A monorail car leaves the Sahara Station and travels along Paradise Road in this June 2004 photo. Monorail ridership was down 12 percent in September since July's all-time high. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Las Vegas Monorail ridership has tumbled by nearly 12 percent since hitting an all-time high earlier this year, with fewer than 29,000 riders taking the rapid transit system each day last month.

But system officials said this week that they weren't alarmed by the ridership drop, adding that a seasonal turnstile slip was expected for the $650 million system, which has yet to break even financially.

"That's normal for Las Vegas," said Curtis Myles, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. "I'm not surprised by those numbers. I knew we'd be down in August and September. That's just how this town works."

Myles added, "Typically, August and September are lower months for conventions and visitors in general, though the town does pretty well."

Only 28,983 people used the monorail each day in September, the second consecutive month the line lost riders since averaging a record 32,928 riders in July, according to figures released this week.

September's ridership of 869,515 passengers is the lowest monthly total since just 621,909 people rode the trains in February.

September also was the lowest farebox revenue month since June, with the monorail bringing in $2,559,855 from fares last month, or $85,328 a day.

That's well short of the estimated $139,000 a day in fares and ad revenues needed to cover the system's operating costs and debt service.

"We need to be earning another $40,000, $50,000 a day," Myles said.

Monorail officials are hoping they'll be able to increase ridership and sell additional train and station sponsorships to close that gap.

"Would I like the numbers to be bigger? Absolutely. Do I think we'll do better? Absolutely," said Terry Murphy, a monorail board member. "We always want the numbers to be higher."

Officials also hope that the system's growing reliability will make it an easier sell to potential passengers. The monorail has suffered systemwide shutdowns on only three days this year, compared with 113 days last year.

"We haven't had anything that shut down the system entirely or significantly affected availability" since spring, Myles said. "It's been pretty good."

In the coming months, officials will step up efforts to sell monorail ticket packages through convention organizers, hotels and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

"People have to know you're there. They have to know you're reliable, which they know now," Murphy said. "Conventions aren't going to buy unless they know we're reliable. We've worked most of the kinks out of the system."

The efforts to market through third parties were largely put on hold last year and into this year as monorail officials addressed the system's numerous operational problems, including three instances of metal parts falling from moving trains since the start of 2004.

"The primary focus of the monorail folks here before was just to get the system up and operational," Myles said.

Added Murphy: "This is our first year. We've had some challenges."

Myles said he expects ridership to pick back up this month and the first half of November before falling off through year's end.

Murphy said he believes that the monorail will get repeat business, as riders get used to the system.

"Our surveys that we do of our riders are very positive. They all indicate that they will definitely ride again," Murphy said. "Our riders will be repeat riders."