Elon Musks Boring Company is making progress extending its first tunnel from the Las Vegas convention center to the first Casinos on the Vegas strip. During typical peak hours, driving from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay, for example, can take up to 30 minutes. The same trip on Vegas Loop will take approximately 3 minutes.
Boring Company could soon be proving that they can build new high speed transportation at affordable costs and with minimal surface disruption. The 1-mile Vegas convention center tunnel, three stations (one underground) and vehicles is costing the LVCVA $52.5 million. A full Vegas strip and Vegas Airport system might cost around $787.5 million.
Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported via compatible AEVs (autonomous electric vehicles) at up to 155 miles per hour.
The 155 mile per hour tunnel connections can be placed in cities with some of the worst traffic problems and to connect them to nearby cities.
Standard AEVs are Tesla Model S, 3 and X vehicles. High-occupancy AEVs use a modified Tesla Model 3 chassis to transport up to 16 passengers with both sitting and standing room.
Boring Company is headquartered in Los Angeles. There have been discussions about two tunnels in Los Angeles. A proposed Dugout Loop will begin at the Dodger Stadium property and will proceed under Vin Scully Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. The western terminus will be located on private property owned by The Boring Company and will be located within the vicinity of a Metro Red Line station.
In two to three years, the Vegas Strip loop and first Los Angeles Boring loop could be built and operating. It is about 250 miles from Las Vegas to the nearest parts of Los Angeles. A Vegas to Los Angeles system would cost about $15 billion if it scaled up linearly from the Vegas convention center system.
Elon Musk has shown that as Tesla and SpaceX scaled up that they develop increased efficiency and lower costs.
A 155 mile per hour loop would make a trip Los Angeles and Las Vegas in about 97 minutes.
East Coast
Boring Company has proposed an East Coast tunnel from Washington DC to Baltimore. The system would consist of the construction of a set of parallel, twin underground tunnels. This transportation system would create a significant public benefit due to decreased commute times, decreased urban congestion, decreased public transportation trip times, decreased transportation costs/fares, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions.
This would be a 38 mile long tunnel. It could be expanded to go to New York.
Megacities and Cities With the Worst Traffic
Tomtom provides GPS services and has detailed traffic index rankings for cities. The higher numbers mean traffic congestion is worse.
SOURCES- Boring Company, Tomtom, Wikipedia
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Only works if you are moving small numbers of people. Doesn't work if you are moving millions.
Mass transit is where a lot of the money to be made is. All large cities in the world are currently working on mass transit systems since the roads in the cities and in/out of the cities are parking lots. Large tunnels are needed to move large numbers of people.
Subways move a lot of people. The number of people is determined by tunnel cross-section area and speed of train. A long train works better than short cars because of the space that will occur between the smaller cars. I hope the boring company have more tricks up their sleeves other than a small cross-section.
As much as I loath this show, this meme is accurate.
You made me laugh out loud…
The state might own some of the needed land if they went above-ground, but they would still need a huge land purchase because you can't just build Tesla-lane on existing shoulder. You would need to add additional shoulder and deal with lots of eminent-domain and environmental and NIMBY lawsuits. Probably better to go underground if they really can lower the costs.
nah this i, you know, for the collective and greater good.
love to see red neck yokel trying to drive his F-650 mega sauraus
thru one of these glorified water pipes.
like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
No plans for tesla owners elite or otherwise to drive their cars on the system as far as we know. Just us regular people if the cost per ride is affordable
I mean, the only reason it's in a tunnel is to avoid knocking down buildings. This isn't a vacuum tube. On the empty desert land between LA and Vegas, they'd just run the track on the surface, probably along existing freeways because the state already owns the land. No reason to spend $15 billion on tunneling under tumble weeds.
It'd also be great advertising for Musk. Any time someone is driving between LA and Vegas, they'd inevitably see the 155 mph vehicles zoom past them in the robo car lane, and every time they'd think, "I need to buy a Tesla."
They'd switch to tunneling when going under private land on either end, maybe under a couple towns in the middle, and through the mountain range at the edge of LA.
Musk's primary headaches are in LA, not NYC, and his plans seem mostly focused on that region. Not much subway in LA.
In the current design for Vegas, no, not at all. In some of his other proposals, private cars are allowed as long as they install his control system.
That is not the smartest use of these tunnels
So privately owned cars can't use the tunnels ?
You haven't been to NYC, I guess. The subways moved over 5m people…a day, before Covid made everyone (too) scared to travel. Even if robotaxis eliminated the endless search for parking, there are not enough roads and bridges to move everyone to specific destinations, and certainly not enough underground spaces (subways run under each other already), and it's way to expensive to create tunnels for a handful of users. No, Musk's Las Vegas tunnels are a speedway fun ride for a minority of Tesla users, albeit not always owners.
No. Musk intends to make Tesla owners (and owner-drivers of any vehicle) obsolete. When Teslas are fully autonomous they will be priced much higher than currently because they will be able to earn money as robotaxis. That also means they will be available to everyone conveniently through an app like Uber. Vehicles will be cheaper to use but more expensive to own. People will have little reason as consumers to own them, it will be a business. Mass Transit as people are familiar with it is not the way of the future, it’s a relic of the 20th century. It wont be able to compete with AEVs and Loop for new construction. It will survive and persist when integrated within Apps that mostly direct AEVs. Vegas will be the showcase to explain to people who just can’t get the concept why this will be how the entire world gets around by the late 21st century,
All the vehicles in the Loop system are networked autonomous vehicles. The system can merge them into a 10m slot at 200kph easily since it precisely controls all the traffic.
When you precisely control all the traffic there are all sorts of odd seeming behaviors that are possible. For example two busy streams of traffic at an intersection could pass through each other at high speed without stopping very safely. It’s a consequence of the system knowing/controlling the exact location and speed of every vehicle.
Loop isn’t a subway. It’s an express path for autonomous battery electric vehicles. Yes it will have higher capacity, easier access vehicles. The point is that it’s AEVs can also travel on the street. Unlike subway cars which are extremely expensive and locked-in designs, the AEVs in Loop will be mass produced and iteratively improved – the same AEVs built to be robotaxis on streets.
Assuming there are many stations along the route, when entering how do you merge if cars in the tunnel are going 150 mph ?
Ride on top PRT (of which this is a reinvention) always encounter the problem that the cars cannot travel up and down vertically very well (except with expensive elevators). Pods gotta hang:
http://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/2008/11/pods-just-gotta-hang.html?m=1
Silicon Valley is probably THE CITY for boring company loops. People just loop from one company to the next, and then back… And once you see past all the drug use and servility, it is all so very boring.
Exactly. Musk's Boring tunnels are for elite Tesla owners (still mostly a $100,000+ car after extras). And not very many of them.
Using traffic congestion in cities like New York or L.A. as justification for Boring tunnels is very misleading. The bulk of the time spent is not between cities, but in them, getting to the launch and exit depots. And then waiting in line to get into and out of the tunnel system, especially if it becomes popular (and if it doesn't then why bother doing this at all?).
Musk hates mass transit; no wonder, he is a car builder. But mass transit, even in L.A., and certainly in NYC, is the way of the future and present. The rest is just fun and games for Vegas rich people.
Bigger tunnels defeats the entire speed/cost advantage. The reason they are cheaper and faster to build is BECAUSE they are smaller.
The Boring Company needs to also build machines for bigger diameter tunnels. NYC has a need for several railroad tunnels. One from New Jersey to NYC. Rail links from Penn Station and Grand Central to lower Manhattan would also be nice.
Instead of staying fixed on electric Tesla cars to move in these narrow tunnels, they should design entirely new low head metro lines with doors opening directly to all the rows of seats to substantially increase traffic volume capacity.