Boring Company Speeds Up Tunneling. Vegas Loop Tunnels Could Finish in 2025

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The Boring Company is deploying the PruFrock 3 tunneling machine at Tesla Gigatexas. The PruFrock 3 machine will be able to dig continuously. It will only need to stop to change out teeth and other parts as they wear out. The Boring Revolution youtube has analyzed the actual tunneling rates on actual real world projects and the older Boring Company machines were getting about 46 meters per day. He now believes the new machine will be able to achieve 80-100 meters per day. This could be an improved assessment of capabilities estimated by Boring Revolution 8 months ago.

The Boring Company states that Prufrock 2 has the potential to dig up to 1,600 meters (1 mile) per week. The tunneling company aims to increase Prufrock 2’s performance by 7-fold with Prufrock 3. The tunneling goals of Boring Company are for hypothetical perfect conditions and softer soils that would permit easier operations.

Seven Boring Company tunnels have been completed in Las Vegas.

Boring Company Plans to Increase Tunneling Speed

Tripling TBM Power: increase power while improving cooling systems (more power = more speed)

Continuous Mining: installing the tunnel’s precast segments simultaneously with mining eliminates the need to stop the TBM every five feet (these stoppages are standard on soft-soil TBMs)

Surface Launch and Porpoising: Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and mines within 48 hours

Eliminating Rail: utilizing rubber-wheeled segment trucks instead of traditional rail-based locomotives eliminates the time-consuming rail installation and maintenance

Decrease Tunneling Cost
Vertical Integration: producing TBMs, construction vehicles, and precast concrete lining in-house allowing rapid iteration

Tunnel Size Reduction & Standardization: reducing the tunnel diameter to 12 feet (30% – 60% reduction), maintaining the same tunnel diameter for all projects in order to avoid “reinventing the wheel” each time TBC designs a project and construction process

Repurposing Dirt: developing alternative methods of excavated tunnel dirt reuse, including repurposing the muck as bricks and pavers for housing projects and embankment beautification

All-Electric Approach: tunnel construction with all-electric tunneling equipment, liner truck included; results in a cleaner tunnel with simpler ventilation requirements due to the lack of diesel fumes

Vegas Loop

The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is an underground transportation system that’s designed to transport over 90,000 passengers per hour. The loop will run through Downtown Las Vegas and Henderson, connecting to attractions like McCarran International Airport, UNLV, and Allegiant Stadium.

The first Encore tunnel linking the resort and the convention center is scheduled to open within the first few months of 2024.

The Encore station is being constructed at the same time as the Westgate station. When the two are open, there will be three offshoot tunnels with the Resorts World station, which opened last summer.

Crews will go back in and add one more tunnel for each of the three resorts, to allow for simultaneous trips between the resorts and the convention center at the same time.

There are issues with the chemicals used in the grout for the walls of the tunnels. There is more than the speed of tunneling impacting the completion of the new tunnels.

Faster tunneling could see that part of the work completed as soon as 2025. However, building the insides of the tunnels and the stations could take until around 2027 to complete. There should be significant numbers of stations completing in Vegas in 2025.

The amount of tunnels for the Vegas Loop project will be more than the 8 lanes of the 3.5 mile long Big Dig tunnel in Boston. The Big Dig took from 1991 to 2006. It was planned to complete in 1998.

7 thoughts on “Boring Company Speeds Up Tunneling. Vegas Loop Tunnels Could Finish in 2025”

  2. Wider tunnels are needed for trains. The Boring Company machines are only useful for small utility tunnels.

  3. Musk is promising increasingly unlikely to impossible things. Frankly, he may be so over-extended with all his companies that he’s failing at basic math. 90,000 people transported (where to where?) per HOUR? In individual Teslas? Not possible.
    “Tunnel Size Reduction & Standardization: reducing the tunnel diameter to 12 feet (30% – 60% reduction)”
    It’ll be very hard though not impossible to make a train that’s less than 12′ wide, and a subway train is what one needs to even come close to moving 90,000 people/hour, given time-sapping dwell times (ask NYC’s MTA about that). And I don’t see any mention of even the original electric buses, let alone tracks and trains.
    At this rate, the Vegas tunnel system will remain what it is today: a quirky chauffeur-driven expensive tourist slow ride through flashing psychedelic and semi-dangerous tunnels in Tesla cars.

  4. I wonder if there are any more projects in development.

    In theory, they could develop privately owned toll tunnels, go straight to consumers to solve congestion that cities and states have given up on. Similar to the SpaceX business model of delivering cell service directly to consumers to keep their launch frequency high.

    • Not a bad idea, but lengthy, Japan & sane Korea are closer.

      Lower hanging fruit is local, heavily constrained cities like Miami and the Florida keys.

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