The Boring Company’s Las Vegas Loop with Tesla vehicles has officially gone into operations this week, and it already prepares to expand to the Strip and beyond.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, the Boring Company’s first full-scale loop project, has now entered operations, and it is available to the public.
Elon Musk’s startup had a small test tunnel in Los Angeles for years, but this is the first full-scale Loop commercial “Loop’” project in operation today.
It consists of 1.5 miles of tunnels with three stations. Tesla vehicles are transporting visitors to their end destination through the tunnels – avoiding surface traffic.
Yesterday was the first official day of operations – starting with the World of Concrete conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop:
Prior to the opening, they ran capacity tests and Steve Hill, LVCVA CEO and president, announced that they exceeded a capacity of 4,440 passengers per hour:
“Loop capacity testing exceeded 4,440 passengers per hour… confirmed today after review results.”
However, there are still some limitations.
When first announced, The Boring Company was talking about the vehicles moving passengers autonomously at high speeds in those tunnels.
For now, drivers are still behind the wheels and they don’t go faster than 35 mph.
But despite the limitations, the system is impressing people enough to campaign for a quick expansion throughout the rest of Las Vegas – leading to The Boring Company’s original plan for a Loop system that covers an entire city.
Late last year, the first expansion of the Las Vegas loop was approved for the first tunnel extensions to the casinos on the Strip nearest to the convention centers.
Eventually, they hope to cover the entire Strip all the way to the airport:
The Loop would enable anyone to get to virtually any hotel or casino emission free while avoiding traffic.
At capacity, it is also expected to reduce surface traffic in the city.
Now the project has received important backing from Raiders president Marc Badain who wants a station at his brand-new stadium in Las Vegas after having ridden in the new convention center Loop (via Review-Journal):
“It’s such a simple concept. It’s amazing that it hasn’t been thought of before. If you can take that many people off of the road and still get to a location in a much quicker timeframe I don’t see how it can’t be massively successful.”
A plan has been submitted to the city, and they are waiting to see where they are going to build the station at the stadium:
“As soon as they’re ready to tell us where they want to put the station, we’ll make the space for it. I think it really depends on how it connects to the rest of the Strip, to the airport and the rest of the community where they’re building the entire tunnel system.”
A timeframe for the project is not available, but The Boring Company is expected to be able to move fast as it reportedly has a new boring machine in the city.
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