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Las Vegas Monorail Finally Ready To Open
doormat writes "The Las Vegas monorail is finally set to open to the public on July 15th! The project has had some problems - it was originally scheduled to open in March. The first part of the monorail, which uses Bombardier M-VI train vehicles, 'a derivative of the famous Walt Disney World Mark VI trains', is 4 miles long and connects several casinos on the east side of the Las Vegas Strip (see map, QT video), as well as the Las Vegas Convention Center (Home to CES, NAB, Networld+Interop and what was Comdex). Future phases seek to expand the monorail to downtown to the North, the west side of the strip, and eventually the University and the airport (which the taxicab and limo groups fight tooth and nail). I swear it's the strip's only choice... throw up your hands and raise your voice! Monorail, Monorail, Monorail! Mono... D'oh!"
Wow, could it cost a little bit more? $3 a ride! $40 for 3 days? No week pass? Mono d'oh indeed.
We also got our first light rail line in Minnesota, the Hiawatha Line. Also driven with Bombardier trains of an original design.
I took some pictures of the opening here.
96,000 people tried out the line last weekend during its debut!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Other countries also lack the outstanding Interstate Highway System.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Where cities are close together, the mass transit systems are integrated. One can take non-Amtrak trains from Philadelphia to New Haven, Connecticut. Baltimore and Washington are connected by MARC trains, and Oakland and San Francisco are connected by Bart and S.F. and San Jose are connected by CalTrain.
And we do have some long lines, but as you say, they are pretty shitty. But those other countries are much more densely populated and smaller. In the Northeast Amtrak, the commuter railroads and subways make a pretty good approximation of what exists in Europe.
The full text of this article from The Economist follows. The original content is subscriber-only; it is reproduced here in the hope and expectation that you will find it useful.
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High-speed rail
Trop peu, trop tard, trop Amtrak
Aug 9th 2001 | CHICAGO
From The Economist print edition
Fast trains may be coming to the mid-west--and stopping too often
THE roads are clogged. The airports are worse. Might fast trains provide relief for America's frustrated travellers? A coalition of nine mid-western states has plans for a rail system that would whisk travellers between the region's big cities at high speeds and connect them to points beyond with a network of slower trains and buses. Strangely enough, Congress, which would have to pay much of the cost, is warming to the idea.
The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative (MWRRI) is a joint venture between nine state transport agencies, the Amtrak rail system and the Federal Railroad Administration. The coalition has unveiled detailed plans and cost estimates for a 3,000-mile rail system with Chicago as its hub that would connect cities such as Detroit, Milwaukee, St Louis and Minneapolis at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour (some 50-75mph slower than French or Japanese trains, but enough to wow the mid-west).
[Image]
Randy Wade at Wisconsin's Department of Transportation claims that the region is ideally suited for high-speed rail. Over distances of several hundred miles, such as the 280-mile trip from Chicago to Detroit, rail is potentially faster, more comfortable and more productive than car travel. It should be cheaper than flying and delivers passengers into the city centre, rather than to distant airports. And cities in the mid-west are already connected by freight rail lines that can be upgraded to accommodate faster trains. MWRRI thinks that a well-run system could attract nearly 10m riders a year by 2010.
Such transport visions are two a penny and often worth as much (ask any Eurotunnel shareholder). The General Accounting Office recently estimated the cost of a national high-speed system to be $50 billion-70 billion. But both the Senate and the House are considering bills that would enable Amtrak, America's quasi-public passenger rail agency, to issue up to $12 billion in bonds to pay for capital improvements in 11 designated high-speed rail corridors. The bonds would not pay interest; bondholders would receive federal income-tax credits instead.
Such stealth subsidies are unlikely to irritate voters, impatient with traffic jams and cancelled flights. "You can't imagine congestion getting better anywhere--ever," says Mr Wade. Tom Daschle and Trent Lott, the Democratic and Republican leaders, are among the bill's 51 co-sponsors in the Senate. The White House has not taken a position yet; but, while he was governor of Texas, George Bush cut the ribbon when Amtrak began running the Texas Eagle from San Antonio to Chicago.
The bill making its way through Congress would provide a down-payment on the MWRRI plan, which can be built step by step. The full system will need lots more money, to pay among other things for the trains and improved infrastructure. Even supporters concede that high-speed rail would do well to cover its operating costs, never mind the capital investment. Politicians will have to be sold on the social benefits of getting Americans off the highways and runways.
Which they might be, except for the most potent enemy of passenger rail in America: Amtrak itself. Critics of federal spending for high-speed rail do not oppose the idea in principle; they just think that giving Amtrak control over something like $12 billion in capital spending is insane.
America's passenger rail system, which was deregulated in 1997, is supposed to cover its operating costs by December
Just like Kim Pedersen. Wired did a nice story on him a few months ago and now he's started the Monorail Society.
Cool!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
Wikipedia on BART:
The trains are computer-controlled and arrive on-time with regular accuracy. Drivers are present in case of unforeseen difficulties.
If you have other information, please correct the wikipedia entry.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
The trains stop running at night and you can outrun it in a car, but you think that's excellent public transportation?
Visit NYC sometime. Trains 24/7 that are faster and cheaper than a car or taxi.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Where was this? I went on vacation to London, and the subway system (sorry, tube) there was excellent: trains every few minutes, posted schedules so that you could plan on being on time for the less common trains (like to the airport), and certainly faster than 5 miles in an hour. Oh, and fairly cheap, too (not sure exactly, I had a month all-you-can-ride pass) If the city I live in had the same level of public transport, I would use it much more than my car.
Woah, buddy.
First off, Disneyland's choice regarding the Disneyland Monorail had nothing to do with cost, or efficiency. It has more to do with Disney's internal pricing policies regarding the two Anaheim parks than anything else. We are actually now hearing that there WILL be extensions to the Disneyland Monorail at some point in the future, but not to the parking structure.. likely to a theoretical "third" park that is still in development.
Secondly, please provide some proof to the claim that Monorail is more expensive than an elevated, grade seperate light rail.
Thirdly, evacuating a monorail is no different than any other elevated train. If you have no catwalk (like the Disneyland monorails, or even the Chicago "El"), you just don't. However, only TWICE (that I was able to find) in the entire 40 year operating history of the Disneyland Monorail has an evacuation been required. In both cases, City of Anaheim ladder trucks were used, one of which is stationed ON DISNEYLAND PROPERTY anyway. The simple fact of the matter is it is much easier for ANY transit vehicle to proceed to the nearest station than to stop dead on the tracks and evacuate mid-span. I don't care who you are, monorail, light rail, or even busway.. a mid-span evacuation is dangerous and not routinely done by any of these transit modes.
A couple of years ago, SF-MUNI (the light rail system in San Francisco) experienced a complete failure of the automation system that runs the subway. Trains were stopped, dead, inside underground tunnels. No effort was made by SF-MUNI to evacuate passengers, even though the SF-MUNI subways are equipped with catwalks and emergency exits. Some passengers were stuck in trains for 2 or more hours.
The fact of the matter is, very few rail systems routinely evacuate passengers to the catwalks, even when they have them, unless their life is in immediate danger. There are more dangers present outside the train: high voltage, potential passing trains, etc.
Yes, when I lived in the SF Bay Area I paid $3.80 each way per day to ride the BART to and from work. But the BART carried me 35 miles in 45 minutes. During rush hour that is quite a feat.
Cheers.
Both Germany and Japan are separately bigger than half of Texas.
Texas: 695,622 sq km
Half of Texas: 347,811 sq km
Germany: 356,970 sq km
Japan: 377,837 sq km
Germany and Japan's combined land area is also larger than all of Texas.
Germany + Japan: 734,807 sq km
Now Germany and Japan are smaller than Alaska. They're smaller than half of Alaska. Put together.
Alaska: 1,717,854 sq km
Half of Alaska: 858,927 sq km
Day to day operation is generally much quieter. With rubber on concrete, rather than steel on steel, the ride is quiet(er) and smooth(er).
Yeah, what ever. Does this mean Europe is more united than the Uncooperative States of America?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
About 10-15 years ago, I lived for a summer in San Fransisco. I bought a "muni-pass" which gave me unlimited BART and SF/Metro for ~ $20/month anywhere in SF.(I was a minor at the time - 17 Y.O.)
This was for the buses trolleys, and BART trains.
I remember the adult version costing somewhere around $80-$100, and provided unlimited BART in the greater Bay Area.
Aren't these still available?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
This is not unique to monorails. For instance, the Montreal subway system uses rubber tires on concrete paths, but it's otherwise identical to a standard subway system (they still have the standard track and wheels on the cars as a backup in case of flat tires). The ride is certainly quieter than metal-on-metal, especially around the corners, but it can be fairly bouncy.
You know what I hate? Wait, what do you like? I hate that!
Trip 3: Walk to bus stop, 1 minute. Wait for bus, 2 minutes. Bus Journey, 10 minutes. Walk straight to platform (with season ticket for train), 1 minute. Wait for train, 5 minutes. Train Journey, 22 minutes. Walk to office, 2 minutes. Total Journey 43 minutes. Total cost, 13 UKP
Trip 4: Walk to car, get in car, 1 minute. Drive, sit in traffic jam, drive, sit in traffic jam, drive, sit in traffic jam, drive, 60 minutes. Queue to park, 5 minutes. Walk to office, 5 minutes. Total Journey 81 minutes. Total cost, 10 UKP to park, 3 UKP petrol, plus car maintenance, tax, insurance, etc.
Public transport can work.
Lots of subway systems use rubber tires. The Paris subway, for example, switched from steel wheels to rubber tires exactly for that reason.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
I am a frequent visitor of Vegas and I doubt I will EVER use the new monorail. First of all, the construction of this monorail closed a number of FREE trams/rails that I often used. There was an excellent free rail between the MGM and Ballys, as well as the Monte Carlo -> Bellagio tram. Both closed down for this construction. Now going from MGM to Ballys will cost $$ and the Monte Carlo Bellagio tram still remains closed! It's on the other side of the street for god sakes. There was no reason to close this excellent free service.
Second, the cost. I usually go with a group of friends, and if the 5 of us split a cab, it always cost $10 or less total, AND takes us door to door instead of only a few stations WAY at the back of the casinos. This is also 24 hrs a day. The monorail closes at midnight!! Who the hell heads back to their room at midnight in vegas?!
The only advantage the monorail has is a direct route to the convention center. Large conventions could make good use of this, but otherwise, I'd suggest tourists stay away.
Population of Europe: 727,786,000
Population of the USA: 293,027,500
Also note that most of the US population is on the coastlines. In the midwest, you can easily drive for 50 miles without running across another town, and even when you do it's rarely more than 10,000 people. Running track to all of those little towns would cost train companies more than they'd ever hope to make from the few additional customers they'd gain.
It's not the love of cars so much as the sheer cost that prevents huge, European-style public transportation systems from taking hold in the US, with the exceptions of the largest cities. Everywhere that's dense enough to run public transportation already has some form of it, and everywhere else is just too spread out for anything but cars to be effective.
The main purpose of this monorail is to create easier travel between the LVCA (convention center) and the strip. The conventnion center is a good distance away from the strip if you walk, this will make staying on the strip and traveling to the LVCA much easier. Plus most travelers will be business and be paying with business account more then likely. Others will be people who just need a quick way to get around. I'm sure day passes will eventually be released for this system. But its not always easy to get around between areas in vegas, even if it doesn't seem that far. While this is useless for locals its perfect for travelers who want to see different areas of vegas. Once this reachs out to Downtown this will provide much more bsuiness for that area that is hard to reach right now and that most people dont' want to pay the extra money to go and visit. sinc down town is a few miles away from the strip and is renovating also to become popular again this is a great thing for the las vegas economy.
But for the most part vegas gets most of its income now adays from CONVENTION TRAVELERS. Which means that making it easier to get back and fourth to the convention center is always a plus. The stations they have built for this system are really nice and will also help the business traveller
I can't believe its not butter!
This _sounds_ good on the face of it, but history says otherwise.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the US had far and away the largest amount of public transit, larger than any country in europe. In the 19-teens more miles of streetcar track existed in the United States than in the entire rest of the world combined. Inter-city rail was commonly used, and relatively affordable and dependable as compared to many of the nations we currently associate with rail such as Germany or France.
It's hard to identify true root causes, but certainly between the 1920s and the 1950s, american culture and spending patterns had fallen so heavily into the pattern of the automobile, that much of this was lost. Some might point to the american habit of so strongly valuing the new (cf. electricity, plumbing, etc.), while others might talk about our devaluing of the collectivist, thus valuing individual transportation. Still another point of consideration is the ugly side of capitalism, when private industry and infrustructure can sometimes poorly interact. Recent examples include Enron and the California power disaster, historically one can look to rail companies and their self destructive rail non-maintenance habits.
In any event, public transit thrived despite our lack of physical density for a good 60 years, and then died. Perhaps the point could be made that it could no longer successfully compete against private transit in our relatively non-dense environment, but even the bostonwash DC corridor has very poor transit now as compared to history and yet remains rather dense.
The problem is a good deal more complex than you suggest.
-josh
Monorail "track" is a lot more expensive to build per foot than light rail. That's the main reason Disney hasn't built any new monorail for a while
In the case of Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, Disney hasn't built any new track as there's nowhere else to extend the scenic monorail line. MGM Studios, Wild Animal Kingdom, and Blizzard Beach are located adjacent to the two main attractions (the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT), hidden from view only by some trees. The monorail ride to one of these newer attractions would be very short and would kill the whole experience.
Granted, the alternative (the smelly, slow busses) is no better...
With all the land Disney owns in the Reddy Creek area, I don't understand why they built all of their newer parks so close together, especially when they started out with a nice distance between the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and the parking complex.
Monorail beamway has a significantly smaller footprint and blocks less sky than traditional elevated two-rail guideway. See pages 14/15 and 38/39 of this PDF for some pictures. Sorry, a quick google search did not return any web pages with pics.
If you compare it with at-grade two-rail, then the advantage is that an elevated monorail has no road crossings. Of course, this is true of any elevated transit system.
Note that the small beam makes monorail evacuations more difficult than elevated light-rail evacuation. For light rail, people can just walk to one end of the train and step out onto the guideway. The Las Vegas monorail system installed emergency walkways between the beams. Riders step out of the side train doors onto the walkway. Disney World does not have emergency walkways and evacuates to the roof of the train. You then walk across the top of the train to one end and shimmy down the windscreen to the beam, and then walk the beam. (The beam is 26 or 28 inches wide). No WDW monorail has ever been evacuated, although there was a train fire years ago in an old Mark IV train.
" don't thing so. Europe is 3,837,000 Sq. Miles and the US is 3,537,438 Sq. Miles."
That statement is misleading as it includes part of Russia.
The European Union, for example, is about 1/3 the size of the continental US, and it has about 150 million more people (1.5 times as many).
That's approximately 4.5 times more people per square-km as the US.
Go to Wyoming some time and tell me that a nationwide mass-transit system is feasable. It's not.
That said, we could do much better. Amtrak is a disaster, and we need more "short-haul" solutions. I can take the bus from my city (Fort Collins, ~100km north of Denver) to Denver, but there is no rail. There should be.
Now, the truth is that it's simply more convenient to drive. Everyone goes ~130kph on the Interstate, and there is rarely any traffic north of Denver, so it only takes about 45 minutes to get to Denver. Compare that to a rail service which would have to be much faster to even compete (to compensate for the time spent getting to the station).
The monorail mentioned in this article is an extension of the one that ran along the east side of the strip from Bally's to the MGM Grand.
There are three other monorails that run in Las Vegas on the west side of the strip:
Mandalay Bay -> Luxor -> Excalibur
Bellagio -> Monte Carlo
Mirage -> Treasure Island
The longest of these three probably runs a bit more than a half mile.
I've just spent a huge amount of time working in Vegas, and I am really annoyed to learn that the monorail will soon open now that I'm gone. I'd have *loved* to had an easy/free way to hop a significant distance up the strip and start exploring again there, as I enjoyed just wandering thru the places exploring.
Similarly, when someone would visit, I'd tell them something like: See Sirens of TI, go inside of the pyramid at Luxor (the balconies and grand lobby are architecturally striking), the 4d Trekkie thing, the 'piazza at twilight' in the Venetian, the new LED dome on Fremont (I didn't get there... that's even worse than missing the Monorail opening, in my book!) and ride the 'Speed' roller-coaster ride. Problem is, unless you've got a chauffeur, that'll take 3 cab rides or more to do and can't be done in a day, since walking those distances isn't reasonable. So, to most folks I would end up saying 'pick just one thing', or downgrading my suggestions until they were riding a 2nd-rate ride, settling on show quality, or otherwise making deep compromises to fit the plans into their brief schedule.
Monorail good. Good for tourists. Good for tourism. Good for the environment. Anyone that works in Las Vegas should understand that their daily commute doesn't lend itself to railways. And it just doesn't compare to the consolidated need of half a million people or more on a peak weekend being squeezed into properties bordering 3 miles of one road. Even then, the rail's not a bad thing, since a strong rail system decreases parking/driving pressure and that's indirectly good for the workers.
Last of all: everyone in america needs a few good public-transit experiences. Otherwise, we'll never learn from our wiser european counterparts on the value of a public transit system. What better place to expose zillions of people to it than a tourist destination like Vegas?! Again, Monorail Good. Detractors idiots.
Europe is 3,837,000 Sq. Miles and the US is 3,537,438 Sq. Miles.
Europe is also fairly populated throughout, meaning that complete coverage is cost-efficient. The US has areas of moderate-to-heavy population surrounded by nothing but miles and miles and miles of farm fields.
Who'd want to take a train to the middle of North Dakota?
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