Passenger Trains > Las Vegas Monorail

Taken on last weeks trip to Vegas to see the Wings beat up on the Vegas Golden Knights. The monorail only runs from one end of the strip to the other. To be more practical, it ideally should be extended to the nearby airport at one end and to downtown Vegas at the other. But still a fun ride.Third photo is a fake Grand Central Terminal as part of the New York casino and hotel facade. With the tremendous amount of hotel rooms in Vegas, the area would seem perfect for HSR running to Southern California. 

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Yes, it should run to and from the airport. But if it did, that huge number of cab and scheister "bus" runs would be out of business. They have lobbied the hell out of the local politico to prevent exactly that from happening.

The other problem with the monorail is the built it in the back of the casinos on the east side of the strip.  To get to any of the stations is always a long walk from the strip.   The only thing it is really good for is getting from the east side strip hotels to the convention center.

Cool pictures though.

My cab fare to the Tropicana Hotel (with airport in sight from my room) was $18. For some reason, the hotel didn't offer a shuttle bus. So taxi or Uber was the only alternative. 

I understand that the hotels lobby against any improvements to the monorail, they want their guests to stay put at their hotel and empty their wallats right there.  Don't wander off to downtown or competitors in search of better odds or lower prices, stay here like our business plan says you should.

Not everyone is there to gamble. We were there strictly for the hockey game and some sight seeing. On the open top bus tour, we were told the Trump Hotel doesn't even have a casino. But given the huge amount of gambling going on (even at early morning hours), that strategy probably makes sense. The monorail appeared to be lightly patronized. 

The current monorail was originally a private line intended to run from MGM to Ballys (IIRC). Intended to skip all those competitors in between.  When the expanded monorail was conceived, the project involved building on both ends of the private construction, and adding more stops

I haven't thought about it in a while, but there were six different trams, people-movers, etc in use in Las Vegas at one point.  So "linking them into a giant loop" would involve a whole lot of rebuilding.  The one at Cosmopolitan stands out as a line intentionally designed not to interface well.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> The current monorail was originally a private line
> intended to run from MGM to Ballys (IIRC).
> Intended to skip all those competitors in
> between.  When the expanded monorail was
> conceived, the project involved building on both
> ends of the private construction, and adding more
> stops
>
> I haven't thought about it in a while, but there
> were six different trams, people-movers, etc in
> use in Las Vegas at one point.  So "linking them
> into a giant loop" would involve a whole lot of
> rebuilding.  The one at Cosmopolitan stands out
> as a line intentionally designed not to interface
> well.

I think I rode that original clunky monorail behind the MGM some years ago (My records show 2002). I've always heard that the taxicab lobby is very strong in Vegas.
And my experience has been that each driver insists they are taking the bestest, shortest, cheapest route.

TJY

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> Taken on last weeks trip to Vegas to see the Wings
> beat up on the Vegas Golden Knights. The monorail
> only runs from one end of the strip to the other.
> To be more practical, it ideally should be
> extended to the nearby airport at one end and to
> downtown Vegas at the other. But still a fun
> ride.Third photo is a fake Grand Central Terminal
> as part of the New York casino and hotel facade.
> With the tremendous amount of hotel rooms in
> Vegas, the area would seem perfect for HSR running
> to Southern California. 


Yeah, you're not the first to have that idea. And yet nothing has gone past the day dream stage.
 

That's why the Atlantic City casinos far more preferred bus passengers over Amtrak's and NJT's Gamblers Express, both of whose services failed. The buses went to a specific casinos, and they paid people to ride the buses with rolls of quarters, etc. Trains do not,. 

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> My cab fare to the Tropicana Hotel (with airport in sight from my room) was $18. For some reason, the hotel didn't offer a shuttle bus. So taxi or Uber was the only alternative. 

There's always city transit buses.  Very resonably priced but you have to ride with riff-raff on a par with coach passengers on VIA trains.

Note in the pictures the existence of an escape catwalk alongside the monorail beam.  Disney World does not have that.  As I understand it, one of the main reasons why there will never be an extension of the WDW monorail is because, in order to add on to it, the entire existing routes would have to be upgraded and retrofitted to include the escape catwalks, as current federal regulations for such passenger conveyances require.  The additional costs to do that, combined with engineering issues as to whether the existing pylon/beam superstructure could even handle that, makes any extensions cost-prohibitive.  As a past monorail train pilot, just sayin' what I had heard.

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How much does it cost to ride the monorail?  We bought "day passes" for $24 before we went to Vegas.  We found the monorail stations so inconvenient that we never rode it!  I believe that none of the Vegas hotels have "shuttles to and from the airport", because the taxi lobby got them banned.

If you mean the WDW monorail trains, they are free.  At one time you had to be staying on property to use them, but that ended quickly.  Not worth the extra hassle to sell and collect tickets, I guess.  I believe at Disneyland in Anaheim they are free, but from Downtown Disney you have to show a valid park admission ticket since the other station is within the park.  You essentially "enter the park" when you use the Downtown Disney station.  No round trips are permitted except from the Tomorrowland station.  Too much info, I'll stop!

If you mean Vegas, you can Google that.  Last time I rode it was $5.00, but got to be more now.

I am a big monorail fan. The shear fact that Las Vegas should have allowed the beast up the strip to downtown baffles my mind. The airport and the university are the next obvious destination. But money talks, and they f’ed up big time.

Posted from iPhone

Arrrrgh!!  Look at all the structure required to store the Monorail Cars.
Topping it off, the switching can only be done on a one-to-three stub, as it appers to me in the photo of the barn.
Give me two-rail anytime.

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA

Where would you put a monorail on the strip? There's simply no room.
That's why the hotel built monorail runs behind the hotels. Room to actually build the bloody thing.
And yes, the taxi drivers and their organizied labor friends put an end to any ideas of a monorail to Mc Carren.

There's an interesting NTSB report on the Internet about a collision between two WDW monorails that killed a "cast member."  

CA_Sou_MA_Agent Wrote:
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> There's an interesting NTSB report on the Internet
> about a collision between two WDW monorails that
> killed a "cast member."  

Employees at WDW and Disneyland are known as "Cast Members" and have been since 1955.
It's just one of those House of Mouse things.

Neat photos, always nice to see pictures 'outside the box' (or 2-rail standard gauge) here.  The NHL Knights (and soon NFL Raiders) are bringing in more cold-weather fans of the away teams to Vegas - another perk of having pro franchises there.

Rich