Columnist Susan Snyder: Monorail defects are easy to track

Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 | 8:37 a.m.

The Las Vegas Monorail trains are sitting idle so much of the time, they could double as public art.

Poor monorail. Seems state tax exemption isn't the only break it has.

One can only imagine the horror of Transit Systems Management officials who had to shut down the thing over Labor Day weekend because it dropped a wheel just two days before nearly 300,000 tourists rolled into town.

One can only imagine the increasing aggravation as monorail officials had to shut it down again Wednesday, after a six-inch washer dropped off the train's drive shaft.

Hate it when that happens.

But the Las Vegas Monorail seems to be falling apart faster than Janet Moncrief's political career.

A Transit Systems Management spokesman on Wednesday told local journalists that stuff falling off the train is "absolutely unacceptable."

OK, so he stated the obvious. But give the guy a break. He has the second-worst public relations job on the planet right now.

The spokesman for NASA has the first. At least the monorail didn't go crashing to the ground.

Yet.

It would be easy to say that perhaps the monorail's molting Wednesday was the third, and therefore final, mishap. (Testing of the system halted in January after one of the trains dropped a drive shaft.)

But it's way past three. The $650 million, privately funded and operated train system opened six months late because of delays that included not only the mechanical failings, but also computer snafus.

Of course, the local backers of the system have done the only thing they can do -- blame the Canadians who built the thing. Transit Systems Management officials already have said they would be pursuing some kind of action against Bombardier Transportation.

("Bombardier" seems an unfortunate name for the company, at this particular moment.)

However, the scariest aspect of the Las Vegas Monorail isn't that it keeps dropping its drawers or that doors accidentally open on the wrong side, exposing passengers to a breathtaking view of the street 25 feet below (Aug. 16), or that passengers have been stranded when the train stopped short of its station (July 22).

The scariest part is that what happens up there stays down here. The public is footing the bill for the next leg of this tourist transit nightmare. The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada will pay for most of the next segment, which will run from the Strip to downtown. Groundbreaking is set for next year.

While our true public transit system undoubtedly has glitches of its own, the RTC isn't known for running buses that have stuff falling off of them. And at least we wouldn't be walking under them if they did.

There definitely are some hard, and no doubt embarrassing, questions to answer. And we will certainly be interested to hear them.

But for now, the Las Vegas Monorail is the best amusement value on the Strip. We don't even have to ride it.

All we have to do is watch.