LAS VEGAS --When it debuted in mid-July, this city's sleek $650 million monorail was supposed to be the envy of the nation, a high-tech public transit system paid for without taxpayer money that would be so popular it could even turn a profit.
But during a busy convention season, bits and pieces of the trains started falling off, potentially endangering anything below, and the system was shut down indefinitely for major repairs. By Thanksgiving, newspaper cartoonists and tourists alike were dubbing it "monofail" and deriding the futuristic cars sitting idle on the costly tracks.
After being closed for 3 1/2 months, at a cost of more than $9 million in fare revenue, the system reopened over Christmas weekend, just in time for Las Vegas's busiest tourist week of the year. It was a Christmas gift from Clark County officials to monorail operators who hope to erase the memory of one of the city's most humiliating and expensive debacles.
"It's one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to this city," said Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor tourist newsletter, which has 65,000 online subscribers. "The inside joke among locals is that every time you drive under the monorail track, people say, 'Look out!' "
As a public relations gesture, the monorail is free to the public until Wednesday morning. The move seems to have worked: Christmas drew a system-record high of more than 45,000 passengers. Many were local residents, said Todd Walker, spokesman for Transit Systems Management, the nonprofit corporation that runs the trains.
"The idea was to invite everyone out to use the system and give them a feeling for what it does," Walker said. "They're the ones who say what's useful and make recommendations to visitors. We can try to generate some positive word of mouth going forward."
They'll need it. The Las Vegas Monorail, which runs north and south along a road to the east of the Strip, has struggled with glitches since its ballyhooed July 15 opening. First, a technician opened the doors on Aug. 16 on the wrong side of the cars facing a 25-foot drop while passengers were on board. Then, on Sept. 1, a 60-pound wheel assembly fell off a moving car.
A week later, on Sept. 8, a six-inch-wide washer came off another train, prompting the closure. No one was hurt in the incidents, and experts later determined the events were caused by maintenance problems and a badly aligned drive shaft that has now been fixed.
"It's a smooth ride and a fun one, too," said Angela Lorenzo, 58, of Arlington, who was visiting her son for the holidays. "You see the Strip from a very different perspective. I wasn't concerned about the problems it had before. Honestly, I don't live here, so I didn't even know about them."
The monorail's success or failure could have a lasting impact on whether other jurisdictions around the nation go into the sort of deal Las Vegas has set up for this system.
"The eyes of the transportation world are really on Las Vegas to see if this can work," said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), a staunch monorail supporter who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "So far, it's not looking so good. Isn't it always touted that private industry does it better than government bureaucracy? I don't believe that is necessarily so at all times, but let's hope it's so here."
The Las Vegas Monorail deal is unique -- and that may account for its safety problems, some experts contend. The trains run on a 3.9-mile route, with six stops connected to major hotel-casinos as well as one at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Transit Systems Management is a private entity that reports to the Las Vegas Monorail LLC, a board appointed by the governor.
Still, it is largely a privately operated venture funded by construction bonds sold to investors using the state's bond rating but with debt insurance so Nevada taxpayers are not liable in a default.
Monorail officials project that 50,000 riders a day -- a reasonable prospect in a city that has greeted a record 40 million visitors this year -- would make this the nation's only profitable major public transit system. That is, not only would it pay for itself, but it would result in as much as $10 million extra for use on upgrades and future portions of the system. The system averaged 28,000 riders a day in its first 48 days, a figure that officials expect to rise once visitors discover it.
No major public transit system operates in the black in North America or Europe, said Donna Aggazio, spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association, a trade group for 1,500 North American transit agencies. New York City's subway system comes closest, recovering 67 percent of its costs through fares and advertising.
Unlike any of the nation's other transit systems, the Las Vegas Monorail is not designed to aid local commuters or even to alleviate roadway congestion. The traffic reduced by this train is in the casino corridor, making visitors its chief beneficiary.
Some critics fear corners may have been cut on safety to open on time. The system is freed from some government regulations because it was built without taxpayer money.
"What I want to know is how the priorities were set, because they may have made decisions to prioritize some things over others that exacerbated the problems," said state Sen. Dina Titus, the Democratic minority leader whose bill requiring a performance audit of the system was defeated in the legislature in 2003. "Was the priority giving high-profile members on the board big salaries instead of spending that money on design? Was it getting through in a hurry?"
Walker, the transit system spokesman, rejected those suggestions, insisting federal standards were followed by Bombardier Inc., the Montreal-based company that built and operates the trains. He noted that such efforts were made because federal and county funds will be used for future legs of the monorail -- including a $450 million, 2.9-mile stretch to the downtown casino center northeast of the Strip, planned to open in 2008 but now pushed back by the closure. The monorail also is slated to be extended to McCarran International Airport to the south by 2012, using taxpayer money.
Walker said that because the system is customized for Las Vegas, the troubles that emerged with the drive shaft putting too much pressure on the track and causing parts to break off could not have been known until the system was operable. Those problems are now fixed, and the system has been deemed safe by Bombardier, county engineers and an outside disaster-analysis firm, Exponent Inc., he said.
Antsy hotel managers hope so.
"We put a lot of money out for this thing, and we'd like to get some of it back in business," said Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino General Manager Ed Crispell, whose company invested millions on a connecting walkway to the monorail at the back of its property and saw about 75 customers an hour enter the casino from the monorail when it was running. "It has been a little embarrassing because a lot of conventions that were told that the monorail would be up and running found it wasn't so."
Titus, too, hopes the system is fixed and becomes productive. The reputation of the destination rides on it, she said.
"Even the mayor made fun of it recently," the state senator said. "Monorails have been around for decades; this isn't the first one ever built. Everything in Vegas is supposed to be so cutting-edge and we can't even make a monorail go? That's kind of discouraging, don't you think?"
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