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Transportation Businesses United States Technology

Elon Musk's Boring Company Wins Contract To Build Las Vegas Tunnel (wired.com) 116

Elon Musk's Boring Company now has a paying customer. "Late Wednesday, the board of directors of the Las Vegas Conventions and Visitors Authority voted to grant a $48,675,000 contract to the Boring Company to build a 0.83-mile, three-station version of the company's Loop mass-transit system inside of Vegas' sprawling, revamped convention center, which is currently under construction," reports Wired. From the report: As previously outlined by BoCo, the Loop system is made up of 8- to 16-passenger battery-powered autonomous electric vehicles, built to shoot people from station to station at speeds of up to 150 mph. This Las Vegas system is slated to transport at least 4,400 passengers per hour between the center's new exhibit and south halls, about a 20-minute walk by foot. The Boring Company has also pledged to build an escalator or elevator system for each of the three stations, pedestrian entrances and exits, tunnel lighting, power and video surveillance systems, a control room, and cell phone, Wi-Fi, intercom, and ventilation systems. The convention center hopes to time the opening of the Loop with the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman was the only board member to vote against granting the Boring Company its bid. During the bidding process, Goodman had asked fellow board members to consider a more expensive proposal from another company, Doppelmayr. "Doppelmayr has been in existence for 125 years," Goodman wrote in a letter, according to the Las Vegas Sun. "They already have projects here that are operating successfully. The Boring Co. is 3 years old and has yet to deliver a final package on anything." Goodman's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Elon Musk's Boring Company Wins Contract To Build Las Vegas Tunnel

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  • 4,400 passengers an hour works out to one and two-ninths of a person per second, and I don't think we should be sending two-ninths of a person at such high speeds, even at 'short' distances.
    • Reduces the need for refunds.
    • 2/9ths of one person could very well be on the train at that second, while the other 7/9th is still boarding the train, while it's stationary at the platform. No proportion of a person should be boarding moving trains, especially at those speeds!

      • Schrodinger's Passengers. They neither are nor are not until the doors on the train open at the destination.

        It's amazing. More than $48 million for this thing. I'm not sure whether this is better or worse than the Detroit Mugger Mover [wikipedia.org] that sucked a lot of taxpayer dollars out of the rest of the state of Michigan to subsidize Detroit's mass transit. The latest numbers I saw had a cost of $4.26 per passenger, with the price to ride just $0.75.

    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      "4,400 passengers an hour ..."

      Perhaps you missed this tidbit: "autonomous electric vehicles, built to shoot people..." It's one solution to overpopulation, but it's surprising it's not a military contract.
  • The summary leaves out this gem:

    Tunnel engineering experts have cast doubt on the Boring Company’s ambitious plans. Musk, who has made destroying traffic congestion one of his (many) missions, aims to speed up tunnel boring by a factor of 10 and reduce costs by a factor of 15

    Magic pixie dust not included, but for a small additional fee can be delivered on demand in a fully self-driving $35,000 Model 3.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Thursday May 23, 2019 @08:11PM (#58645218)

      Musk, who has made destroying traffic congestion one of his (many) missions, aims to speed up tunnel boring by a factor of 10 and reduce costs by a factor of 15

      Magic pixie dust not included, but for a small additional fee can be delivered on demand in a fully self-driving $35,000 Model 3.

      They're boring this tunnel for $48 million. It should be fairly obvious neither of those factors applies yet. It's a goal, not an instantly summoned reality, springing fully formed from the forehead of Musk. Why do his detractors always attribute Zeus-like powers to him, then act disappointed when he's not a god? Why has ambition become a dirty word? How do you expect anything to improve unless there's a goal? What's wrong with trying to IMPROVE SHIT that you hate it so much?

      • They're boring this tunnel for $48 million. It should be fairly obvious neither of those factors applies yet.

        As compared to what? That $48MM bid clearly came in low enough that Vegas spurned the other company that's actually been in business for 100+ years and actually has proven track record of successfully doing this sort of project.

        • As compared to what? That $48MM bid clearly came in low enough that Vegas spurned the other company that's actually been in business for 100+ years and actually has proven track record of successfully doing this sort of project.

          Thing is in civil engineering it's never a bad idea go go for the lowest bidder rather than the company who provably knows what they're doing. Nothing ever went wrong doing that.

    • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Thursday May 23, 2019 @08:37PM (#58645302)

      I would suggest looking into some trade rags for quotes from TBM manufacturers, talking about the benefits of exactly what Musk mentioned when he started The Boring Company. Higher power motors, higher voltages, and the real gem: deep learning AI’s to work with geological data in real time. I almost killed my keyboard spitting out my coffee.

      Just power and more digital control is expected to help speed things up by as much as 3x; advanced materials could potentially double from there. Beyond that, maintenance and geology-specific wear-optimized control algorithms are low hanging fruit.

      The difference between Musk and other boring manufacturers is that the others see greater potential in larger diameter bores rather than faster per-mile tunneling. Jury is still out on that one, but I think it is a case of everybody can win.

  • Good practice. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:38PM (#58644854)

    I can't say I disagree with the lone holdout - this is going to be a transformative, leap of faith moment for Boring. Can they go from proof-of-concept to the real thing, without it becoming a disaster.

    But what is Vegas for, if not a spectacle? Worst-case scenario they probably at least have the tunnels dug for someone else to come and make work properly, and much of the money left still unpaid.

    And a great chance for Boring to come up and face real challenges. You know Musk has got to be eyeing them for offworld purposes. If they can make it work, without real problems developing down the line, then they're in a much stronger position to dig Mars colony-tunnels. An airtight subway tunnel would make a heck of a safe and predictable habitat for early development, and if lava tubes and chambers on Mars and the moon got anywhere near as enormous as we have reason to believe they might have, then there's a ready-made massive open areas underground just waiting for us to come reinforce and seal them once we're ready. Made all the more appealing by a smooth, efficient tunnel network connecting key spots underground and on the surface.

    • it's suspiciously like this [youtube.com].

      Musk has dug one very small, very useless tunnel. And it's not like digging tunnels for transportation is anything new. I don't see anything to indicate he's got some new tech. Are there patents? Trade secrets? There's better posts on old threads about Boring but the long and short is it's pretty clear he can't do anything but dig a small tunnel.

      This will be a boondogle, which in better economic times we'd ignore but the economy sucks for everyone but the top 20%, and tho
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Musk has dug one very small, very useless tunnel.

        He also dug it at a slower rate and higher cost than the company that previously used the exact same machine digging in much harder ground.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        This will be a boondogle, which in better economic times we'd ignore but the economy sucks for everyone but the top 20%, and those guys aren't going to pay for this, it'll come out of the budgets for services to the bottom 20% like it always does...

        Except that nothing about this is a boondoggle because they don't receive any money from the get go.

        Quoting the fucking article:

        According to the contract, the company would receive just over half of its payment after construction is completed, 70 percent after testing and commissioning, and the full payment only after it demonstrates it can daily move at least 4,400 people each hour.

        On top of that they have to take out a payment recovery bond which will payback the convention center if they don't complete the project AND they will have to spend $1.6M to close and secure any work they've done. This is almost exactly like the Australia grid battery system bet that Tesla made over a year ago.

    • It's will be a good place for homeless people to shit, shoot up, and fuck. Source: I like to do those things.
  • Crazy people digging holes in the desert...

    Wait, this isn't a return to the days of "the boys" running Vegas is it?

  • by mjperson ( 160131 ) <mjperson@mit.edu> on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:56PM (#58644934)

    It's Vegas! You are *supposed* to gamble on untested infrastructure.

  • Monorail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday May 23, 2019 @08:49PM (#58645344)
    Las Vegas, could you PLEASE connect the monorail to the airport?
  • They can probably sneeze during this project and spend more than 48 million wiping their noses. Musk apparently underbid to get the contract. We shall see the result.
  • This seems way too short - 0.83m is next to nothing. Hell, most Europeans walk that far to get to the train station every morning (I do - and it takes me 15-20 minutes).

    They're proposing 3 stations on that distance, so let's say the third station is roughly in the middle. That means you've got 0.4 miles to accelerate and to decelerate. You're going to need to recover as much of the acceleration energy in the deceleration because you're going to have to do it all over again in a moment to go the second half

    • by Anonymous Coward

      imo it's just an exhibit. It isn't really that useful but it's cool and since it's going to be built by a tech darling people at CES will all want to take a ride. If there's stuff on either end, food courts, exhibits that have entrance fees etc, it's another opportunity to shake some more money out of everyone that goes to a convention.

      Probably why Boring company underbid too, because they both need and understand the need for publicity/advertising. The 125 yr old company is well known and already has a rep

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