Transportation officials OK monorail design contracts

Angela Soo

Friday, Aug. 10, 2001 | 11:26 a.m.

Plans for the downtown monorail project moved forward Thursday as transportation officials approved design contracts, bringing the project closer to being a reality.

The Regional Transportation Commission approved $2.1 million in contracts for an environmental analyses, utility survey and design work for the stations and terminals.

"This is a very important stage because it's the beginning of the preliminary engineering design phase for the downtown segment," RTC Assistant General Manager of Transit Lee Gibson said. "We need to perform these studies in order to submit a DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) to present in a public hearing and to continue the design work effort of the project."

Gibson says residents should have access to a drafted environmental report October 5. The RTC will then schedule a public hearing to discuss the findings before November 17. After receiving feedback from the community, the RTC expects to produce a final environmental impact statement by March.

The RTC awarded contracts to five companies, which include, Terracon, IBI Group, PBS & J, C & B Nevada, Inc. and Gennett Flemming, Inc. The monorail's final design will be approved in July by the Federal Transit Administration.

The proposed two-mile downtown leg will extend from Sahara Boulevard to downtown, with two proposed stops on Sahara Avenue at Paradise Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, and three stops along Main Street at Charleston Boulevard, Bonneville Avenue, and Fremont Street.

The estimated cost for the monorail is $100 million per mile, and city officials hope it will bring tourists downtown, as well as help with air quality and traffic congestion.

Ingrid Reisman, RTC spokeswoman, says the RTC is still in the process of securing federal funds but prospects look good.

One prospect is getting back some money Nevadans already pay through gas taxes. The government collects a state gas tax of 3 cents per gallon and most of the funds are redistributed to other states for mass transit projects.

In order to be considered, a New Starts Evaluation Report, which is a summary evaluation of a transit project, must be submitted to the Federal Transportation Authority. The FTA then judges and ranks the report against other projects all across the country to determine which ones will receive federal funding.

"We certainly think we have a good chance," Reisman said. "Las Vegas is the only metropolitan city in the west with over 1 million people that doesn't have some type of light or monorail system."

In 1998, Washington D.C. contributed $5.6 million in state gas tax and received $262.5 million in federal funding. Nevada contributed $30.4 million in 1998.

A four-mile monorail in the resort corridor, which would extend from the MGM Grand hotel-casino to the Sahara, was fully funded by the private sector through a $650 million tax-free bond issue and is scheduled to be completed in 2004. Although some construction has begun, an official ground-breaking ceremony is scheduled for Thursday.

RTC officials hope to break ground on the public-funded portion in 2003 and have it seamlessly connect to the resort corridor by 2006.

"But before we can break ground, we need to look at utilities, rights-of-way, system engineering and all the other intricacies required to get the ball rolling," Heather Curry, RTC spokeswoman, said. "These are all the first initial building blocks that need to be tackled before making this model a reality."