Three ways down the Strip, and the trip each one actually wins.
“Getting down the Strip” sounds like one problem with one answer. It is really three different problems — a short hop inside a cluster, a long run from one end to the other, and a late-night ride home — and each wants a different mode. Walking, the Monorail, and rideshare are not competitors; they are tools for those three jobs.
Walking is free and unbeatable inside a cluster: one resort to the next, a show to dinner, a casino to the fountains. It is the worst tool for the whole corridor. Las Vegas Boulevard is about four miles of resorts, entrances sit back from the sidewalk, and crossings detour over bridges — so a “quick walk to the casino next door” can take much longer than the map suggests, especially in summer heat.
The Las Vegas Monorail is a paid, elevated train running 3.9 miles behind the east side of the Strip, from MGM Grand in the south to SAHARA in the north, with seven stations. Trains come every four to eight minutes and the full route takes about 15 minutes of travel time. It is genuinely fast for an end-to-end run, especially for convention-goers near the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The catch is location. The Monorail runs parallel to the Strip, not down it, so every trip starts and ends with a walk into the resort. It does not serve the airport or downtown. Fares are lower for online eTickets than paper tickets at the station.
Two resort trams are free and running. One links Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Excalibur on the south Strip. The other, the ARIA Express, links Bellagio, The Shops at Crystals/ARIA, and Park MGM. They do not connect to each other — from Excalibur you walk across to New York-New York/Park MGM to pick up the second. A third tram, between Treasure Island and the former Mirage, stopped operating when that resort closed and is not a current option.
The Deuce on the Strip is RTC’s public double-decker bus, running 24 hours between downtown/Fremont Street and the South Strip Transit Terminal and stopping at most resorts. It is slow in traffic but cheap and flat-rate: current RTC Strip fares are $6 for a two-hour pass, $8 for 24 hours, and $20 for three days.
Did you know? The Monorail’s tracks do not run along Las Vegas Boulevard — they run parallel to it on the east side, behind the resorts, which is why every Monorail trip begins and ends with a walk into a property.
If you will ride the bus, the airport leg has its own rules — see airport to hotel. For pickup-lot quirks and surge timing, read rideshare in Vegas, or start at the Getting Around hub.
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