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Boring Company Gets Approval to Expand Las Vegas Tunnels to 65-Mile Network:
Las Vegas city officials have approved The Boring Company's request to expand its planned network of underground tunnels. The Las Vegas Loop will now feature a total of 69 stations and 65 miles, or 104 kilometers, of tunnels.
The Boring Company tweeted the news yesterday evening, following a meeting with the Clarke County Zoning Commission yesterday morning. The Las Vegas Loop was set to feature a combined 34 miles, or 55 kilometers, of tunnels and had stations that predominantly ran along the Las Vegas Strip. The Boring Company then asked in March to expand the Las Vegas loop, with the newly approved expansion adding 18 new stations and about 25 miles, 40 kilometers, of additional tunnels, according to a tweet from the county's official account yesterday.
[...] "This is a 100% developer funded project that will reduce traffic trips from our surface street public roadways, it will provide folks another easy and convenient alternative to get around, and as part of our revenue sharing agreement with the Boring Company, they will end up paying the City for use of our right of way," Las Vegas Executive Director of Infrastructure Mike Janssen told Gizmodo in an email. "So, I am excited to see the project continue to grow."
Attorney Stephanie Allen, representing the Boring Company, told county commissioners at yesterday's meeting that the Las Vegas loop currently has 2.2 miles constructed with 5 operational stops—four at the Las Vegas Convention Center and one at Resorts World. Allen further told commissioners that 1 million passengers have ridden through the network so far, with peak ridership in one day reaching over 32,000.
"The more opportunities we have on this map, the more opportunities for success with this system," Allen said during the meeting.
(Score: 3, Troll) by driverless on Sunday May 07, @09:57PM (13 children)
The first step at this point is to stop digging.
Love, Dear Abby.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07, @10:15PM (1 child)
Nonsense! This is the kind of free market innovation that government cannot do, only pay for.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday May 08, @03:30PM
So far the tunnels are just Teslas that sit in bumper to bumper traffic. I can do that on the surface.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RamiK on Sunday May 07, @10:46PM
The trick is to keep digging until the core maglev patents expire so the straightforwards decision of "lets just go with the cheapest contractor" becomes "we have to go with Musk since he owns all the tunnels".
compiling...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Monday May 08, @01:26AM (9 children)
Digging tunnels for transport isn't a terrible idea. What could use some improvements is the vehicle system used in those tunnels. Like, maybe instead of having individual Tesla cars which can hold only about 4-5 people at most, instead have something significantly bigger that can hold 80-100 people in one. And maybe, if you've got a bunch of these going along the same route, instead of driving them individually, you hook them together to save on energy. And maybe just to make sure that these vehicles are going where they're supposed to, we should have special rails that keep the wheels where they should be.
Maybe we could call such a brand new invention that only Elon could have thought of a "subway".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @01:46AM (2 children)
The biggest improvement would be to run cargo underground. Let me ride topside and enjoy the sights!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday May 08, @03:21PM (1 child)
I'd rather travel at 700 mph than 70. Of course, if it has TSA bullshit like airlines, I won't be riding it. Air travel was mostly pleasurable before 911, I refuse to fly now.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @03:37AM
To travel across Vegas at 700 mph (a little less than 5 seconds per mile) will require some heavy acceleration and braking. Still cheaper to do it an airplane, and we can still have the view
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Monday May 08, @05:32AM
And have animated puppets singing along the route.
(Score: 1) by Se5a on Monday May 08, @05:36AM (4 children)
Rail has huge upfront costs. Maybe boring will do this later when it's more established.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday May 08, @10:47AM (3 children)
And by "huge", we mean about $2 million per mile. So total cost for the length of the Vegas Loop would be around $4.4 million. Plus we'd need a couple of rail cars to have the same total capacity as the Loop currently has, and Google tells me each of those goes for $2 million, so tack on another $4 million for that.
Total cost: $8.4 million.
For comparison, the whole Vegas Loop project cost $52.4 million, of which $2.1 million was spent on Teslas. So you'd have gone from $52 million to $61 million or so, a bit bigger but not "huge". And as an added bonus, you'd no longer have the problem of "somebody screws up in the tunnels and blocks the whole system".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday May 08, @02:48PM (2 children)
Being thick, but TFS says
> The Las Vegas Loop will now feature a total of 69 stations and 65 miles, or 104 kilometers, of tunnels.
65 miles * $2M is $130M?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday May 08, @04:40PM (1 child)
The $52 million number I was quoting was for the original 2.2 miles of Loop. Which was a tiny fraction of what the Boring Company said it was going to deliver, I might add.
So, assuming the cost of the new tunnels is similar to the cost of the old ones, that means we're talking about going from a project costing $1.65 billion to $1.7 billion.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday May 08, @05:23PM
Thanks - I was indeed being thick!