Elon Musk’s The Boring Company seeks to avoid traffic jams with underground tunnels and an electrical system made up of a fleet of Tesla autonomous electric cars. The company is planning a massive citywide expansion of the currently modest underground transportation system it’s building in Las Vegas.
In May 2020, The Boring Company completed the creation of its second tunnel in the American city. Yet Elon Musk does not intend to stop there. The startup now wants to build a 10-mile sub-surface loop that serves the famous Las Vegas Strip of casino hotels and reaches the city’s downtown area as well as McCarran International Airport, all with Tesla vehicles.
This new proposal from the Boring Company could make it possible to go from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay in just three minutes, which otherwise can take up to 30 minutes by surface roads during peak traffic hours, the company claims. The announcement comes just days after the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) finished buying the Las Vegas Monorail. An acquisition puts an end to a non-compete agreement that previously prevented The Boring Company from digging tunnels serving the same areas.
The Boring Company plans to shuttle up to 4,000 passengers per hour through its tunnels aboard Tesla’s electric vehicles with a capacity of 8 to 16 passengers. The final goal is obviously to make these vehicles operate completely autonomously. This will not be the case right away. Over the months, sensors will equip the tunnels to allow vehicles to gain autonomy so that, in the long term, these tunnels become roads perfectly suited to autonomous cars.
If the new expansion proposed by Musk’s company is approved, it will be funded differently this time. The Boring Company will pay for the cost of constructing the main tunnel of the new citywide loop, while casinos and other properties along the route that want a station will have to pay to have them built. The company will present its project very soon to the Las Vegas City Council.
