Houston’s light rail boondoggle has been the subject of several previous posts here. Given that misery loves company, this Washington Post article provides Houstonians with some comfort that Las Vegas may have managed to generate an even bigger rail boondoggle than Houston’s:

When it debuted in mid-July, this city’s sleek $650 million monorail was supposed to be the envy of the nation, a high-tech public transit system paid for without taxpayer money that would be so popular it could even turn a profit.
But during a busy convention season, bits and pieces of the trains started falling off, potentially endangering anything below, and the system was shut down indefinitely for major repairs. By Thanksgiving, newspaper cartoonists and tourists alike were dubbing it “monofail” and deriding the futuristic cars sitting idle on the costly tracks.
After being closed for 3 1/2 months, at a cost of more than $9 million in fare revenue, the system reopened over Christmas weekend, just in time for Las Vegas’s busiest tourist week of the year. It was a Christmas gift from Clark County officials to monorail operators who hope to erase the memory of one of the city’s most humiliating and expensive debacles.

However, the Las Vegas monorail has an interesting characteristic that is not shared by most rail systems — it was not built with government funds and is not designed for commuters:

Unlike any of the nation’s other transit systems, the Las Vegas Monorail is not designed to aid local commuters or even to alleviate roadway congestion. The traffic reduced by this train is in the casino corridor, making visitors its chief beneficiary.

The Las Vegas Monorail deal is unique . . . Transit Systems Management is a private entity that reports to the Las Vegas Monorail LLC, a board appointed by the governor. . . it is largely a privately operated venture funded by construction bonds sold to investors using the state’s bond rating but with debt insurance so Nevada taxpayers are not liable in a default.

Nevertheless, the ubiquitous governmental subsidy of the system appears to be on the horizon:

[F]ederal and county funds will be used for future legs of the monorail — including a $450 million, 2.9-mile stretch to the downtown casino center northeast of the Strip, planned to open in 2008 but now pushed back by the closure. The monorail also is slated to be extended to McCarran International Airport to the south by 2012, using taxpayer money.

Thus, as with publicly-financed stadiums, the scam of these publicly-financed rail systems lives on because the benefits of light rail are highly concentrated in a few interest groups such as elected officials, environmental groups, labor organizations, engineering and architectural firms, developers and regional businesses. On the other hand, the costs of such systems are widely dispersed among the general population. Consequently, the many who stand to lose will lose only a little while the few who stand to gain will gain a lot.
This is why a politically savvy minority can con a large group of taxpayers facing relatively small costs into voting for an uneconomic rail system based on perceived benefits such as helping the poor, reducing congestion and pollution, and fostering development. Even though these benefits are exaggerated, it is usually not worth the relatively small cost per taxpayer for most taxpayers to spend any substantial amount of time lobbying against the cost-ineffectiveness of the rail system. With political leadership usually more interested in reading tea leaves than balance sheets and pro forma operating statements, these uneconomic rail systems just continue to perpetuate like a bad virus.
Of course, if other public projects are proposed where the overall costs outweigh benefits, then the small cost to the taxpayer per project could add up to quite a hefty boondoggler?s bill after awhile. Las Vegans should think about that as they consider publicly financing both the extensions of the monorail and a stadium to attract a Major League Baseball team.