The image of the Las Vegas monorail that’s supposed to excite you is something like this:
But of course, the other side of that image is this:
That’s the view from the inside, thanks to that advertising wrap that covers the outside.
I was just in Las Vegas for my nephew’s wedding, so of course I checked out the monorail. It presents itself as a serious transit service, with all the station features you’d expect in a metro.
I wish the interior were open gangway, but instead it’s a series of little closed pods:
The view? Better if you’re further from the window, certainly, so that the advertising wrap imposes a dull blurring effect instead of the pixellated one above.
But sometimes you want to look out your own window, so the effect is unavoidable:
What’s this thing all about? Why are there so few people on it? Well, it’s the fare (over $5 for a single ride) but also the fact that it’s built to connect the backsides of several casino hotels, but goes nowhere else. In the north it stops just short of downtown. In the south it stops just short of the airport.
So anyway, I arrived at the rather downscale looking Westgate station. Why there? The Vegas Loop!
The monorail began as a private investment to connect certain casinos that had a common owner, but it was later taken over by government. However, the conversation about extending it to make it more useful seems to have stalled, partly of course because Elon Musk’s Teslas-in-tunnels project, the Vegas Loop, is at the moment the cool new thing. What do I think of the Vegas Loop? The full argument is in Chapter 4 of my book, but you can also go for a ride with me on it, in the next post.
The advertising wrap is stupid. Part of the appeal of taking a monorail is that you can look at the window. This is especially appealing for tourists. The wrap ruins it.
The Las Vegas Monorail runs along the posteriors of the hotels on the east end of the strip. The “scenery” is exhaust ducts, dumpster corrals, loading docks and parking garages, i.e. the unsightly but necessary stuff to keep the resorts functional.
If you want scenery, ride the Deuce.
Can’t have serious transit between the airport and the strip because that would cut into the business of the Ubers and rental cars…
Seriously, the fact that a place with the tourist volume and proximity to the airport has no rail transit between the strip and the airport is ridiculous.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the pandemic was that RTC got rid of the monorail’s far superior competitor, the Strip-Downtown Express (SDX) line. It was the limited-stop counterpart to the Deuce double-decker local buses.
The SDXes ran articulated buses imported from the UK. They had the cheeky name of the WrightBus StreetCar, and the bus went out of its way to disguise its bus-ness, like having a shell that looks like a European tram and hoods that covered up the rubber tires. They were gorgeous. See: https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Regional_Transportation_Commission_of_Southern_Nevada_011-061
The vehicles themselves were very fast and had an EV-like feel to them. Also, to facilitate speed, passengers could board and exit at all three doors and proof-of-payment ticketing was enforced. More importantly, they ran along the Strip rather than the backside of only the east Strip casinos, so riders enjoyed the scenery.
So basically, they got rid of a really useful and economical BRT and kept a less useful and much more expensive monorail. Smart decision making.
@Max, I am not sure what keeps the monorail in existence. The monorail went through more than one bankruptcy, and now it’s the ward of the state — the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau appears to own it . The BRT was run by RTCSNV, the Vegas Valley’s bus system.
During and after the pandemic, RTC got rid of the Strip BRT as well as the Las Vegas Bl. North BRT, which also used gadgetbahn buses that were imported from France.
If the ridership did bounce back, RTC should reintroduce the limited-stop Strip bus. The ordinary articulated buses are perfectly fine.