Monorail's New Dubious Record
January 30, 2007 | 11:23
am
Looking for some quiet time in busy Las Vegas? How about taking a ride on the monorail. The Las Vegas Monorail continues to be a joke and an embarrassment. The embarrassment is the failure of the monorail to find riders and the joke is how the officials for the monorail continue to respond by explaining away their pathetic numbers. The Review-Journal reports today, "The Las Vegas Monorail saw a ridership collapse by more than 30% in 2006, capping a disappointing year with its worst ridership month ever in December, according to monorail statistics."
How did things get so bad? The monorail responded to having too few customers by charging the ones they had more. Despite the predictable result , the monorail sort-of predicted anyway that ridership would rise 11%. This is consistent with the way the monorail has worked with numbers since opening in 2004. Back then the monorail estimated that it would have 50,000 riders a day. The actual number for last month: 15, 430. No worries. The lords of the monorail have another plan for success: an airport extension. The only huge caveat is that someone has to pay $500 million for building it. You can see why the Review-Journal reports the monorail is rated by one expert agency as a junk bond at risk for default.
So, how have monorail officials responded to this dismal outlook? No worries (of course). First monorail spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman denied that anyone made that pesky 11% rise in ridership prediction that the Review-Journal reminds readers the head of the monorail made on December 14, 2005. Even better is Reisman's apples and oranges celebration of the terrible numbers on ridership, telling Review-Journal: "The monorail's current daily ridership...still far exceeds most rail systems throughout the country." Maybe when the Vice President's term ends, they can hire Mr. Cheney to crow about this and the other tremendous successes of the Las Vegas Monorail
The poor management goes from the front office down to the rails.
I decided to catch a glimpse of the monorail in action for CES.
I went to buy a local pass, which you have to buy from a live person and as I walked up to the booth, the lady told me three times in rapid fire succession that I had to use a machine, her computer doesn't work. This was before I was able to say anything. I showed my Nevada license and stated my business and she said, "Oh, OK. People have been bugging me all morning."
Then you had to stand in a long single file que that a security guard was managing via barking instruction in broken English to the 50 or so ticketed future riders as how to pass through the one gate even though three lanes were open.
I braved the scorn of the guard and walked through an open lane and as the passengers behind me followed, the line began moving efficiently.
In a similar experience on the return ride at the convention center station, two Monorail security guards barked at passengers to follow a police tape line to form a que while waiting for the next train. I shot video since it was similar to TV shows where I've seen prisoner being hustled through hallways.
It was definitely the wrong way to do it. And this isn't just a case of me sharing poor customer service. If Vegas wants to evolve out of a provencial shell into a world-class city, fresh ideas need to be installed all over town, especially at the Monorail. They need a whole new front office with competent managers who can extend training down to the front-line employees.
Posted by: Fletch | February 04, 2007 at 09:26 PM
The strange thing is that my wife and I (2 summers ago) we had a good time in using the Monorail. We were staying at the Las Vegas Hilton Was it great? No. But it was cleaner than most vegas cabs; by far cheaper over the course of our vacation (even for two riders) and generally as fast as cabs would be during rush hour. I have to say I have been surprised as to the poor ridership - perhaps it remains a problem with the fact that the casinos on the opposite side of the street hate it and are not promoting and, without Ceasars and the old-Wynn properties, ridership gets creamed.
Posted by: Erik | February 05, 2007 at 05:37 PM
I just returned from a 3 day trip to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Pallazzo Hotel, and since we had tickets to a show at Planet Hollywood we decided to get a day pass on the monorail.
What an embarassing joke!
By the time we hoofed it up to Harrahs, through the labyrinth-like casino to get to the station, back though BOTH Bally's and Paris casinos, as well as the Paris shops, and then the rest of the way along the strip, we had walked further than we would have just going straight up the strip to PH.
I imagine that the Taxi/limo driver lobby, as well as Harrahs, Ballys and Paris all were very supportive of this useless waste of money.
Posted by: Mike | April 15, 2008 at 06:52 AM