Orphan Road

When I saw the headline for Knute Berger's piece in Crosscut on the Las Vegas Monorail and what it tells us about our own fated elevated system, I was afraid he'd uncovered some serious reliability or other substantive issues with the Vegas line that would serve as a cautionary tale for would-be monorail resurrectionists like myself.

Fortunately, the article contains no such warnings. Instead, Berger focuses on the low ridership of the Vegas line and its out-of-the way location. Neither of those would have been an issue with the Seattle line, which would have been a commuter transportation system along a well-trafficked corridor, not a tourist-trap overpriced joyride like the Las Vegas line. Plus, Seattle's pedestrian friendly, unlike the Strip, where sidewalks disappear into casinos with little or no warning or simply stop.

Berger does support the idea of extending the line all the way to the airport, which I heartily agree with. Waiting for a cab at McCarran Airport is a daunting task. The circuitous four-mile ride from the airport via taxi reeks of a powerful taxi driver lobby. As a bonus, having a monorail connection directly from the Airport to the Strip would make Vegas seem even more like a Lunar resort colony than it already does.