Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Monorail system on hold

The Regional Transportation Commission has delayed approving a tentative plan for a Strip monorail system to give local entities and hotel-casinos a chance to review the proposed route and station locations.

The proposal is the result of a $1 million, year-long study by the engineering firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas. The study looks at the feasibility of linking downtown, the Strip and McCarran International Airport by light rail.

The study, which could cost as much as $2.5 million when completed, came from federal transportation dollars allocated to the RTC.

The board on Thursday gave the firm until next month to meet with hotel-casino owners and the city of Las Vegas to discuss the proposed alignment and stations for the system before going further with the project.

"The whole intent of developing an alternative network is to stimulate discussion and the collaborative process," said Sam Tso, an engineer with Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Las Vegas City Councilman Matthew Callister said any proposal must link with the existing transportation system center downtown for it to be viable.

"This ought not be a ride just for tourists but an alternate means of transportation for the existing community," Callister said.

The firm picked one specific alignment for a prototype network out of a slew of proposed routes, Tso said. The final alignment depends on available public right of way and the city's preference through the downtown area.

"We developed a conceptual fixed guideway system to show what a network may look like," Tso said.

The prototype is a 30-foot-wide elevated system with 29 stations running in a loop along each side of Las Vegas Boulevard. It starts from a base terminal at Russell Road and goes 14 miles north to Cashman Field, with a central station near the Stratosphere Tower.

Earlier this week, Stratosphere and the Boyd Gaming Corp. commissioned a study of a monorail linking the tower to downtown.

Tso said no cost estimates have been assigned to the project at this point, but earlier guesses ran from $500-800 million.

"It depends on how the right of way is going to be provided," Tso said.

The firm has been meeting with representatives from the hotel-casino industry to get them to agree to a plan and hopefully donate right of way on their properties. Tso said the alignment tries to make the best use of existing public right of way along the resort corridor.

Callister asked whether the project would be privately or publicly financed, and whether it would be financed all at once or in segments. Callister has been critical of planning of the Las Vegas Beltway, which is being built in stages as funding becomes available.

"If it starts at the airport ... a lot can happen with funding before it gets to where can affect most of the community," Callister said.

The next step of the study is to evaluate the financial feasibility of the project and explore public-private funding options, which could help determine whether construction began at the Strip, downtown or the airport.

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