"The Las Vegas Monorail Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday." Oh noes, why? It has only been in business since 2004! "Because the train's popularity was overestimated, the company has not paid off the $650 million in construction and start-up costs.... Monorail representatives told the state they anticipated about 20 million passengers a year who would pay a fee of $2.50 per trip. The monorail's Web site says it has carried 27 million passengers in five years." MONORAIL!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
35
Seriously, who would've bet against Americans actually walking around, like, on their feet.
City Council had the odds at 52/1.
I call the big one Bitey!
"Homer, there's a man here who thinks he can help you."
"Batman?"
"No, it's a scientist."
"Batman's a scientist."
"It's not Batman!"
"Were you sent here by the devil?"
"No good sir, I'm on the level!"
"Is there a chance the track could bend?"
Not on your life, my Hindu friend!
Nobody used that thing. If you were a tourist staying on one property, going from one to another, one of the last things you want to do (even in 110 degree heat) is spend more time in a ligament of that property; it's nice to feel like there's life outside of these places, even for tourists. Also, it didn't go anywhere. Had they built to to say, the Airport, downtown Las Vegas, anywhere but other casinos, it would've worked. Stupid ass MGM/Mirage.
It would have been fine if they'd put slot machines and cocktail waitresses in them.
Actually, it was PERFECT if you stayed on the strip and had to go to the Convention Center for a work/conference thing. Way better than the cab line. ALSO if you wanted to go to the greatest gentleman's club in the world: "The Spearmint Rhino."
What they needed was a BULLET TRAIN. Nobody does not love those things! Also: strippers. A bullet train with strippers. Fact. Alex Pareene will back me up on this.
Monorails are the last remaining relic of an America optimistic about the future; a future of clean cities, meals-in-a-pill, and mass transit 50 ft off the ground. Write your local representative and demand that we bail out monorails. Too awesome to fail!
Those roof-top zeppelin stations would have been pretty cool too.
I remember walking the Strip back in the early Nineties when it was empty space and embryonic construction sites plus Caesars, the Frontier, the Mirage, Treasure Island and MGM. It was barren, dark and seemed dangerous.
Later, walking the strip between the Venetian and the Bellagio back in October of '09, I was amazed at the street life, the open-air restaurants and musicians. Really pretty nice. If the monorail connected to the airport, it would have been a BLOCKBUSTER.
Obligatory Simpsons monorail episode reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw&feature=player_embedded
And it's a Conan episode.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Las Vegas is the Worst Place on Earth.
Also: Mule w/ Spinning Wheel.
They should have started the monorail route from the top of the Stratosphere.
With an excursion past the giant Eiffel Tower made of toothpicks.
An Amtrak style "Cafe Car" would have helped. Who doesn't like microwaved hotdogs?
I don't understand. It worked in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbook.
!!!
Like all public transit, monorail fails to self-sustain.
Yeah, how's that 'underground train' working out for you, New York?
Jury's still out.
Receding.
Like all public transit, in ill planned vast conglomerations of environmentally catastrophic sprawl monorail fails to self-sustain.
Fixed.
I love public transit as much as the next guy (commute: r to n to 4,5, to metronorth), but none or nearly none are sustainable without subsidies, usually of the massive variety.
Exactly. Because public transit is not self-sustainable in a bubble. When the benefits of development, increased productivity, reduced congestion, cleaner air and water, and walkable communities that breed healthy individuals are all factored in, public transit more than breaks even.
All this failure shows is that fat, lazy tourists prefer stepping outside and hail a cab over climbing the stairs to ride a train.
No, it shows that trying to run a transit system like this as a money-making business is stupid, unless you have places people really want to go, they're all going there together, they'll pay a lot of money to go there, perhaps there's no other way to get there, and/or some additional qualites that do not usually (ever?) exist (not ruling out above ideas such as slots and/or naked women). Because even if what you say is true--that the total value to society from mass transit is so much greater than what you have to invest to build/maintain/operate it--the owner doesn't get that added money, whether said owner is public or private.
Actually, that's entirely dependent on who runs the system. If it is a city-run system, and the city benefits from real estate taxes and property tax revenue, then it could very well break even. Unfortunately, there's no line-item in a city's financials for "property taxes for new development built within 5 blocks of transit since transit was planned."
Mono- d'oh!
More like Monofail!
Amirite?!
Right?
'...'
Oh, god I'm so lonely.
I remember the only time I ever visited Detroit (once is probably enough, LOLz! not to be a hater.) I mentioned their very-bizarre-and-seemingly-useless-under-the-circumstances little monorail in conversation and one of my acquaintances replied, "heh. The People Mover." and by referring to it as "The People Mover"...I thought he was making a joke.
They have the same thing in Indianapolis, and it is really called a People Mover. The first day it opened, all the local news stations were there, and they glided out of the first station ... only to stop halfway to the second station. Stuck. It was glorious.
"...Springfield doesn't have a light rail."