Opening
Day! First Images, first impressions
Page Three of Six
Pictures and commentary
by Kim Pedersen (except where noted)
Here we are looking south towards MGM from the Bally's/Paris
Resort Station. This picture essay is following the 3.9 mile route
in a northerly direction.
The logo art was new to us, and we saw it throughout
the system, including on tickets and employee uniforms. It's a
nice design, evocative of monorail windows in motion. Opening
day attracted a lot of folks, over 30,000 brought in $98,000.
Here we see patrons learning the ropes of the ticket machines.
Some stations had more machines than others. Anyone
familiar with touch screens should be able to figure it out fairly
easily. The discussions I heard were usually over which kind of
ticket to get; $3 one-way, $5.50 round-trip, or an all-day $10
pass. The pass makes the most sense for Strip visitors, and comes
cheaper than most one-way taxi rides.
Plenty of free brochures with information were on hand
in the stations. This is the renovated Bally's/Paris station,
now with automatic safety doors and the new logo. None of the
stations were air conditioned and it was a relief to board the
cool trains.
Now the new track begins. The MGM-Bally's track used
to make a hard left into a small storage/maintenance shop, now
the track climbs a bit and cuts right through the Bally's building
as it heads north.
After cutting through the Bally's building, the system
makes a spectacular S-turn to line up behind the Flamingo Hilton.
Engineers found this and the alignment in the alley behind resorts
challenging. We looked at this area and tried to figure out how
street level light rail could follow this route without totally
disrupting the area.
Now THAT is a straddle bent. Although it's pretty big,
you can see it doesn't darken the street or cast a huge shadow.
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