wishful thinking.
So what option does that leave? Well, as Homer and Marge can attest, there is no monorail in Springfield anymore. I personally don’t think it will come to that since a failure of that magnitude would be too embarrassing to too many people and companies, but I think anyone who suggests that it is totally impossible for it to happen is kidding themselves.
return to the top
