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Transportation

Las Vegas Approves The Boring Company's Underground Loop (cnet.com) 81

Posted by EditorDavid from the viva-Las-Vegas dept.
The Boring Company's tunnel project in Chicago is "in doubt" (according to the Chicago Tribune), while a project connecting Washington to Baltimore "is waylaid in the environmental-review process."

But it looks like Las Vegas will officially get a tunnel from Elon Musk, CNET reports, "perhaps within this year." The billionaire's Boring Company on Tuesday got the approval from the 14-member board of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) to build and operate an underground loop that would carry people in autonomous electric vehicles at the city's convention center.

Musk has responded to the approval in a tweet, saying he'll make the tunnel "operational by end of year," even though the convention center's expansion won't be done until 2021, according to LVCVA's release... A LVCVA spokeswoman said in an email that the underground loop will be ready in 2021 if the contract with the Boring company is approved at LVCVA's board meeting on June 11.
The Las Vegas Sun has more details, pointing out that travellers would be carried in electric vehicles moving through two parallel tunnels, one running in each direction. And that fleet of electric vehicles "could include Tesla's Model X and Model 3 and a vehicle with capacity for about 16 people â" all manufactured by Musk. All the vehicles would be fully autonomous, meaning they won't have backup drivers, and would move at speeds of up to 50 mph."

The mayor of Las Vegas, also a member of the board, actually voted against the tunnel, calling the Boring Company "exploratory at this time" and warning that "we are considering handing over the reins of our most important industry."
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Las Vegas Approves The Boring Company's Underground Loop More

Las Vegas Approves The Boring Company's Underground Loop

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  • what? this is impossible (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i was assured 3d printers changed the game
    oh well
    we are still on track for colonizing mars right

  • Performance guarantees? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Saturday March 16, 2019 @02:48PM (#58284552)

    If I was on the board, I would insist on some timely delivery/end performance guarantees from Musk. Maybe backed by some kind of bond/at risk money. After all, Musk has a history of aggressive timeline announcements. While it may be ok to overstate how fast and how far things will go when developing a new technology, this is something they'll be relying on.

    • Are bad [youtube.com] The only reason to approve a loop would be as a tourist attraction.

      • Just wanted to let you know that the person who made that was so stupid and uninformed, I worry about you being able to die your own shoes or go outside in a rainstorm without drowning since you felt it should be shared... hope you are OK and you recover high mental functions soon!

    • this is something they'll be relying on.

      They are not relying on it. There are already ground-level shuttles between the convention centers in Las Vegas. The Loop will supplement that, not replace it. It will be faster, more convenient, and relieve congestion, so it is a no-brainer. They have nothing to lose by approving it.

      The mayor is just pissed because he was hoping to get a backhander or campaign donation. LV's municipal government has near Louisiana levels of corruption.

    • While it may be ok to overstate how fast and how far things will go when developing a new technology, this is something they'll be relying on.

      It doesn't sound like there's much new tech to develop, just some dispatch software. Musk delivered the South Australia battery in 63 days:

      https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]

      It sounds like he could be more than a year late and still be done before the convention center opens, but it's not just you and I that know that projects delivered late reflect poorly on the busi

      • It doesn't sound like there's much new tech to develop, just some dispatch software

        The only example of the boring company we have, in LA, is behind schedule, and unable to deliver as promised so far. I would worry about it if I was in Las Vegas. The South Australia battery was a large run of something that had been in production (batteries) for quite a while, and by Tesla specifically in addition to generally in the world .

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Seems fairly low risk really. It's only a mile long, the tech is old and well established. I kinda wonder why Musk is even interested... Maybe as a way to refine a few tunnel building techniques at his startup.

  • rather stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday March 16, 2019 @02:51PM (#58284564)

    Here in Chicago we already have vehicles in underground tunnels with a side going each way. They are electric trains. We also have some up in the air on elevated tracks.

    After going to the trouble to make tunnels, why not be smart and put a train in them, that's much more efficient than storing electric power in batteries for use later!

    Sure, vehicles might be used at the train stations to go to separate destinations, but that's the same thing that could be done in any city... maybe autonomous taxies to/from bus and train stop to homes could be market for Musk.

    Reinventing things badly seems silly. Put trains in tunnels!

    • Nobody likes waiting for trains. So far there hasn't been a better option but that doesn't mean you should avoid better options when they're available.

      Model 3's don't seem likely, at least long term - "and a vehicle with capacity for about 16 people" as TFS says.

      Effectively they're describing autonomous short buses, presumably with constant availability.

    • Trains require bigger tunnels, much bigger stations, are slower, and are less responsive to variable passenger flows.

      Pods are much cheaper, faster, and more convenient. That is the whole point of the Hyperloop.

      Doubling down on the defects of trains, instead of fixing them, makes no sense.

      • Except now that the LA tunnel is drilled, hasn’t Musk walked back the promise of pods there and gone back to his original intent of modified Teslas being the sole vehicle in the tunnel? So do we know he’ll stick with the plan in Vegas?

        Cars versus trains is a different argument than people pods versus trains.

        • Except now that the LA tunnel is drilled, hasnâ(TM)t Musk walked back the promise of pods there and gone back to his original intent of modified Teslas>

          What he said that was that pods would be used by general transit but that Tesla cars could ALSO be slotted in to drive the tunnels as well (autonomously).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kiviQr ( 3443687 )
      OHare - downtown 40 min on CTA or depending on traffic 25min to 1.5h. It would help downtown/businesses to grow if you could get from Midway to OHare in 10 min.

      • 2nd express set of rails for Blue Line has long been discussed, would be 20 minute trip. Cost a bundle of course. Less than a Musk tunnel with autonomous cars however.

    • Re:rather stupid (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Saturday March 16, 2019 @04:00PM (#58284874)

      >After going to the trouble to make tunnels, why not be smart and put a train in them, that's much more efficient than storing electric power in batteries for use later!

      There's also another compelling alternative, if you want the responsiveness of pods/minibusses, without the cost of batteries to power them: streetcars. Run power lines along the ceiling to power the pods, and install (retractable) power brushes in the cars. Then you don't have to build infrastructure capable of handling the massive weight of a train, and don't need batteries in your cars, though small batteries to allow them to operate independently at the stations might be both safer and more cost effective.

      One of the nice things about autonomous pods is that it's relatively trivial to assemble them into trains on the fly. Either via actual hitches, or just operating them bumper-to-bumper to maintain a continuous slipstream. Much of the "science fiction" promise of how autonomous vehicles will vastly improve traffic flow and efficiency can actually be delivered in a system where one operator gets to set the rules for all the cars.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by idji ( 984038 )
      No-one uses the Las Vegas Monorail anyway, why would they use the Boring Tunnel?

      • No-one uses the Las Vegas Monorail anyway, why would they use the Boring Tunnel?

        The reason few people use the Monorail is that it is utterly useless. Every stop it makes takes around ten minutes of winding through a casino and shops to get in or out of it (except I think for one entry point on the strip itself). So you are talking 20 minutes of dead time, at least, trying to get on or off. You are better off getting an Uber, or in lots of cases just walking.

        By contrast, the tunnel they are talking about

      • Apparently you weren't at this last CES... It was nearly always packed. Best way to get from the Convention center to the Venetian exhibits!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This thing is only a mile long. It's basically what they have to shuttle people between airport terminals.

    • Well he's got to do something with the massive number of Model 3s sitting around being charged with diesel generators [thetruthaboutcars.com]. Might as well put them in a tunnel!

  • Don’t quite understand the mayor’s sta (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday March 16, 2019 @02:57PM (#58284580)

    When she says "we are considering handing over the reins of our most important industry" - how is this giving control of the casino industry to Musk? Or does she actually consider tunneling to be Las Vegas’ most important industry?

  • Here's to hoping that the mayor of Vegas isn't hindering Tesla's contract to give it to one of his buddies instead.

  • Time to Sing the Monorail Song? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by careysub ( 976506 ) on Saturday March 16, 2019 @03:26PM (#58284702)

    Las Vegas currently has a monorail that sort-of connects the major resorts on the east side of the Strip. It started off pretty well in ridership, 7.9 million in 2007, but with the Crash of 2008 ridership collapsed, understandably so, but after the Great Recession ended ridership never recovered. In recent years the ridership has remained stuck in the mid 4 millions (it was originally projected to have 19-20 million riders).

    I say "sort-of connected" because does not actually attach or enter resort complex but is outside, separated and behind them, out of view. In one part it is quite far from the closest resorts. If the monorail had been integrated into the resort complexes, so that it could serve as focal point, and provide a "theme ride" type atmosphere, like the Disneyland monorail, then it might have a lot more riders. They probably could boost ridership considerably if they built an extension to the airport that is right next to it, but the bus, limo and cab companies would not have it.

    All this is background to this new tunnel scheme. Given that they already have a mass transit system centrally located in what is really a very small city core, which they fail to exploit effectively, what possible role would a new tunnel system provide? This proposed phase just provides a ride from one end of the convention complex to the other, in your car, sort of like what, I don't know, a short road might do, so it is a basically an underground ride attraction for the convention center.

    But wait! There's more! It could be extended to go along the Las Vega Strip, along the same route as the monorail, but underground! That is to say, even more out of view than the current underutilized mass transit system following the same route. The conceptual map shows the tunnel connecting to the airport, which has already been repeatedly vetoed for the monorail.

    Anyone here want to invest in this project? Hello? Anybody?

    Full disclosure - I have ridden on the monorail, and I liked it. I would have liked it a lot more if I didn't have to get off just outside the airport, and wait to board a bus to take me inside the fence to the terminal.

    • I rode the monorail once. Kind of a useless routing for me, as I usually stay on the west side of the strip. I have to think that making the monorail viable would do wonders for traffic in the area, but Vegas politics don’t really go that direction.

    • The really weird thing about the Vegas Monorail is why it doesn't go to the airport. The runway and the Strip are close to each other but you're stuck going the long way around on a shuttle bus, taxi,...

    • If the existing monorail just went to the goddamned airport, about another mile away, people might actually ride it.

    • An insightful comment, and there is yet another oddity in the rationale behind the loop. The loop as I understand it is for cars, but how would that work? The monorail, whatever shortcomings it may have in its implementation, is made to move people. You can walk on and walk off at will with no other concerns. But what are you going to do with your car after you exit the loop? Why drive it such a short distance? If you are going somewhere near the end of the line, where will you park your car at the oth

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vix86 ( 592763 )

      During my one trip to LV a few years ago, I saw the rail from the ground. Me and my brother considered using the monorail at one point to get from one part of the strip to the other, but its not easy to find when you are going from the main street of the strip, into a casino, to the monorail. The signage for it was horrible, so I think the casino's just got way too caught up on trying to keep people from using it. In the end we just Uber-ed or walked.

  • Boondoggle.

    You can do it. Say it! SAY IT!

  • Supplied by One-Armed-Bandits at every seat

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