Is the future of driving underground? Boring Company to expand Vegas Loop to 69 stations

Clark County Nevada has just approved Elon Musk’s The Boring Company plans to extend the “Vegas Loop” by 25 miles and 18 stations which will take the EV tunnel network to 69 stations underneath the iconic Las Vegas strip, including the airport.

The network is a series of tunnels and stations built by The Boring Company, a SpaceX subsidiary, which is revolutionising tunnelling technology.

With no exhaust fumes, electric vehicles open up new possibilities for subterranean transport. The Boring Company has developed a new type of tunnelling machine which can tunnel much faster and for much lower cost than traditional boring machines.

The company’s latest machine “Prufrock” is designed to tunnel at speeds of over 1 mile (1.6 km) per week.

This is 6 times faster than the previous machine “Godot+”. The company’s medium term goal is to increase tunnelling speed to 7 miles (11 km) per day!

The machine’s speed combined with the all-electric drive enables a massive reduction in cost-per-mile tunnelling. With no exhaust fumes, costs are further reduced because the tunnels don’t require expensive exhaust vents.

Prufrock also has the ability to launch and emerge from the surface which traditional boring machines are unable to do. The machine can build a pedestrian tunnel in just 5 days.

The Boring Company says its technology will enable low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels. The company’s mission is to “solve traffic, enable rapid point-to-point transportation and transform cities”

“To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels are needed,” says the Boring Company’s website.

“Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight, and won’t fall on your head,”

“Tunnels minimise usage of valuable surface land and do not conflict with existing transportation systems. A large network of tunnels can alleviate congestion in any city; no matter how large a city grows, more levels of tunnels can be added.”

Combined with high-speed autonomous electric vehicles, the new technology could revolutionise transport and dramatically reduce the number of major roads in cities. The underground networks could open up huge amounts of space on the surface enabling car-free zones for pedestrians and cyclists.

The clip below shows a test drive in a tunnel made in 2019. The Tesla Model 3 reaches a speed of 116 mph (187 kmh) in the tunnel covering 1 mile (1.6 km) in just under one minute under city traffic.

After building multiple test tunnels, The Boring Company received approval in October 2021 to build the first phase of the Vegas Loop network including 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations. With the success of the project, Clark County Nevada approved the second phase last week.

Passengers enter the stations via escalator, similar to an underground metro, where Tesla EVs are waiting to take them to their desired station. Currently the cars do have drivers however with Tesla’s fully autonomous driving software the longer term plan is for the vehicles to be driverless.

With very few traffic variables in the network, reaching autonomy in the tunnels will be much easier than in regular traffic.

The convergence of electric autonomous vehicles and low-cost high-speed tunnelling technology could completely revolutionise how we get around our cities. The current road system in cities is noisy, polluting, dangerous and isolates communities.

Could we see a future where major roads are ripped up and replaced with green park spaces and pedestrian and cycling paths?

What a difference that would make to our cities!