Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Monorail officials optimistic system will be back on track

A small fix could make a big difference to the troubled Las Vegas Monorail.

After altering the drive shaft, full-scale testing could begin soon and the system reopen later this month.

In recent weeks, the angle at which train drive shafts are mounted was changed. In limited tests, this has dampened vibrations that probably caused trains to shed parts earlier this year.

"It appears we're heading in the right direction," Cam Walker, president of monorail management firm Transit Systems Management LLC, said Tuesday.

Monorail managers, engineers and regulators will meet privately this morning to evaluate the fix, discuss whether to implement final testing known as "commissioning," and possibly set a checklist for reopening trains to paying passengers.

"Commissioning could start very, very soon," said Ron Lynn, an official with the Clark County Department of Development Services Building Division. His agency regulates the monorail and must approve a relaunch.

"We are cautiously optimistic," said Lynn, adding that it was premature to guess a monorail reopening date, but that it was "mathematically" possible before year's end if tests continue to go well.

Said monorail spokesman Todd Walker: "Based on that testing, we'll have a better idea" of when to reopen.

Lynn and monorail officials base their optimism on the drive shaft change. Shafts have dropped parts in two of three instances of metal parts falling from moving trains this year.

These incidents, in which no one was hurt, prompted on Sept. 8 an ongoing shutdown of the $650 million monorail line.

Unlike a typical car's drive shaft, which is positioned horizontally, the monorail's drive shafts had been placed at a slightly- upright angle of 5.7 degrees.

At that angle, the monorail's drive shaft would undergo unexpected stresses when trains were traveling at higher speeds, making tight turns, or riding steep inclines in the tracks, Lynn and monorail officials said.

Engineers have reduced the drive shaft's angle to just 1.8 degrees on all nine monorail trains, six of which have been undergoing limited testing in recent weeks.

"This, thus far, appears to have remediated the problem," Lynn said. "We're watching six trains run pretty much problem-free."

Monorail officials concur with Lynn's findings.

Unlike many monorail lines that have straight, flat tracks, Las Vegas' system has a series of sharp turns and various inclines to accommodate right-of-way issues behind the Strip's crowded east side.

Lynn said a written report from monorail builder and operator Bombardier Inc. and a verbal report from disaster analysis firm Exponent Inc. seem to agree on substantial parts of the drive shaft theory and fix.

The cost of the fix was not immediately available, and who would pay for it was pending further talks between monorail officials and Bombardier.

"The costs related to the closure over the past three months was not our biggest concern. Our biggest concern was having a safe system before reopening to the public," Cam Walker said.

The third instance of falling parts, involving a wheel, was blamed on faulty wheel installation at a Bombardier factory and appears to be unrelated to the drive shaft issue.

A timeline for commissioning tests would depend on how those tests are scheduled.

Lynn said each train will be asked to run a number of "cycles," or round-trips, up and down the monorail's entire 4-mile track.

An exact number of cycles has not been set. Lynn said perhaps 1,000 problem-free cycles without passengers would be required per train.

Cam Walker said it's up to the county to set the bar wherever they feel is justified. "They're the ones that need to tell us what they feel is sufficient testing and stressing of the system to make sure it's safe," he said.

But how many days that will take to complete might be up to monorail officials.

"If they run it for many hours per day, it'll take fewer days" to complete the mandated cycles, Lynn said.

That differs from the system's initial commissioning early this year, when operators aimed for running a full daily schedule for 30 consecutive days without encountering any major problems.

It took about six months to reach that goal due to numerous problems that stymied commissioning, including one of the drive shaft drops and various glitches in software used to steer the driverless trains.

Opening by year's end would allow the monorail to be used during New Year's celebrations, when 300,000 revelers are expected here, and at the Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 6-9, usually one of the valley's largest conventions.