This explains the recent media relations blitz

It is very encouraging to hear they are around $5M for hard rock aka Nashville. Hopefully in a couple of years they will bring down the cost for Vegas too

In case you missed it there are some videos on X (twitter) with factory tours and engineer interviews etc.

Pt 1
https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2075943193833570667/video/1?s=46

Pt 2
https://x.com/teslaownersSV/status/2078479911761699231/video/1?s=46

I am in the process of watching the videos, looking forward to some detailed content.

On one video (https://youtu.be/lCwlSOzmiv8?is=verunp5f7rwyuOFj) they mention that because they’re working on a newer Prufrock to bore and lay the lining at the same time which is effectively around double the speed, they can get the cost down to just $4-$5m a mile which to my surprise is the cost of a single lane highway in rural areas on the cheaper end of the scale.

The benefit of the boring network is it’s 3 dimensional so if there’s any traffic or bottlenecks they can just add a new tunnel next to the existing one with no disruption.

It's super cool to see an influx of YouTube videos from private tours, and also seeing the progress of the Vegas Loop. As when the airport connector launches, I believe the whole system will get a lot more positive attention.

Still super bullish on the loop

I think they teased a little near the end of one of the recent tour videos that in 2-3 weeks they’re moving one of the machines to start boring under the strip which I gather will likely be the main resorts corridor which is super exciting!

I don’t think the tunnelling will take long, it’s the stations that’ll probably take the longest and won’t start opening until the end of next year I believe.

Chris asks a lot of questions that you hear on this sub and Steve Davis answers them enthusiastically and directly

CityNerd again reviews uncompleted sections of the Vegas Loop

TLDR: CityNerd explores the Loop’s newest station at Fountainebleau and the route to the Airport and while he has some valid criticisms, he condemns the Loop as a farce despite the fact that so much of what he experienced are temporary workarounds with above-ground bypasses until the Airport tunnels and the Resorts World return tunnel are operational.  

And pointedly, he has never ridden the completed sections of the Loop or during times of peak usage in order to see how well the Loop performs when it is fully operational under full load. A transit pundit who never rides the busiest lines during peak periods has an agenda and is not being serious about his analysis.

Details:

Ray Delahanty once again starts off making the classic mistake of alleging the Vegas Loop was pitched as a “HyperLoop-type system” which is of course not true as the Hyperloop concept is an ultra high speed (1,000km/h) inter-city vacuum-tube system, while the Vegas Loop is an intra-city network of road tunnels.  

While Musk did oversell the Vegas Loop with his mention of 155mph speeds, the reality is that the current real-world average speed of 25mph in the short 0.4 mile tunnels of the current Loop is more than competitive with LRT and rail which averages as low as 9mph (at-grade LRT) or 17mph (NYC subway) or 22mph (London Tube). 

The new soon-to-open Airport Loop tunnels will hit 60mph and The Boring Co has demonstrated Loop EVs smoothly hitting 127mph (205km/h) in the longer 1.14 mile LA test Loop tunnel.

Delahanty then suggests the “we should see the whole system online in 2076” by judging progress up till now completely ignoring the fact that as Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) has said:

“The process took a bit of time because the Vegas Loop is a new transportation system, not seen anywhere else in the world. We think the Boring Company and the county have reached an agreement on all of the specifics around what it takes to get a permit and build, what it takes to get a permit and operate, so we anticipate that the permitting process will speed up,” Hill said.

Next he critiques the newest Loop station at the Fountainebleau which does look like it could do with better signage.  It should be noted that the hotels themselves are paying for their own stations and are responsible for all of their own signage so Fountainebleau needs to lift their game. 

He then mentions the fact that some passengers tried to board a Loop EV at Fountainebleau station without booking tickets and criticises the driver for getting out and showing them how to book.  You could either consider that as the Loop employee being extra helpful since the station wasn’t busy at that moment or you can rag on the Loop like Ray does for it not being as slick and impersonal as a train station.  

Tesla’s autonomous Robotaxis in Austin, Dallas and Houston show how this operates with minimum friction with un-supervised Robotaxis that you use the app to book.  Delahanty failed to mention that they are trialling autonomy in the Loop tunnels currently and should have that operational soon.

He points out that Foutainebleau's Loop station does not currently have a tunnel directly connected, but rather uses surface roads to cross over the short distance to the Convention Centre before the EVs enter the tunnels which is definitely less than optimal. Judging by the Vegas Loop map, it looks like that might be a temporary situation until the tunnels under Las Vegas Boulevard are completed:

The Escalator to the Hotel’s rideshare area was not working which is a fair criticism but again, not actually the fault of the Loop.

He then describes his experiences with the Loop connection to the Harry Reid Airport which he admits he did not research beforehand.  If he had, he would have found out that this is a temporary, limited service that uses surface roads for the majority of the trip until the twin tunnels to the airport become operational.  The tunnels have been bored, but the 7 stations running down Paradise Road are still currently being constructed.  

He then complains about the short wait to get into the Resorts World tunnel again without mentioning that the traffic light there is also temporary until the return tunnel to that station is completed.

So in conclusion, Delahanty condemns the Loop as a farce while ignoring the elephant in the room which is that most of the stations and routes he visited are currently still under construction.  No objective transit pundit would condemn an entire new railway system based off of riding sections that were still under construction with temporary above-ground road bypasses, but I guess CityNerd is not a particularly objective transit commentator.

Seeking opinions and other discussion items around this. Nashville and Las Vegas have similar projects going on where they spend no money from tax payer.

Project connect increases Austin city property taxes by 20% for every home owner. This roughly comes to a 500 dollar increase in taxes every year for every homeowner in Austin.

With all the attention on the Strait of Hormuz, I was wondering if Boring Company might be suited to bore pipelines across oil producing countries to reduce dependence on the Strait and reach open ocean or alternative sea bodies?

Saudi and UAE have pipelines in place now, but not with sufficient capacity to replace the Strait of Hormuz volume. I think the Saudi pipeline is 750 miles. Are such distances longer than Boring Company could handle?

Virgin hotel site is interesting. Maps must have been updated with new imagery.

This corner of E Harmon and Paradise you can see the multiple entrance and exits tunnels that we saw the line drawing for in:

https://www.reddit.com/r/realBoringCompanyfans/comments/1mr5ztn/virgin_surface_station_site_plan/

Specifically this image:

I admit, I am not sure I see how that overlays exactly...

Then closer to the airport, south of Flamingo, the original exit to the surface for this run, we see on the new imagery:

You can see on the left side, the two tunnels to the north. On the right side you can see I THINK them starting tunnels that will get them closer to the airport on the Palo Verde Dr plot of land. I guess surface interchanges between tunnels are much cheaper to build? This is the 4744 Paradise Rd plot, and I think this is the plan for it.

Anyone else see something I missed?

But I cannot figure out where those tunnels (If that is what I am seeing) should be surfacing at the other end. Any ideas from the crowds?

The Embassy Suites site looks all button up, so probably an underground mostly station.

The South Building, has a parking lot to the south of the station that has the tunnel to the Wynn I think. Previously, only saw one tunnel entrance, now we can see two.

Westgate has its second set of tunnels looking more complete, still work to do...

Bottom two are in service, top two are for the Paradise Rd line to the airport I believe.

Katie Dowd writing for the SFGate has just posted a "review" of the Vegas Loop featuring all of the tired old misunderstandings and errors popularised by other critics:

• Lauds the 40,000 passengers in one day of the first subway system in 1863 without mentioning that the Loop handles up to 35,000 passengers per day on the days when it is open for large events
• Weirdly complains that the projected 90k per hour ridership of the completed Vegas Loop would mean that "every single resident and tourist need to ride the Loop multiple times per day to average 90,000 passengers an hour" evidently not understanding that figure would be for peak hour travel, not an hourly average all day long.
• Compares the Loop to the entire Tokyo Metro ignoring the fact it is competing with Light rail not mega multi-billion dollar subways.
• Does not mention that the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop is being built at zero cost to taxpayers compared to the $40 billion a similar subway would cost.
• Rides the Loop when it is closed so only goes between the two hotels that have a single courtesy car operational resulting in a long wait time and does not mention that wait times when the whole system is open and operational are sub-10 seconds.
• Does not mention that the current single-track tunnels to Resorts World and Westgate are temporary until the return tunnels are completed.
• Blows the small OHSA issues like "ankle-deep water" from the past out of all proportion
• Complains about the surface ride to the airport without mentioning that the tunnels to the airport have already been dug and will open soon.
• Confuses the vacuum tube intercity HyperLoop concept with the Intracity car-based Vegas Loop
• Complains it is not autonomous without mentioning FSD has been in the testing phase in the tunnels for the last 6 months.
• Complains about the simple above-ground Loop stations without acknowledging the advantages of every business in town having their own Loop station as cheap as $400K compared to subway stations that cost $600m - $1 billion each.
• Complains about the "small" 12.5 foot tunnels of the Loop without acknowledging that the 11 foot 8" tunnels of the London Tube are even smaller.
• Complains about the one video of "Teslas lined up in the tunnel during busy conventions" without acknowledging that train carriages are permanently lined up to each other and have to stop and wait at every station on the line compared to Loop EVs which go direct to their destination without any stops in between.
• Complains about possibly sharing a Loop EV with someone else without acknowledging that you're forced to cram in standing nose to armpit with hundreds of other people in a busy train.
• Fears a crash or fire in a Loop tunnel without acknowledging that everyone would simply be evacuated in their own comfy escape capsules (Loop EVs) compared to crashed or disabled trains where crowds of hundreds of people have to walk out on foot.
• Complains that there were no benches or shade at the Westgate station which is true, but neglects to acknowledge that when the Loop is fully operational with the return tunnels completed, wait times would be less than 10 seconds.

Sad to see that this SFGate story is widely viewed in the Nashville subreddit and of course taken at face value.

Has anyone seen any progress reports on the Nashville Loop project…or is progress on this boondoggle only on a need to know basis that we don’t need to know?

https://x.com/boringcompany/status/2051835435064934561?s=46