EDITORIAL: Las Vegas monorail again fails to meet optimistic projections

As sure as the sun comes up in the east, it’s a flat-out lock that revenue and ridership projections for the beleaguered Las Vegas Monorail will reflect some bizarre alternative reality. Always take the under — it’s the best bet in town.

On Tuesday, monorail officials released their 2017 numbers and, as usual, they failed to meet expectations. Passenger boardings for the 3.9-mile transit route were down 2.5 percent from 2016. Revenue of $21.85 million showed minuscule growth.

A 2016 consultant report had predicted that rider fares would generate $24.3 million for the project in 2017. That guess proved overly optimistic by 10 percent.

In December, a monorail spokesman blamed Uber and Lyft for the lagging ridership.

Still, monorail executives vow to push forward with a $110 million expansion from the MGM Grand to Mandalay Bay. Supporters claim the new NFL stadium — to be built across I-15 from Mandalay Bay — will be the train’s salvation.

“We can’t do it all by cab and Uber and private transportation,” said Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak.

True to form, however, the projections underlying the expansion are wildly exaggerated. A Review-Journal report in December revealed that monorail officials claim that the project will double revenue by 2025 while eventually boosting ridership by 40 percent.

A transportation expert at the University of Southern California noted that if such predictions came to fruition, the Mandalay Bay station “would probably be the most productive transit stop I’ve ever heard of.”

None of this book-cooking should matter, given that the monorail is operated privately. Investors are free to draw their own conclusions about the expansion’s feasibility, as they are about the rail line’s checkered past, which includes a bankruptcy filing that left previous creditors holding millions in worthless paper.

In November, however, Clark County commissioners inexplicably dragged local taxpayers into the mix when they voted to set aside $4.5 million in room tax revenue each year to create a slush fund to help the monorail mitigate financial distress. The lifeline was also intended to ensure monorail officials obtained more favorable financing for the expansion project, which should have sounded warning bells and whistles for the commissioners.

Curtis Myles, president and CEO of Las Vegas Monorail Inc., said Monday that he hopes to soon announce more details about how the company will pay for the expansion. “We’ve got it figured out,” he said. “But we’re not ready to talk about it publicly yet.”

But as Mr. Myles and Co. remain determined to expand their empire, they might also want to quickly “figure out” how to get more tourists onto their trains.