Troubled roller coaster grounded for third time

      County building officials shut down New York-New York's roller coaster for the third time Saturday, less than a day after resort officials reopened the ride and assured the public it was "perfectly in operational shape."
      Inspectors found cracking on the tracks and have closed the 3-month-old coaster indefinitely.
      "I don't want anybody to die on this," said Ron Lynn, assistant director of Clark County's building department.
      New York-New York opened the $18 million "Manhattan Express" to the public Friday after the county shut it down twice since March 10. Inspectors cited the resort with five notices for safety violations stemming from design problems that had caused about 40 small steel tension rods to snap.
      Casino President William Sherlock and other company executives were among the first passengers to ride the roller coaster Friday after they said repairs were complete.
      "We wanted to show that we're confident enough to ride it, and hopefully, the public will come back and ride it," Sherlock was quoted as saying.
      Less than 24 hours -- and hundreds of passengers -- later, more tension rods began snapping and hairline cracks began forming in the steel tracks, inspectors say. New York-New York reported those problems to the county Saturday morning and voluntarily closed the attraction.
      "Our No. 1 priority is the safety of our passengers," said Marty Moore, the resort's vice president of marketing and sales, who last week called repairing snapped rods "routine maintenance."
      County inspectors then officially closed the ride, demanding extensive repairs and tests.
      "At this point, the entire structure could be affected," Lynn said. "We want to know why this keeps happening."
      The "Manhattan Express" seats as many as 80 passengers, who pay $5 each to soar 67 mph, at as much as 3.4 G-forces, for nearly five minutes. About a half-million people have ridden the roller coaster so far.
      Problems began shortly after the ride opened Jan. 3 when crews discovered bent and broken tension rods -- threaded steel bars that act as braces, serving to minimize vibration and protect the tracks. Dozens of those rods since have been replaced with stronger materials.
      Lynn said those replacements have strained other rods, causing them to break. That strain, he believes, also triggered small cracking in the tracks last weekend.
      So, Lynn has ordered the resort to do the following:
      --Replace all of the coaster's 250 tension rods with tougher, better-designed equipment.
      --Replace cracked portions of the tracks.
      --Hire an outside engineering firm to study other possible damages to the tracks.
      --Install a device to measure stress from acceleration.
      --Install an apparatus to gauge other strains on the ride.
      --Test the coaster 1,000 times with sand bags, and simulate possible disaster scenarios, including power outages and fires.
      --Write a complete analysis of why the coaster's design has failed and how the resort plans to correct it.
      --Agree to extensive and frequent testing once the ride reopens.
      Resort officials said Monday they hope to have met those measures by late this week. Lynn called that timetable "optimistic," saying the work could take two to three weeks.