Elon Musk always aims high. With Tesla, the serial founder has given the auto industry a shock; SpaceX’s spaceships bring people and material to the International Space Station (ISS). And in the underground of Las Vegas, The Boring Company (TBC), founded by Musk, is drilling a tunnel system that will use self-driving Teslas to connect the famous “Strip” with the city center and the airport.

Insane? Vegas! Sounds crazy. But the “Las Vegas Loop” is more than the pipe dream of an eccentric billionaire, it is a concrete infrastructure project. A first section is to be opened in the spring 2021: Two tunnels that connect the city’s “Las Vegas Convention Center” (LVCC) with a 980 Millions of US dollars will be connected to the extension building west of the old exhibition center. And that’s just the beginning.

In May 2019 the Las decided Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) opposed conventional rail transport and gave the green light for the round 52 Million US dollars (42 million euros) expensive tunnel project. The LVCVA had taken quite a risk: TBC has nothing to show apart from a 1.8-kilometer test tunnel in a suburb of Los Angeles. A comparable project in Chicago is encountering resistance from residents and local politicians, while others are only in the preliminary planning stage. Las Vegas is more open to crazy projects.

The tunnel connects the old with the new exhibition center. Below the planned route to the Hotel Encore.

(Image: Clark County)

TBC has set itself the goal – also with regard to Musk’s Hyperloop project to improve the technology of the tunneling machines so that tunnels can be built faster and more automatically than before. Beat the snail: Faster than a snail, is the motto. Because Teslas are used with autopilot, TBC can reduce the tunnel diameter from 8.5 to a good 4 meters, which saves time and money. To connect the LVCC, the company is building the tunnels, including the stations and operating technology, and will also be responsible for driving operations. The company is already looking for driving and operating personnel on its website.

First drilling At the 15. November 2019 the first excavators and the big drilling machine arrived. The first tube was drilled three months later, and the second tube was completed in mid-May 2020. The distance of about 1.3 kilometers leads from the east entrance of the “South Hall” under the main hall and the adjacent Paradise Road and ends at an above-ground station west of the new hall. The core of the facility is the underground “train station” in front of the main hall, which is about to be completed.

Almost finished: The underground train station under the old exhibition center.

The west hall with 55. 700 square meters of exhibition space and the new transport system should originally be put into operation at CES 2021. The work is as good as complete, but the CES is only taking place virtually due to the corona pandemic. “The West Hall was finished on schedule, but when it can be officially opened is uncertain in view of the pandemic,” said a spokeswoman for the LVCVA. When major trade fairs – the previous CES came in January 2020 around 170. Visitors – can take place again is uncertain.

It is also open whether the system has the desired capacity of up to 4400 passengers per hour. The fair visitors are to be driven through the tunnels in semi-autonomous Teslas with up to 250 km / h. Initially, Model 3 and Model X are used with a safety driver. “We made it a lot simpler,” Musk explains on Twitter. “At the moment there are basically only Teslas in a tunnel, which is much more profound than it sounds.” At the above or below ground “stations” the cars let the passengers out and pick up new ones in order to then thread themselves back into the tunnel traffic.