"Plan urged for Las Vegas Strip-to-airport monorail link"

Monday, January 22, 2001

Plan urged for Strip-to-airport monorail link


LAS VEGAS (AP) - With work underway on a nearly four-mile monorail
connecting Las Vegas Strip hotels, critics want to accelerate plans for a
spur to McCarran International Airport.

"If we really want to ease traffic then there needs to be something to
address all the vehicle trips between the airport and the Strip," said
Jessica Hodge, a Las Vegas Sierra Club member and advocate for mass
transportation. She said an airport link would alleviate congestion and
pollution.

The monorail is a good idea, "but it must connect to the city center and the
airport," said Gil Carmichael, a former head of the Federal Railroad
Administration and an expert on mass transit.

"For Las Vegas not to be going into their airport is a terrible error."

The Regional Transportation Commission talked about running the monorail to
the airport - and north to Cashman Field - before approving the hotels-only
route in August 2000.

The one-mile monorail currently in use connects the MGM Grand and Bally's
hotel-casinos. The first extension of that track, which will stretch 3.8
miles from the MGM Grand to the Sahara, has been four years in the making.

Planners say 19 million people will use the monorail, paying a $2.50 fare.

The plan to go to the airport remains "one of the future phases," said Bruce
Woodbury, chairman of the Regional Transportation Commission. "We'll have to
decide which is a higher priority, going to Cashman or the airport."

In September, the state floated its biggest-ever bond for the project, $650
million. The airport and Cashman Field spurs would be funded separately.

The airport extension remains on the boards, said Bob Broadbent, president
of Transit Systems Management, the company managing construction and
operation of the private monorail system.

"We know we can get there (to the airport) from our system," said Broadbent,
who was Clark County aviation director before joining the drive for the
monorail in 1996.

Other metropolitan areas are working to add airport rail service, including
New York, San Francisco and Portland, Ore. Denver also plans to build an
airport rail link.

Carmichael praised the transportation commission for linking the monorail
with Citizen's Area Transit buses. But he said an airport connection would
strengthen the system more.

Up to 10 percent of the 34 million people passing through McCarran annually
would ride the monorail, Broadbent said.

It also would help relieve heavy traffic at the airport, where officials
expect passenger traffic to rise to 55 million people a year in 10 years.

Peggy Pierce, conservation co-chair for the Sierra Club, predicted taxi
drivers would resist an airport monorail.

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