Friday, December 24, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Monorail gets go-ahead for restart today

After getting a green light from Clark County regulators, the troubled Las Vegas Monorail was set to reopen to the public today, ending a 107-day shutdown.

The four-mile rail line behind the Strip's east side will be allowed to resume passenger service at or after 10 a.m., according to Ron Lynn, who heads the Clark County Department of Development Services' Building Division, which regulates the monorail.

"The bottom line, they can open up tomorrow," Lynn said Thursday night.

Monorail officials said they had not been contacted by the county Thursday night but anticipated opening the system as early as the county would allow.

"We're excited," said Todd Walker, a spokesman for the monorail.

After reopening, the monorail is expected to run until 2 a.m. Beginning Saturday, the monorail should resume its regular daily schedule of 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Lynn said that he would issue a certificate allowing 30 days of monorail service before another review, and that the monorail company has six months to resolve nearly two dozen minor outstanding issues.

The $650 million system had been shut down since early September after the third instance this year of metal parts falling from a moving train.

Two of those incidents were blamed on excessive vibrations in train drive shafts, which since have been modified.

Those modifications have appeared to minimize drive shaft vibrations in recent dry runs that were closely monitored by regulators, engineers and system officials.

System testing concluded Wednesday. During the latest testing phase, known as "commissioning," eight of nine monorail trains each ran a minimum of 2,000 miles.

The reopening means that, barring any other problems cropping up, the system will be ready for two of Las Vegas's biggest wintertime draws.

New Year's Eve is expected to draw up to 300,000 people here. That will be followed by the Consumer Electronics Show, which runs Jan. 6-9 and usually is one of the valley's largest conventions.

The last shutdown was only the latest of a string of problems to bedevil the monorail line, which was built with private dollars.

In the 162 days since the monorail opened to the public July 15, the line has been able to operate only 49 full days.

Officials originally had hoped to open the system sometime during the first three months of 2004, but that target was missed amid computer glitches with the monorail's driverless steering system.

During testing in January, a drive shaft fell from one train, the first of the part-dropping incidents.

The system finally opened to the public in mid-July. One month later, a worker inadvertently opened a train door facing a steep drop-off from an elevated platform to the ground below. No one was hurt.

On Sept. 1, the system was shut down for six days after a wheel broke away from a moving train. The incident later was blamed on improper assembly by the train's manufacturer and operator, Bombardier Inc.

The incident might have been prevented if workers paid heed to 149 separate system alarms the day before. Bombardier since then has added staff and revised procedures at the monorail's control center.

The system had been reopened for one full day when a metal flange broke off a train's drive shaft, prompting the latest shutdown.

Monorail officials hired Exponent Inc., a disaster analysis firm, to help scour the monorail for flaws. Among its recommended fixes was a realignment of the monorail's drive shaft.

Engineers from Exponent and the county agreed that the angle at which the shaft was placed probably was a heavy contributor to vibration problems.

The monorail has lost an estimated $85,000 per day in farebox revenues while it has been closed. At that rate, total fare losses during the latest shutdown are more than $9 million to date.