The Boring Company wins contract to build Las Vegas tunnel

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has been selected to build an underground “people mover” tunnel for the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). 

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) Board of Directors recommended that the contract be awarded to the Boring Company back in March, and it voted to approve it on Wednesday. 

The total value of the contract is $48,675,000. 

The tunnel, called the LVCC Loop, will allow people to quickly move between the LVCC’s New Exhibit Hall, North Hall, Central Hall and South Hall. The Boring Company claims the benefits of such a means of transportation include no surface noise and vibration as well as comfortable and convenient way for passengers to move around, without being affected by weather. The company plans to move people in autonomous electric vehicles, though the exact nature of those vehicles hasn’t been described yet. 

The project should be completed by January 2021, when it could be used during the CES trade show. On Twitter, Boring Company CEO Elon Musk said the company will start digging in two months, and will aim to finish it by the end of 2019. 

According to the project’s documentation, Boring Company will receive the bulk of payments after it has already built the tunnels and infrastructure, and commenced vehicles testing. And it will have to pay hefty fines if it doesn’t meet the goal of being able to transport 4,400 passengers per hour on a daily basis. 

Musk also revealed some additional details about the Loop. He says the project will consist of two tunnels, “about a mile long each.” 

The Boring Company has already described potential expansion opportunities, including extending the Loop to “McCarran International Airport, hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, downtown Las Vegas, Las Vegas Stadium, and, in the long term, Los Angeles.”

The LVCC Loop is Boring Company’s first commercial project. The company finished one tunnel, a two-mile test tunnel at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. The company’s bid to build a tunnel in Chicago doesn’t look likely at this point, while another bid to build a tunnel in West LA has fallen through.