Elon Musk always aims high. With Tesla, the serial founder gave the auto industry a shock; SpaceX’s spaceships bring people and material to the International Space Station (ISS). And in the underground of Las Vegas, The Boring Company (TBC), founded by Musk, is drilling a tunnel system that will connect the famous “Strip” with the city center and the airport with self-driving Teslas.
Insane? Vegas!
Sounds crazy. But the “Las Vegas Loop“is more than the pipe dream of an eccentric billionaire, but a concrete infrastructure project. A first section is to be opened in spring 2021: two tunnels connecting the urban” Las Vegas Convention Center “(LVCC) with a 980 million US dollar expansion to the west of the old exhibition center, and that’s just the beginning.
In May 2019, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) decided against conventional rail transport and gave the green light for the approximately 52 million US dollars (42 million euros) tunnel project. The LVCVA had taken quite a risk: TBC has nothing to show apart from a 1.8-kilometer test tunnel in a suburb of Los Angeles. A comparable project in Chicago is encountering resistance from residents and local politicians, others are only in the preliminary planning phase. Las Vegas is more open to crazy projects.
– The tunnel connects the old with the new exhibition grounds. Below is the planned route to the Hotel Encore.
(Image: Clark County)
TBC has set itself the goal – also with regard to Musk’s Hyperloop project – to improve the technology of the tunneling machines so that tunnels can be built faster and more automatically than before. Beat the snail: Faster than a snail is the motto. Because Teslas are used with autopilot, TBC can reduce the tunnel diameter from 8.5 to 4 meters, which saves time and money. To connect the LVCC, the company is building the tunnels, including the stations and operating technology, and will also be responsible for train operations. The company is already looking for drivers and operations personnel on its website.
First hole
On November 15, 2019, the first excavators and the large drilling machine arrived. The first tube was drilled three months later, and the second was completed in mid-May 2020. The route of about 1.3 kilometers leads from the east entrance of the “South Hall” under the main hall and the adjacent Paradise Road and ends at an above-ground station west of the new hall. The core of the facility is the underground “train station” in front of the main hall, which is about to be completed.
Almost finished: the underground train station under the old exhibition grounds.
The west hall with 55,700 square meters of exhibition space and the new transport system were originally supposed to go into operation for CES 2021. The work is as good as completed, but the CES is only taking place virtually due to the corona pandemic. “The West Hall was finished on schedule, but when it can officially open is uncertain in view of the pandemic,” said a spokeswoman for the LVCVA. It is uncertain when larger trade fairs – around 170,000 visitors came to the previous CES in January 2020 – will be able to take place again.
It is also unclear whether the system will provide the desired capacity of up to 4,400 passengers per hour. The fair visitors are to be driven through the tunnels in semi-autonomous Teslas at up to 250 km / h. Initially, Model 3 and Model X with a safety driver are used. “We made it a lot simpler,” Musk explains on Twitter. “At the moment there are basically only Teslas in a tunnel, which is much more profound than it sounds.” At the “stations” above or below the ground, the cars let the passengers out and pick up new ones, in order to then get back into the tunnel traffic.
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