Sunday, Dec. 22, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
What started as Maxey's Monorail has turned into Monorail Madness.
Before former MGM Grand chief Bob Maxey started building his one-mile monorail from his property to Bally's with reconstituted Disney World cars, everyone else on the Strip got nervous.
Especially after Maxey started talking about running the rail straight into McCarran International Airport.
So the Regional Transportation Commission spent more than $1 million conducting a study to determine the best route and technology for an elevated rail system that would get people and cars off the streets and help reduce carbon monoxide levels.
Almost two years after those discussions began, the project is finally pulling into the station, with the inheritors of Maxey's Monorail still driving the engine, much to the consternation of the RTC.
Less than a month away from a final recommendation from its steering committee, the RTC seems to be getting pushed out of the loop by a consortium of hotel-casinos led by Hilton Hotels Corp.
"The key thing is how little information is available to the entities and the public about what is being proposed," RTC Director Kurt Weinrich said. "It puts us at a disadvantage to figure out how that fits into the grand plan, the regional grand plan."
Driving that train
Some inkling of what the Hilton group wants to build came to light last week, when a consortium led by Carter & Burgess pitched a $150 million project linking the MGM Grand, Bally's, Flamingo Hilton and Las Vegas Hilton.
With the $3 billion acquisition of Bally Entertainment finalized last week, Hilton now is the largest gaming company in the world, and has more of a reason than before to link the properties.
To lend themselves an air of credibility, the Hilton-MGM group has asked Aviation Director Bob Broadbent to coordinate their activities.
Greg Jensen, the attorney representing the hotel group, sees Broadbent's job as protector of the public's interest.
"Bob Broadbent's role is quality assurance, to make sure what's done meets federal guidelines so that Clark County and the valley can receive maximum credit for air quality mitigation," Jensen said.
Broadbent is leading a team of airport and county planners working directly with the Hilton group to make sure they meet federal guidelines to remain eligible for transportation grants. They also are there to ensure the system is high quality and can tie into a future public transit system.
When asked what his role was, airport planner Jacob Snow said, "I'm going to do whatever Mr. Broadbent wants me to do."
As Snow sees it, Broadbent is the conductor of a big orchestra made up of many disparate players.
"With one hand he leads the orchestra with his baton," Snow said. "And with the other hand he's cutting through red tape. My job is to help sharpen the scissors and keep the baton clean and well-greased."
Anyone who's worked on previous monorail proposals knows that red tape is a giant killer. Three years ago, it killed two competing systems vying to build a Strip monorail -- the Japanese HSST and the German People Mover.
The Japanese firm wanted to build its own lines, but the resorts complained. It tried another route, but before it could work out the details, the parent company, Japan Airlines, ran into a financial crisis.
The German company proposing a $60 million, 1.3-mile demonstration People Mover downtown had equally bad luck trying to win permission to build a system on the Strip.
Egos and longtime rivalries can also stop a project dead in its tracks, and the RTC is trying to hold the center amid shifting priorities and impatient hotel-casinos. With the Hilton group breaking out, it may be harder to persuade companies like Mirage Resorts and Circus Circus Enterprises to hold off building their own people mover systems.
Broadbent said getting the other properties to buy into one system that meets federal guidelines is a tough but necessary goal to try to achieve. "Otherwise, you have a private system running down both sides of the Strip that doesn't meet federal standards."
The grand plan
The RTC paid the engineering consulting firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas $1.2 million to come up with that grand plan to submit as part of its traffic improvement plan for federal air quality attainment.
So far, the consulting firm has led the study and rode herd on the steering committee -- several dozen independent-minded reps from the casinos, county and airport planners, and RTC staff.
After 18 months, the committee has come up with a plan for solving traffic problems in the resort corridor that ties a fixed rail system in with street improvements and bus expansion totaling $2.2 billion.
RTC officials are hoping that a third of the funding will come from state and local governments, another third from private interests, and the rest from federal transit grants.
After meeting with House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., the RTC is optimistic it will be included on a list of projects to receive funding authorization through the reauthorization of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.
A final recommendation is supposed to be made to the RTC board in January for adoption, which will trigger a cycle of environmental studies required for federal funding.
The most expensive of the components is the fixed guideway -- a 14-mile, $1.53 billion system that would link downtown and Strip resort areas with the airport and convention center. Officials envision 200,000 riders a day.
The second element would expand the bus fleet from about 180 to 500, a $431 million proposal that could handle 350,000 riders a day.
The third component is a mix of park-and-ride programs and freeway carpool lanes at a cost of $107 million.
The final component is a $183 million upgrade of the streets and highways above and beyond the region's 20-year master plan.
"The main point you want to get out to the public is we cannot solve the long-term mobility problems by continuing to just widen streets," said Samuel Tso, a transportation engineer and executive with Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Making connections
Tso acknowledged that private financing is going to be a necessary ingredient to the plan, but has not been a part of any discussions with the Hilton group. Nor have any formal proposals been made to the RTC or the steering committee.
"I don't know whether this private proposal is truly breaking away, but they are following a separate path that may dovetail back into the major investment study," Tso said. "We recommend following the current process to make this system eligible for federal funding."
However, Tso said no one is dictating that the public be the lead agency, and acknowledges the RTC's role as a catalyst among private interests.
"This doesn't preclude a private entity from moving forth," Tso said. "Our caveat is if you want to go ahead and move sooner, as long as it's compatible with this future master plan system, then the RTC has no problem."
Jensen said the Hilton group wants the same thing as the RTC, "but sooner rather than later."
"We are considering a transit-grade ride so on the day we have a valleywide system, we have that component," Jensen said at a recent public hearing on the monorail plans. "The MGM system is transit grade."
True, but its capacity is only 3,400 to 5,000 passengers per hour. The RTC is recommending a system that can carry 20,000 people an hour in either direction, Tso said.
Private developers also should know that the RTC design requirements call for a fully automated system with a specific turning radius, cruising speed, braking and accelerating speeds and other factors related to comfort, Tso said.
"Ideally, the technologies should also be complementary," so that any private system can connect up with a public system if one is ever built," Tso said. The catch is that the public system technology won't be known until the RTC starts advertising for bids.
Snow said the major investment study, which he has participated in, has identified a way to take the existing monorail system from Bally's to MGM, and put a cap over it to link up with other technology.
Broadbent said he's trying to build on the RTC's efforts to date. Whatever is built, Broadbent said, will have to be cost effective and appealing to casino owners also vying to build monorails linking their properties.
"We support the major investment study, we support a system that meets all federal requirements, but you've got to sell the hotels," Broadbent said. "And they're very damn individualistic."
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