The Las Vegas Monorail is wrapping up the summer months with ridership in a deep freeze, failing to top 20,000 daily riders on a regular basis in recent months.

The rapid transit line averaged just 18,963 daily riders in June, July and August of this year.

That was a drop of 38 percent from the same months in 2005, when 30,735 people rode the system every day, according to monorail statistics.

And ridership in the past three months was 12 percent less than in March, April and May of this year, when the monorail averaged 21,581 daily riders.

Monorail officials have said they expected a sluggish summer, and they hope that marketing efforts as of late will eventually increase ridership to healthier levels.

But they cautioned it could be mid-2007 before those efforts show results in the form of busier turnstiles.

"I'd love to see it sooner, but I have to be realistic," Ingrid Reisman, a monorail vice president, said last month.

The $650 million, privately financed monorail has not turned a profit since opening in mid-2004 and establishing regular service late that year. At the time of the opening, backers were expecting more than 50,000 riders a day.

Although reliability has vastly improved after a problem-pocked 2004, the monorail has seen its bond rating fall into "junk" status.

Deep cash reserves are expected to keep the monorail solvent into at least 2008.

The monorail collected about $83,462 a day in farebox revenues in the past three months, or about two-thirds of the $123,000 in daily passenger receipts that one credit rating firm estimated the monorail needs to break even.

With the monorail collecting $4.40 per passenger in June, July and August, it would take just under 28,000 riders each day for the monorail to break even. The monorail has failed to top 28,000 daily riders since October of last year, when 28,820 people took the line every day.

But that ridership total was before a January hike in the base one-way monorail fare to $5 from $3. Before that increase, in 2005 the monorail had fewer than 23,000 daily riders in only one of 12 months.

Since then, it has topped that figure only in April, when 23,484 passengers took the train each day.

The monorail's marketing efforts include convention tie-ins, ticket distribution to tourists through various Strip hotels, and locals' discounts.

In the long run, monorail backers also hope to build a $500 million extension to McCarran International Airport and an $800 million loop to three other planned or existing Strip area convention centers in hopes of increasing ridership.