Columnist Jeff German: There’s no time like sometime

Friday, April 23, 2004 | 4:37 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

April 24 - 25, 2004

You could ask Las Vegas monorail officials the same question a thousand different ways and get the same answer.

When is the monorail, "the most technologically advanced public transportation system in the world," going to start carrying passengers?

Sometime this summer.

Monorail officials can give you facts about every aspect of the $650 million system, which one day could carry 20 million passengers a year along its 3.9-mile route between the MGM Grand and the Sahara hotel.

Did you know the privately financed monorail, which is fully automated, connects eight resorts and gives riders access to 24,000 hotel rooms and 4.4 million square feet of meeting and convention space?

Did you know that each of the seven four-car trains can carry up to 228 passengers, 57 per car?

And did you know the ride from the MGM to the Sahara takes 14 minutes?

But when will the monorail open?

Sometime this summer.

There has been plenty of chatter about the project's delayed opening within the casino industry, primarily among the hotels that have kicked in millions of dollars for a stop along the route.

Monorail officials, however, aren't panicking just yet.

"This promises to be an incredible system," says Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson, who doubles as chairman and CEO of Transit Management Systems, the firm that runs the nonprofit monorail. "We're very anxious to get it open."

But when?

Sometime this summer.

According to the monorail contract, Canadian-based Bombardier Transportation, the general contractor and the world's leading expert on this kind of system, was supposed to have the trains up and running on Jan. 20.

When it became clear that that date wasn't going to be met, monorail officials began saying the system would be in operation within the "first quarter" of this year.

The first quarter ended almost a month ago, and now the opening has been pushed back to "the summer." That could be anywhere from June 21 to Sept. 21.

During a tour of the monorail's operations center last week at Sahara Avenue and Paradise Road, everything seemed in place and ready to go.

Bombardier officials were busy in staff meetings, and four trains were being inspected.

At the nearby Sahara station workers were testing the automated ticket machines, while a computerized speaker system periodically would announce the arrival of a test run.

But behind the scenes glitches in the technologically advanced computer system that runs the trains continued to create uncertainty about the opening.

Gibson says Bombardier officials have had to rewrite software to make sure the computer system holds up to the stress it's expected to receive from the public.

"We're trying to fine-tune the software," he says. "Unfortunately, you just don't hit a keystroke and suddenly it's all tuned. We're willing to take the time to do it right."

The biggest hurdle for the project is a one-month demonstration period in which all seven trains have to be running as if they were operating on a normal business day. If problems develop anytime during the demonstration, the demonstration has to begin again for another 30 days.

Gibson can't even predict when the demonstration period will get underway, but he says he "hopes" it will take place within four to six weeks.

In the meantime, Gibson says, Bombardier officials have a financial incentive to get the trains running.

So far, according to the construction contract, Bombardier has paid $2.8 million in damages to Transit Management Systems for not having the project ready by Jan. 20. Bombardier has to hand over $85,000 a day until the monorail opens.

So you'd think company officials would have an opening date in mind.

The best estimate Bombardier spokeswoman Helene Gagnon could give is -- you guessed it -- sometime this summer.