The Boring Company’s first commercial loop, deployed in Las Vegas, has officially been approved for expansion throughout the city.
Tesla vehicles inside tunnels are going to offer a new transit solution in Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop is The Boring Company’s first full-scale loop project currently in commercial use.
Elon Musk’s tunneling startup completed the $50 million project in just over a year.
A Boring Company Loop system consists of tunnels in which Tesla electric vehicles travel at high speeds between stations to transport people within a city.
While the ambition is to have complex tunnel systems underneath entire cities, the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop is only 1.5 miles long with three stops. But the hope has always been to eventually connect it to a larger Loop system under broader Las Vegas, especially the Strip and the airport.
Now, the expansion project has officially been approved by Clark County:
The approved expansion includes 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations covering a significant part of the city:
Vegas Loop users will be able to jump into a Tesla vehicle and drive through the tunnels directly to a specific station.
The company gave examples of travel time and prices on some routes of the Vegas Loop:
Clark County noted that no public money is going to be used to finance the transit project.
The Boring Company is planning for a capacity of 57,000 passengers per hour.
So far, the experience at the convention center loop has been a bit underwhelming since The Boring Company has yet to deliver on operating the Tesla vehicles autonomously in the tunnels.
They still rely on drivers who also drive at a lower speed than originally promised.
The Boring Company has removed mentions of the vehicles being driven autonomously in the tunnels from its website.
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