It was a record year for airport passengers at McCarran, reports the Review-Journal. Over 44 million passengers arrived in 2005 as the airport posted a 6.8 percent increase in arrivals and departures.

Increases like this are straining McCarran's capacity even though it has $2.4 billion in additions to help it cope. "How do you close a restroom down when there are dozens and dozens of people who need to use a restroom at the moment? We don't have any lull periods anymore. We just have peaks and then we have bigger peaks," Clark County Aviation Director Randall Walker tells the paper.

McCarran is implementing some small space-saving tricks like off-site baggage check-in, which will soon start at the Venetian but these are only stogap measures for the next decade while the Ivanpah airport is built.

At the same time, the plan to extend the monorail to the airport is gathering steam, reports the Las Vegas Sun. You can't help but get the feel that the main proponents of the airport leg are MGM Mirage and Harrah's whose guests will be able to avail themselves of the service.

Of course, if they're like other passengers, they probably won't ride the rails, again showing the projected ridership numbers were very exaggerated. If you have the stomach for the whole sorry saga, take a look at CityLife's expose on how the monorail was not the free ride it was supposed to be.