He created the Boring Company to pursue his transit vision. One of the projects, which featured two tunnels along the one mile in Las Vegas, was completed last month. When it opened for business in January 2021, a little of its original vision would be realized. Passengers will enter Tesla – driven by other humans, not transported by an autonomous sled – and driven at a top speed of 35 miles per hour, according to Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill.
It was on stage in April 2017 at a
Ted conference of ideas, Musk shows animation
the video the vehicle was lowered into a tunnel above an elevator that merged with a roadside parking lot and drove across the city using an electric train. He called the Loop the Intacity transportation project and claimed the autonomous vehicle would be cheaper than the bus. Thirty layers of tunnels in a city might completely improve congestion problems in high-density cities, Musk said
November 2018.
But the two Boring Company tunnels were completed at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which will open more than a year ago
Musk’s original estimate, Is far from the slippery Ted video pitch. Beyond the 35 mph speed limit and the initial requirements for human drivers, this project was built for conference participants and is not currently intended as public transportation.
The system will depend on Tesla Models 3s and Xs. Trams built on the Model 3 chassis carrying 12-16 passengers can be introduced later, according to Hill. He hopes the vehicles will eventually drive independently, once they are proven safe. Hill said he wasn’t sure how long it would take.
Boring Company and Musk representatives did not respond to CNN Business’s request for comment.
The newly completed tunnel can eventually be extended to the greater Las Vegas, providing travel between casinos, resorts, residential neighborhoods, sports stadiums, and airports. Two resorts, Wynn Las Vegas and Resorts World Las Vegas, submitted expansion plans this month to local governments for approval. Both are located about a mile from the Convention Center.
Construction can begin later this year, awaiting approval. Rates will be affordable, according to a spokesman for Resorts World Las Vegas, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2021. No further details about the proposed expansion have been released.
Hill said that tickets will cost from $ 3 to $ 5, making it more expensive than bus tickets. Travel by a single bus can be $ 3 or less in Las Vegas, and a monthly bus ticket can be obtained for $ 65.
The Boring Company has released a map of how the Loop can be extended, with 27 more stops in Las Vegas, and an extension to Los Angeles. However, the proposal has not yet come out of the drawing board. So far it seems that it’s only a proposal without entering from Las Vegas.
A spokesman for McCarran International Airport said there was nothing formal in the work for new airport connections to the Strip or convention center. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman declined to comment on this story.
While the current reality does not fit Musk’s initial vision, Las Vegas leaders are excited about the potential for expansion, which they see as a cost-effective way to improve local transportation.
“We have seen the subway system, we have seen the monorail, we have seen the light rail,” Hill said. “It’s not because we haven’t thought anything. It’s because we don’t have room for it or we can’t afford it.”
A monorail, for example, can cost $ 100 million per mile, he said. Boring Company has not requested public funding, and thinks it can dramatically reduce tunneling costs.
But there are questions about whether it will fulfill its promises, be cost effective and serve a large number of visitors. Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, said
last month he spends less than 1% of his time in the company. Musk has played an important role in the success of other companies, so the limited time contribution can influence how successful the company is.
In 2017, Musk announced that he received government approval for a
proposed Hyperloop, a high-speed subway service that will travel between New York and Washington, DC in less than 30 minutes and with speeds of more than 600 mph.
Question survive whether Musk has sufficient approval to complete the project.
Meanwhile, besides Las Vegas, several other Loop projects from the Boring Company are slowly moving forward. If completed, they will operate at a lower speed, with a 155 mph cap.
One example, his project between DC and Baltimore is under environmental review, according to a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration. A federal government website that tracks infrastructure project permits has described the review as completed by the end of 2019. The spokesman declined to say why the review appeared to be delayed.
The project will initially be limited to 1,000 passengers per direction per day, according to the government
environmental assessment project. That would provide less capacity than the Marc Camden Line, a commuter train service that connects the same two cities, and has an average working day rider of 5,075, according to
State of Maryland data. Ratings say Loop capacity is due to limited size of the DC Loop station location. Future expansion can accommodate more than 100,000 passengers per direction per day, when including trips to intermediary stations in the future, according to the assessment.
If the Boring Company is cleared to continue the DC project to the New York Hyperloop, the curved route south of Baltimore will make it technically unrealistic to maintain the high speed projected by Musk, according to Christian Claudel, a transportation engineering professor at the University of Texas-Austin who has advised students on Hyperloop project. Given how sharp the curves are on the project map, G forces will be too strong for fighter pilots, he said.
Plans to build a Loop from downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport seem
camphor. A spokesman for the city of Chicago said the project had not been discussed since Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office a year ago.
But in Vegas, interest remains high to see what the Boring Company can do, if it develops.
“From my reasoning, it’s only a matter of time,” said Jeremy Aguero, spokesman for the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board. “The world is likely to be very important for Southern Nevada and perhaps beyond.”
