Monorail officials hope to set record on New Year’s

Christina Littlefield and Stephen Curran

Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 | 11:14 a.m.

Las Vegas Monorail officials are looking forward to transporting tens of thousands of passengers on New Year's Eve after breaking their previous ridership numbers on Christmas Day.

The six open trains carried about 45,000 people Saturday, about 10,000 more than the monorail system has ever handled on a single day since its original opening, spokesman Todd Walker said.

About 33,000 people rode on Friday, the day the monorail system reopened after malfunctions closed it in September, Walker said, and another 39,000 rode the trains on Sunday.

"We're excited," Jim Gibson, chief executive officer of Transit Systems Management, said. "We are really pleased that the community was excited enough about the monorail to see how we are doing."

Another reason the ridership was so high this weekend, however, was because the system was not charging passengers. The company is allowing passengers to ride for free through tomorrow to allow locals and visitors to experience the monorail for themselves and to "thank them for their forbearance for putting up with all of this inconvenience" in getting the trains back on track, Gibson said. Normally a single ride is $3 a person.

"We wanted for the community to have an opportunity to gain confidence in the monorail system," Gibson said.

The monorail reopened Friday at 10 a.m. after getting the green light from the Clark County Building Division on Thursday. County officials on that day reviewed the final safety report regarding the monorail.

The re-opening weekend went off without a hitch, Walker and Gibson said. The only incident Walker said he heard of was a drunk, unruly passenger breaking a magazine stand.

"Honestly that was the most newsworthy thing and that's normal, someone is who is drunk and on the Strip for the first time in Vegas," Walker said.

Gibson said the opening was just in time for the holiday weekend, and that the monorail system will now be able to play a major role in transporting New Year's Eve revelers in and out of the Strip.

The numbers on Christmas Day also showed that the monorail can handle that large number of people, Gibson said.

The monorail system will be open until 3 a.m. for the late Friday into early Saturday festivities and Gibson said the company is working with Strip hotels and Metro police to better organize transportation efforts.

"We can't predict numbers, but I'm guessing more (people will ride the monorail) than we've seen ever in the four- or five-hour period around the New Year and we are excited to see how we respond," Gibson said.

The safety report, prepared by engineers from Exponent, the third-party firm hired by the monorail company to study the two separate malfunctions that prompted the more than three-month-long closure, was hand-delivered by an Exponent executive who flew in from San Francisco early Thursday afternoon, Todd Walker, a spokesman for the monorail company, said.

The document was the final hurdle for the beleaguered monorail, which on Wednesday passed the battery of preparedness tests. County engineers must review and agree with the report before they give the $650 million system the go-ahead to reopen.

The final battery of tests, which simulated a string of failures that ranged from fires to computer meltdowns to pieces falling from the elevated tracks, followed a longer process that required the trains to log more than 19,000 trouble-free miles combined before it would be allowed to reopen.

Exponent's report was to detail how a series of harsh vibrations loosened a 60-pound wheel assembly that fell Sept. 1 and the 6-inch-wide washer that fell from a moving train less than a week later.

The failure is believed to stem from a misaligned driveshaft, which caused the undercarriages to vibrate and loosen equipment underneath.

The first incident left the privately financed system shuttered for six days; the latter was responsible for the most recent closure.

The closure has cost the monorail company almost $9 million -- $85,000 a day -- in lost farebox revenue, officials have said.