Las Vegas, Home Of Bad Ideas, Goes All-In On Tesla's Dumb Tunnels

Image: Robyn Beck (AP)

Las Vegas seems to be on a roll with bad ideas lately. There’s the whole debacle that was the 2023 Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. There’s a new ordinance that could land you in jail for up to six months and hit you with a $1,000 fine if you block pedestrian walkways. And now Vegas officials are doubling down on considering Elon Musk’s Boring Company tunnels a viable public transportation option.

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that both Clark County and Las Vegas city officials have approved the sale of 1.8 acres of land near the University of Nevada Las Vegas to a mysterious affiliate of The Boring Company only known as Object Dash. These mystery buyers have been purchasing tiny spots of land in various spots across the city for over a year now: late last year, another mysterious affiliate buyer called Open Dash purchased 1.4 acres for $3.7 million in the city’s Chinatown for a Loop station. In Summer 2022, 2.2 acres of land across from the Mandala Bay casino on the Vegas Strip was sold to a buyer who “wished to remain anonymous,” and some suspect that was Object Dash as well.

Currently, The Loop — which I should remind everyone is a dumb waste of time and resources— only runs and operates under the Las Vegas Convention Center. The future plan looks to be to fully build out the Loop to a system of nearly 70 miles of tunnels with each land site purchased being a future station.

At full build-out the Vegas Loop will stretch from south Las Vegas Boulevard to downtown Las Vegas, with stops planned for Chinatown, Allegiant Stadium and the Thomas & Mack Center.

The system is planned to include 93 stations spread out across 68 miles of tunnel, according to the Boring Co.

Of course, this is something affiliated with Elon Musk we’re talking about, so there’s a catch: The Boring Company won’t actually be the ones building the stations. They’re just digging the tunnels. The plan is for the stations to be built and paid for by business or casino/resort owners.

“Property owners also will decide on what their planned station will look like and choose if it will be located above or below ground,” the Review-Journal says. It’s still not known how much it’ll cost to ride through the tunnels. While the current Loop under the convention center is free, info from The Boring Company’s site seems to suggest there will be a per-mile cost to use them.