Las Vegas Is the Site of the 69th Ite Annual Meeting in August. over the next Few Months We Will Present Features That Describe This Inviting

ITE JOURNAL / MARCH 1999 LAS VEGAS, NEV., USA, IS well known for the Strip, the wedding chapels where many Hollywood stars have married and its Elvis impersonators. What is not as widely known is that Las Vegas is home to a relatively large number of small scale Automated People Mover (APM) systems that serve the internal site-circulation needs of resorts. In fact, Las Vegas may be considered the birthplace of contemporary, low-cost, cablepropelled systems designed specifically to serve urban needs in North America. Although cable-propelled systems have their origins in the last century, applications in North America were limited to mining operations, ski slopes and amusement parks until 1977 when a conventional suspended aerial tramway was constructed to connect Manhattan with Roosevelt Island, located in the middle of the East River.1 However, the first truly urban system to depart from traditional design appeared in 1981 in Las Vegas at the Circus-Circus resort.2 The system connected a secondary hotel and parking area (the Terminal Manor) with the main hotel/casino and crossed over a public street (Figure 1). The distinctive feature of the technology was the guideway design and method for supporting the vehicle. Whereas conventional cable technology for bottom-supported vehicles featured steel wheels riding on steel rails, the Circus-Circus system utilized pneumatic rubber tires riding on a concrete running surface. Emulating the suspension technology used by the self-propelled APMs, which were appearing in growing numbers in airports, the pneumatic tires of the Circus-Circus system offered weight reduction in the vehicle and guideway, as well as a quieter ride. The system was constructed by VSL, who also had constructed the aerial tram at Roosevelt Island. It was 401 meters (m) [1,315 feet (ft.)] in length and featured two vehicles. The vehicles were attached to a single loop of cable and started simultaneously from the two terminals at each end of the guideway. At the midpoint of the single-lane guideway, it widened to two lanes to allow the vehicles to pass each other without stopping. With each vehicle capable of carrying 50 passengers, the one-way hourly capacity was 1,639 passengers. In order to keep weight low, the use of on-board air conditioners was avoided by giving vehicles a charge of cold air when they were in the terminals. Operation was around-theclock, with only brief downtimes for routine maintenance late at night. The system was dismantled along with the secondary hotel to make room for new construction in the mid-1990s. However, visitors to Las Vegas can view its sibling, a second cable-propelled system built by Circus-Circus in 1985 to connect the main hotel/casino with a Las Vegas— A Showcase for Automated People Mover Technology