Thursday, March 10, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIRTUALLY UNCHANGED: Monorail still short of goal

System averages 23,033 daily riders, completes service in 73 of 74 days

The Las Vegas Monorail is getting more reliable, but it doesn't appear to be any more popular with riders just yet.

The monorail averaged just 23,033 riders per full day of service in February, virtually unchanged from January. The system completed a full day's service 73 of 74 days through Tuesday, according to ridership figures.

Ridership is well below what was expected. The monorail had been aiming for 30,000 daily riders in February and 29,000 each day in January.

January's daily average ridership was 22,313.

Nonetheless, monorail officials were upbeat, noting ridership appeared to surge toward month's end, with some days exceeding 30,000 riders.

"I think there's only one way for the system to go, and it's upward," Todd Walker, a monorail spokesman, said Wednesday.

"I think we'll see a steady increase in the number of riders due to the word-of-mouth and increased marketing, now that we're past the reliability problem."

Officials hope ridership will continue to build momentum into the spring tourist season and beyond.

"I think before the end of the year we'll be averaging in the mid-30s in terms of ridership on a daily basis," Walker said.

Daily ridership in the 30,000 range may be enough to generate the $85,000 a day in farebox revenue needed to break even on the monorail's $650 million cost of construction and annual operating bill of more than $14 million.

That's because the average fare paid in February was $2.86, well above the $2.50 initially expected.

At last month's average fare level only 29,720 daily riders would be needed to turn a profit, well below the 34,000 to 40,000 riders once thought to be needed.

The base monorail fare is $3. Discounts can lower the average, while tickets sold in bulk that go unused can boost it. Last month's daily farebox revenue averaged $66,077.

Officials at the Regional Transportation Commission, which does not operate the monorail but has a vested interest in the valley's public transportation network, said it's too early to worry about low monorail ridership numbers.

"It's still a young system. It's still a new system," said Ingrid Reisman, a spokeswoman for the commission.

"We have a constantly changing visitor population," she said. "I think it'll be a little bit of an education process until visitors know the monorail is there and they know how to use it and are comfortable using it."

Commission officials are pleased that the system has been reliable as of late.

"It's a step in the right direction for the system, and is exactly what the monorail proponents have said would happen," Reisman said. "They just had to work the kinks out of the system."

The commission has mothballed plans to help support a $450 million monorail extension to downtown Las Vegas, but are leaving open the option of revisiting that plan.

The monorail spent most of 2004 out of service due to persistent breakdowns that followed its mid-July public launch. Last year, metal parts fell from moving trains on three occasions.

The system has largely been reliable since reopening Dec. 24, following a 107-day shutdown. Its only problem of note was an electrical failure that shuttered the system for most of Feb. 2.

The monorail system was stopped for 10 minutes around midday Wednesday after a truck hit a pillar supporting elevated tracks along Paradise Road just south of Desert Inn Road. The system was restarted after a quick inspection determined there was no significant damage to the pillar, Walker said.

Other than the stop, monorail operations were unaffected.