For a minute early Thursday morning, the Las Vegas Monorail could have passed for the New York subway's green No. 4 train dumping off riders at Yankee Stadium.
The cars were packed -- not 16 people filling the cars' available seats, but honest to goodness strap hangers. Riders numbered in the hundreds, not the teens, as they exited at the Las Vegas Convention Center for the Consumer Electronics Show.
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Oh yeah, and nothing was falling off the train.
Convention week is big business for the little engine that thinks it can. Ridership is up an estimated 40 percent and the four-mile track actually feels like a transit system.
"It's like the bloody Tube," said Annette McDougal of the United Kingdom as she eyed the map above the ticket kiosks at the convention center station.
Because transportation to a convention is a business expense, none of the conventioneers riding the system Thursday balked at the $5-one-way charge or $15 all-day pass.
In New York, where Sammy Diaz is from, tourists can ride any of the buses or subways for $7 a day, $24 for the week.
As Diaz pushed his credit card into the monorail kiosk at the Sahara station last week, he said: "I just figure it's Vegas, I gotta pay."
That's why Las Vegas residents should be so worried about the system.
If the private endeavor doesn't improve ridership, boost its junk bond status and pay off its construction debt -- even with its tax-exempt status -- it's more than likely the public sector will be asked to bail it out.
Although the current system is just a shuttle from the hotels on the east side of the Strip to the convention center, it's hard to imagine gamers ponying up the cash to take over the $650 million system and pay the daily operating costs not being met by fares.
Convention time, like last week's CES and the Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show last November, are bigger business for the monorail. It's when the daily fares actually begin to near company projections. But even the conventioneers riding the system last week had complaints.
"We're in the north tower," remarked John Simpson to his colleague as the monorail they were riding neared the convention center exit closer to the south exhibition tower. "We should have got off at the Hilton and walked."
The CES crowd still plopped down $20 to park, queued for shuttle buses and waited for taxis. Numerous attendees said they don't take the monorail because it doesn't stop at their hotel.
"It's slow," added Byong-Young Kim of South Korea. "It's faster than walking, but not much."
Those who said they liked the system all wished there were more cars. "You wait like for an hour to leave here," said Joergen Fredericksen of Denmark.
Monorail officials said the wait is closer to 20 minutes because, with just four cars on a monorail train, the exiting convention crowd has longer to wait for a space to ride.
But the post-convention day crush is a pleasant problem.
In November, fewer than 26,000 people were riding the monorail a day. That's about half of the projected ridership.
Analysts say the system needs to bring in $123,000 a day. It didn't even hit $76,000 a day in November.
Monorail officials don't talk about sagging ridership as a problem, but as an opportunity. Apparently if people aren't riding the system now, they will if it goes to McCarran International Airport or to the west side of the Strip.
The monorail company has commissioned alignment and ridership studies for expanding the system.
It would cost more than $500 million to build to the airport and a bare-minimum $800 million to expand to the west side of the Strip, according to monorail President and Chief Executive Officer Curtis Myles. "You're going to need a lot of money to extend it," Myles said.
Myles said train cars could be widened and made taller to accommodate airport travelers and their "1.8 to 2.6 bags per person." That would make for some wide load lumbering above Paradise Road, given how much space the laptop cases and small roller bags were taking up on the monorail cars to CES last week.
If metal dropped off the regular-sized cars, would the bigger berths create more mechanical problems?
Myles said the monorail's technical problems are largely a thing of the past.
But few locals can forget the 107 days the system was closed in 2004 after bolts and a 60-pound tire fell off the system in separate incidents.
Last month, when the monorail announced it was raising its fares to $5 from $3 one way, it threw a bone to locals -- $1 fares. The problem was that the tickets had to be purchased at one of three public transit offices nowhere near the monorail system.
The monorail also had to clarify the offer when someone apparently tried to buy a $1 ticket. The $1 tickets have to be purchased in bulk (20 rides).
The company's Jan. 3 news release said the bulk purchases are needed to "reduce the potential for ticket scalping."
Unless the demand to ride the train increases to convention week levels, the only ones getting scalped will be the taxpayers.
Erin Neff's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906 or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com
