After years of anticipation, months of delays and a day of celebrations, the ballyhooed Las Vegas Monorail this morning will begin hauling paying passengers on a route behind the Strip.The $650 million line, which debuts to the public at 8 a.m., will be unique in ways beyond its basic premise of luring walkers off the car-crazy Strip and onto trains.
Innovations include driverless trains, taxpayer-free system funding and turning the simple act of riding a train into something called “transportainment.”
But before carrying its first tourist behind the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard South, the monorail had to overcome a daunting price tag, skepticism and technical glitches that pushed back its rollout date.
“It’s been a roller-coaster ride,” said John Haycock, board chairman of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. “You can well imagine that on a project of this magnitude, every day there was a new obstacle to deal with.”
The monorail made its ceremonial first passenger run Wednesday morning, plowing past a wind-scattered cosmetic cloud of fog and a blast of streamers.
VIPs along for the first ride included Gov. Kenny Guinn, Regional Transportation Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury, entertainers Rita Rudner and Penn Jillette, and the usual Vegas big event gaggle of showgirls and sirens, who were whisked from the MGM Grand station to the Sahara stop in about 17 minutes.
In the evening, monorail backers hosted a soiree at the Las Vegas Hilton, where more than 1,000 invitees were expected, consisting mostly of transportation commission and monorail company officials, monorail employees and their families.
The best part about the monorail that it’s privately funded, without a cent from taxpayers.
I might try it out this weekend.
Nice new page layout.
But when you wrote about the monorail tell me if not at least once you wanted to start doing the Simpson’s monrail tune.
Been there and done that.