Nevada Power expects snarls on next monorail leg

Stephen Curran

Thursday, July 22, 2004 | 9:44 a.m.

Nevada Power engineers are already planning ahead for a series of challenges expected in building the next leg of the monorail, which is not scheduled to begin for at least another year, representatives of the utility told a Regional Transportation Commission subcommittee Wednesday.

Allen Montoya, who coordinated the contract between the Las Vegas Monorail Co. and Nevada Power Co. during construction of the first 4-mile stretch from the MGM Grand to the Sahara, told members of the RTC's utility coordination committee that utility officials aren't sure what they'll find in the aging power infrastructure along the Strip north of Sahara Avenue, where the extension will go.

But they do expect "a lot more challenges," Montoya said.

The greatest barrier during construction of the monorail's first phase, which opened last week, was working around the heavy traffic of the route, which runs behind the Las Vegas Strip and along Paradise Road.

"It turned out to be a nightmare along Paradise and Twain," he told the commission, in describing traffic snarls caused by engineers' attempts to pipe electricity along the route.

But both Nevada Power and monorail officials said rerouting the utilities did not contribute to the six-month delay in the monorail's opening. The trains were originally scheduled to begin running in January.

The aging electrical and telecommunications wiring along the route from Sahara to downtown is expected to be the biggest obstacle in the second phase, Montoya said.

Monorail planners say they expect to break ground on the Strip-to-downtown connection within a year.

Within that stretch, engineers will have to contend with transmission lines leading from crucial electrical substations that provide power to much of the Strip along that part of the route, Montoya said.

If those transmission lines are damaged, they could potentially put up to 10,000 customers in the dark, he said.

"We have to be careful when we do it and how we do it so we're not interrupting those customers," Montoya said.

All Strip hotels have backup power systems, but the Bellagio earlier this year found itself in the dark for three days when its backup failed.

Montoya said the existing monorail route is allotted about 12 megawatts of electricity, half what the Bellagio can consume at a given time. The average residential consumer has a capacity of about 5 kilowatts.

This brings the monorail's estimated monthly usage to about 15.5 million kilowatt-hours a month, Todd Walker, a spokesman for the monorail, said.

The monorail project does not easily lend itself to comparisons with other large-scale projects, as it spans several privately owned properties, Montoya said.

"It's not just your run-of-the-mill project," he said.

Of the project's $360 million construction budget, which was privately funded, about $10 million was set aside to move or repair utilities, Walker said. The next phase will be paid mostly by the RTC, he said.

Walker said he didn't know what the utility cost for the next leg would be, but said the monorail company and the RTC had taken into account the area's older infrastructure.

"Anytime you go into an area that has more of a history, there is additional diligence required in looking at what's there and what we need to go around," he said.