Vegas Loop to Elevate Teslas Using Existing Monorail Infrastructure

Once the outdated Las Vegas Monorail is retired, its tracks will become elevated Vegas Loop roadways, allowing Teslas to exit the tunnels and bypass traffic from the MGM Grand to the Sahara.

Plans have been in the works for the better part of 12 months, but last week, Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which purchased the monorail out of bankruptcy in December 2020, provided more clarity as to the details behind the plans.

“It will incorporate the monorail,” he said in a speech to the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association (NHBA) on April 23, as reported by Las Vegas Advisor. “We’ll take the track off, put a pre-cast two-lane road on top, incorporate it into the Boring Company system, and use the existing monorail stations.”

In 2020, the LVCVA said the monorail would be closed and dismantled as early as 2028, but definitely by 2030. Last year, the organization extended that timeline to 2033-2035.

End of the Line for Monorail

The Las Vegas Monorail has been a 3.9‑mile fixture of the resort corridor since 2004. But according to Hill, the system is nearing the end of its useful life. It has increasingly become subject to breakdowns and outages which cannot immediately be rectified.

The monorail employs nine Innovia 200 trams, each with four cars, which its track was custom-designed to fit.

Those trams were only manufactured by Bombardier out of Quebec, which no longer makes them. In fact, after racking up billions of dollars of debt, it no longer makes trams at all. Bombardier sold its rail business for $6.7 billion to French competitor Alstom in 2021.

Alstom only manufactures a newer model, the Innovia 300, whose beam width of 27.2 inches renders it incompatible with the 26-inch older model.

For a while, monorail executives reportedly rooted for Disney World to upgrade its Mark VI trams so they could buy the retired stock. (The first monorail tracks to operate in Vegas, connecting the MGM Grand and Bally’s from 1995 to 2002, used two retired Disney World Mark IVs.)

However, the Mouse House is in the same no-win situation as Las Vegas. It can buy an all-new monorail system but would need to construct all-new tracks. It’s not impossible for a company to develop a new monorail to fit the existing one’s tracks but nobody is rushing to step up to that very niche plate.

Crazy Train

So why would the LVCVA pay $24.3 million in December 2020 for a doomed transportation system — one they needed to pay a Los Gatos, Calif. company up to $500K annually to operate?

Because the monorail had a noncompete clause that prohibited any other company from building another off-street transportation system for the Strip.

The LVCVA had already signed, in 2019, a $48 million contract with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Vegas Loop, which would probably have violated the monorail’s noncompete clause.

Track to the Future

Rather than dismantling the elevated guideway, Hill intends to reuse the monorail’s right‑of‑way and support pylons as part of the Vegas Loop.

“When you get to the MGM station, we’ll tie it into the parking garage and use it as part of a station with ramps to get in and out of it,” he told the NHBA.

In other words, there would be no need for the Boring Co. to dig a separate four-mile-long tunnel connecting the South Strip to the North Strip near Las Vegas Boulevard.