The Boring Company landed a $48.6 million contract in Las Vegas and is scheduled to start a new loop at the city’s Convention Center in September
The board of the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority voted to approve a $48.6 million contract in Las Vegas with Elon Musk’s Boring Company for an underground transit line at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The new loop that will reportedly be just 1.83-miles long, aims to be able to move people across 200 acres of conference space with two tunnels for vehicles and three stations. The construction is set to start in September and be completed by January 2021, just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show, which if it gets finalized successfully, it could become The Boring Co.’s first commercially operating project.
The authority is spending $1.4 billion to expand and renovate the convention center and sees the LVCC Loop as the kind of technology that helps attract meeting and convention business. “The Boring Company looks forward to working with LVCC to build a safe, affordable and exciting transportation system in Las Vegas,” the company stated.
However, a lot of people are skeptical and don’t believe that Musk’s high-speed transportation concept can really live up to the hype, it remains to be seen. The new transit project – dubbed the LVCC Loop – will connect the Las Vegas Convention Center’s New Exhibit Hall with other convention halls down the street. It currently takes 15-20 minutes to walk from the New Exhibit Hall to the other halls, and according to the Boring Co., the distance will take about 1 minute with the new underground LVCC Loop. The Las Vegas board’s vice chairman, Bill Noonan stated:
“This is truly a unique and one-of-a-kind project. People will come from all over the country to see it. This project is going to be a real benefit to our customers. But it also has an opportunity because it’s innovative and leads to a low-cost system, to help solve congestion problems not only in the resort corridor, but throughout the community.”
The Boring Company claims that they can significantly reduce costs of tunneling by shrinking tunnel diameters and increasing the speed of the tunnel boring machines – which otherwise can cost as much as $1 billion per mile.
