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Las Vegas Approves The Boring Company's Underground Loop (cnet.com)
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."
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."
This is the most Boring news on Slashdot today.
I mean, it is news. You don't HAVE to scream and shout about Elon Musk, do you? Do we really have to do the entire song and dance all over again, because Musk? Musky Musk Musk, the Muskinator? Pass the Musky Joint?
Are we trying to save the children or what? It's like a cave full of PEDOS in here!
I dig this boring company, it's like Elon Musk is both deep and incredibly boring at the same time. Even more impress is his goals, to make tunnels for electric cars that can drive faster than polluting cars and drive underground because they don't dump out tons of CO2 and other NOx pollutants.
Funding secured, my man
i was assured 3d printers changed the game
oh well
we are still on track for colonizing mars right
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.
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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!
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?
#DeleteChrome
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/...
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 business.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's to hoping that the mayor of Vegas isn't hindering Tesla's contract to give it to one of his buddies instead.
"projects delivered late reflect poorly on the business." - Unless they're good enough for people to forget they came late, in the final tally.
The tech involved is not much innovative at all here. It is all well known components. You could say it is 'boring' tech. (har har).
But it is basically a tunnel which they can do. With electric cars on a fixed route (which they can do). Which their driver assist software on a known route with no cars changing lanes the software should handle with ease. There are pretty much only possibly items in front of the car (another car).
The tricky part will be people queuing and breakdowns. Both are very manageable.
This pretty much does seem like a no brainier.
I wouldnâ(TM)t expect a slashdot peon to understand business.
Conferences are the most important industry for Vegas. 25-50k well paid business people with both personal and expense account money to burn come here weekly. They not only gamble and stay in hotels, they pay local residents to drive busses and private shuttles around (and those vehicles and all their supporting infrastructure) are indirectly paid for here by , they pay locals for all the taxis / Uber required, they load up government with airport and hotel taxes, I could go on and on. Your random ass vacation to Vegas where you coupon stack and set a hard hundred dollar gambling limit does nothing.
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
She obviously considers conventions to be Las Vegas' most important industry, which seems plausible. Saying that this gives control over them is obviously hyperbole though.
Oh shutup, all of you.
A lot of slashdot users have this issue. It isn't just iggy.
I'll name the ones Ive seen do it frequently:
APK, iggy, Bill, c6gunner, syndon, dns-n-bind, Kendall, windbourne, REI.
Tbh there are only a couple people on slashdot who are actually nice people: this list includes but not limited to:
Drinkypoo, AmiMojo(I know you guys hate her but she always talks in a reasonable way and never insults anyone), bill_mc, Actually I do RTFA, 93 escort wagon, rosco, sometimes the binary guy.
There are others but those are the ones I see moving the discussions forward and talking calmly about issues.
Boondoggle.
You can do it. Say it! SAY IT!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Supplied by One-Armed-Bandits at every seat
"A lot of slashdot users have this issue. It isn't just iggy." - True. I try to get each individual to acknowledge it about themselves, see if they can change themselves for the better - their own benefit, really. But also ours too.
The lies cannot be allowed to drown out the facts without someone at least pointing it out, every time, indefatigably. I'm just one person attempting it, I hope others fact-check these constant "Assertionists" and moderate them accordingly.
So far, no luck. Lies are more popular on slashdot than truth and there's really no groundswell to push back on that anymore if ever there was. Just a few holdouts.
We already have underground electric cars that drive in loops...its called the mother fuckin subway.
He says it's bullshit!
I quite agree with him. A previous video, that's also well argued.
He has so many good ideas and execution, why does he go for this bullshit that just tarnishes his image? It's like the real Mr. Tesla, genius, who later married a pigeon and thought he was talking to aliens while promising a death ray.
Repeating her dumb Fox News trope-retard self for nobody's benefit, indefinitely...
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 having the Boring company build is made for ease of use and access. You get in on one side, you go to the other side of the convention center that would take 15-20 minutes of walking to reach, it's a huge time savings even with a few minutes to do down to the entry point.
If they did the same tunnel under the strip with entrances/exits right on the street, it would be a massive hit (traffic up and down the strip is almost always slow and fairly horrible, garages also are a long way away from things if you bring your own car).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are lots of auto drive trains at airport
mmmm meatball sub...
Oh wow.
You can say bad words!
I am SO impressed!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
But the subway smells like pee...
Drinkypoo and Amimojo are trolls. I dont care how nicely Marxist fuckwits spew their murderous agenda. It is still a murderous Marxist agenda.
Yeah, i just love that $30 taxi ride where the driver taxes you all the way around the strip along the interstate. The fucking airport backs up to the strip. You could be there in 60 seconds.
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 .
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