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."

Comments

Time to Sing the Monorail Song?

[careysub]

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.

Re:rather stupid

[Immerman]

>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.