Las Vegas Monorail Co. President Curtis Myles III thinks the monorail, shown by the Sahara, represents the best means for easy movement as Las Vegas adds hotel rooms and the customers needed to fill them. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Where others spy a boondoggle, Curtis Myles III sees salvation.

And given the Las Vegas Monorail Co.'s troubled history, its top executive had better pack a positive attitude when assessing the $650 million system's continued role in moving people through an increasingly crowded resort corridor.

The 43-year-old Las Vegas native has served as president and chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. since July 2005.

With management-level experience in trucking, aviation and countywide bus operations, the former college basketball player is well-versed in traveling.

Despite its spotty performance, Myles believes the monorail represents the best means for easy movement as Las Vegas adds more hotel rooms and the customers needed to fill them.

But he realizes that the monorail can't solve local traffic problems on its own.

"We're going to max out the airport pretty quickly. Las Vegas Boulevard is already maxed out. (Interstate)-15, if we don't add new lanes, is going to continue to be maxed out," Myles said. "We have to have an integrated solution."

For that to occur, the monorail must first increase ridership.

On average, only 20,000 people per day rode its trains during the first half of 2006. That's down nearly 30 percent from last year, and well below the 50,000 daily riders first envisioned by developers.

Proposed routes connecting today's four-mile track with McCarran International Airport and the Strip's west side should bolster those figures, provided Myles & Co. can secure the needed $1 billion to make those improvements a reality.

Until then, he'll work to turn things around through a series of smaller adjustments.

Question: How did you get into transportation?

Answer: One of the boosters at Colorado State University owned a trucking company. I graduated and continued to play basketball, but I'd broken my knee and knew that I wasn't going to last (as an athlete).

I took a job with the trucking company as a management trainee, figuring I'd probably do that for a couple of years.

I was in that for five years, actually liked it ... so when I moved back to Las Vegas in 1991, I started working in aviation as an intern (with the Clark County Aviation Department).

Question: What took you to the Regional Transportation Commission, and later the monorail?

Answer: (RTC General Manager) Jacob Snow and I were directors together at McCarran, and he had a deputy general manager position open that he wanted to fill at the RTC.

Now I had (experience in) the surface transportation aspect, the aeronautical aspect of transportation and interstate commerce.

Looking at the monorail, what it was supposed to do ... I did a lot of research and said, "This may work."

Question: So why isn't it working now?

Answer: You have to go back and look at the reasoning why this system was going to exist, which was that it was going to connect to the convention center and seven resort venues.

The resorts were going to promote the system. The backers of the system were going to develop a relationship with the conventions to sell them bulk tickets. There was going to be a substantial amount of marketing to potential visitors of Las Vegas to make them aware of the monorail.

None of those things happened. The only thing that happened was the thing got built.

Question: Why didn't those things occur?

Answer: You had different players involved (due to several corporate mergers involving Strip resort owners), and those different players may not have been attuned to how the system was supposed to have developed. They had different agendas, different focuses.

The monorail was supposed to open in January of '04; it didn't open until July. Then when it opened, there were problems so things shut down for 110 days. The focus wasn't on doing these other things; it was on getting back open.

Now we are trying to do those things. ... It's probably going to take us 18 months.

Question: What steps do you expect to happen next?

Answer: The system hotels promoting the system with their front desk (staffs), you'll see that more by summer's end.

Over the course of the next few months we'll start to see conventions enter agreements to buy tickets more often; we'll see the marketing start to step up, primarily in-market. Activities surrounding sponsorships should also step up. Hopefully we'll have another big one to announce within the next few weeks.

Question: What's the status of expansion plan?

Answer: We're going to complete our ridership study by the end of August, first week of September. The alignment study is effectively completed for the extension to the airport, so we're working with the airport for approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration.

You'll see some activity related to the west-side extension and where it will go. We had talked about being along Frank Sinatra Drive, but we don't think that alignment is going to be conducive to the kind of ridership that's needed to justify how much system we're going to have to build.

We're looking at being a lot closer to the Strip, if not directly on the Strip, related to some of those properties.

Question: Who would pay for the expansion?

Answer: I think the financing will be a combination of some resort support and some private investment. But the system itself needs to have the ability pay back its own debt, so the ridership study will be integral to how we develop that financing plan.

Question: Is the proposed downtown line a dead issue?

Answer: We've had discussions with (Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman) and he's certainly interested. But he's a pretty demanding person and he wants what he wants now. Unfortunately for us, now means the airport, not downtown.

Question: What makes you optimistic that the monorail can turn around?

Answer: If you can do it anywhere, you can do it here because you have people who all have a pretty narrowly defined interest in mind, and that is supporting the horse that this town is built on -- the tourism industry. This community is going to rally around the solutions to moving people around, which is one of, if not the, biggest challenges.

Question: From your viewpoint, how will the monorail work within that solution?

Answer: It's going to have to be integrated with the solutions that the RTC is developing. ... It's not going to be a panacea. But neither is adding buses or high-speed freeways in and of themselves. They've got to work together.

Question: If all goes well, how would a fully integrated system serve visitors?

Answer: We're hoping that people will, for example, be able to get on a plane in Chicago and check their bags. They'll get off that plane, and instead of going to pick up their bag and wait in line for a cab or bus, they'll be able to check that bag into their hotel right there at McCarran.

They'd then get on the monorail and in six, seven or eight minutes be at their hotel to start enjoying their trip within minutes of arriving at the airport rather than hours. By the time they get to the hotel, they've already got their keys in their pockets and their bags are already (in the rooms).