Elon Musk’s The Boring Company Seeks to Double the Size of the Vegas Loop
March 29, 2023
6 years ago, Elon Musk made the decision that he was fed up with traffic jams and made the decision to team up with The Boring Company to design and produce a tunnel in Las Vegas that would end them.
What’s the problem?
The problem arises as this revolutionary initiative seems to be underperforming and is already experiencing its first bottlenecks. The so-called Vegas Loop is a network of tunnels designed to avoid traffic jams. It is located in Las Vegas and was inaugurated in 2021. Until then it had been working properly. In early 2022, CES, the world’s most important technology fair, was held in the Texas city.
The Vegas Loop has a distance of just over 3 kilometers, which is planned to be extended to 21, and connects the most important convention and exhibition centers in Las Vegas. Including the one where CES was to be held. The event was the first litmus test of Elon Musk’s plan. However, the results were not as expected. In fact, while it is true that it was not a huge traffic jam, it is also true that the hold-ups were not completely eliminated. As Musk himself had stated would happen.
The Vegas Loop
The Boring Company made sure to continue using 70 Tesla cars to meet the high demand. Which caused the tour duration to double. In addition, the plan is set up for autonomous cars traveling at a higher average speed than recent ones. Reason why the company attributes part of the shortcomings to this situation.
However, this is not the main complaint of the Vegas Loop users, who complain that the tunnel is rather narrow and there is only one lane. This, according to motorists, makes it difficult to cross the tunnel in case of misfortune or unforeseen circumstances. In addition, questions also remain about what happens if a car has a breakdown and starts smoking or there is a fire start. Although in relation to this, the company has made sure that the tunnel has some emergency exits and a fire stability protocol.
What’s going on? Musk’s original initiative envisioned autonomous vehicles capable of traveling at high speeds. In practice and for the time being, the drivers are human, which requires minimizing speeds to reduce hazards. Without a higher speed per route, The Boring Company can only reach 4,400 passengers/hour by putting more and more cars in the tunnel. However, the infrastructure, as Musk discovered that 2016 afternoon in his car, has a limit. None of this has stopped the metropolis Las Vegas from taking an even greater interest in the project. The small line that records the LVCC cost $50 million, a fairly low price for any underground infrastructure.
Conclusion
The initiative is to extend The Loop to the entire city, creating a kind of subway network for cars. In October, the city council approved the expansion of the plan. It will increase from the recent 3 stations to 51 and from the current 2.7 kilometers to 46. Connecting The Strip, the American football stadium, and occasionally the airport. The Loop is still an embryonic plan. It has room to be optimized. It looks no more than an underground highway well beyond the maximum capacities of other, less state-of-the-art infrastructure (e.g., the Los Angeles subway moves 14,000 people per hour).
