A Tesla car drives through a tunnel in the Central Station during a media preview of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas, Photo / Getty Images
A Tesla car drives through a tunnel in the Central Station during a media preview of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas, Photo / Getty Images
It’s Elon Musk’s multimillion-dollar and very glitzy vision of how we’ll travel in the future.
Last week, almost 100,000 people got to have their first ride on the Vegas Loop underground transport system.
But a big problem has led to criticism of what one industry watcher has dismissed as Elon Musk’s “vanity project”.
In fact, while many visiting Las Vegas were dazzled by this neon-drenched travel solution, some have questioned if it’s anything that new at all or if it really is better than, say, a bus.
One person, after taking their first ride, told news.com.au in Las Vegas that it was “pointless” – at least in its current form.
But backers of the Vegas Loop have branded critics as “clueless” while the city of Las Vegas is doubling down, clearing the way for a 55km extension beneath the casino city that could cost more than $US2 billion ($3.1b).
Alongside Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, Musk also owns the majority of The Boring Company (TBC).
As the firm’s name suggests, it’s chiefly into boring tunnels.
Musk formed the company in 2016 after complaining traffic in Los Angeles was driving him “nuts”.
“Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he memorably said.
Tesla cars are shown in the Central Station during a media preview of the Vegas Loop. Photo / Getty Images
His vision was for a network of easy-to-dig tunnels where autonomous pod vehicles would hurtle passengers at 240km/h around the city on some form of tracks or guideway.
What has opened in Las Vegas is not even close to that.
The Vegas Loop is 2.7km in length and connects one end of the Convention Centre with the other, with a branch leading off to a casino.
Rather than pods, there are cars – Telsas, of course. And while they are electric, they’re not autonomous with each one requiring a driver. Rather than travelling at 240km/h the Teslas go at a more sedate 55km/h.
It’s possible that one day the original ambitions will be met, but many remain sceptical that cars, or pods, going that fast will ever be allowed beneath city streets.
The Musk Loop experience
Yet even in its current, pared-down form, the relatively low cost of the Loop – the initial Vegas tunnels cost $US75 million ($A107 million) – has other cities salivating at the prospect of a bargain basement banishment of their transport woes. [Although for some the drool has dried up. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 28 that the Boring Company was “ghosting” cities across America. It reported that Musk’s firm had submitted bids for transport projects in Ontario, Maryland, Chicago and Los Angeles, but then “gone underground”. “The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to ‘solve soul-destroying traffic,’ only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure,” the Journal said.]
Elon Musk of The Boring Company announcing a now-shelved Loop project for Chicago in 2018. Photo / Getty Images
The Vegas Loop opened in 2021 and only operates during conferences. Early January’s CES technology show, which saw scores of people descend to Nevada to see the latest consumer electronics, was its biggest test yet.
When news.com.au visited, a steady stream of conference-goers were eagerly descending the escalator at the Loop’s Central Station – the only truly underground station on the small network – to see what all the fuss was about.
On first glance, it looked impressive. A concrete canyon opens up below lit by an ever-changing swirl of vivid light: First a searing blue and then a sunrise orange before an intense magenta. Hits by Celine Dion echoed through the chamber.
What was hoped for ... and what was delivered. Image / The Boring Company. The staff-intensive Vegas Loop features not high-speed driverless pods but speed-limited Teslas driven by humans. Photo / Benedict Brook, News.com.au
At one side of a platform, Telsas drive out of tunnels and head towards one of 10 parking bays. Staff direct passengers to queue up for the next car, not unlike a funfair ride.
The sheer amount of people checking out the Loop saw staff encourage strangers to share vehicles – which was ironic because Mr Musk has railed against public transport precisely because you ride with a “bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer”.
With a possible serial killer in the back seat, the driver headed into one of the equally vividly lit tunnels.
They’re small, almost claustrophobically so, and barely wide enough for the car.
Tesla cars are shown in the Central Station during a media preview of the Vegas Loop. Photo / Getty Images
The journey, twisting and turning, almost feels like you’re slicing through some neon Alpine mountain.
And then suddenly you’re disgorged up a ramp and into the bright daylight of Nevada and a far less glamorous grey parking station.
The journey should take two minutes, but the 80 or so cars that had been sequestered for CES meant there were mini jams to exit the system. It perhaps added another minute to the journey, although TBC said the average CES ride was indeed sub two minutes.
It’s certainly snazzy. But the feeling is less like the transportation of the future and more like a disco taxi in an underpass.
And that’s the big problem. All the Kmart-style LED lights in the world can’t hide the fact the Vegas Loop is just a road tunnel. And there’s nothing new about that.
A ‘little pointless’
Riders news.com.au spoke too had mixed views on the Vegas Loop.
“It was great. It was a comfortable experience, the service was good,” rider Alex said.
“But it was a little pointless as it doesn’t cover a lot of distance.
“It gets you where you’re going and it has LEDs. It’s literally lit. It’s like a roller coaster,” Alex said.
Conference-goer Shike said it was fun, but was still just a road tunnel.
“Public transportation would move more people for sure.”
If you measure the success of the Vegas Loop by capacity, it can struggle.
TBC claims it can carry up to 4400 people an hour, but that’s probably with all those strangers riding together. A more likely outcome is people see it as a taxi and keep each Tesla to themselves.
The firm said 94,000 rides were taken during CES which works out at about 3000 per hour, still below its claimed capacity.
In contrast, a single line of the New York Subway can transport 27,000 people per hour in one direction over the same distance as the Vegas Loop.
Some have said the tunnelling technology from TBC is admirable but it should be trains or trams, not Teslas, going underground.
Huge amount of staff
Staffing is another issue for the Loop. Right now, it needs loads of them. News.com.au spotted about 15 staff at the two stations helping passengers and making sure they got in and out of the Teslas safely. And if there were 80 vehicles, that’s 80 drivers.
In contrast two or fewer staff can operate a train, with stations usually only having a handful of staff each.
TBC points out that in the future driverless cars may take over. And it says those cars can zoom through stations en route that passengers aren’t embarking at rather than stopping at every one. Which is a bit like an express train.
Many US city mayors have gazed enviously at the Vegas Loop, keen on a cheap transport solution with that touch of Musk magic.
But the company has struggled to expand beyond Las Vegas. Projects announced in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Baltimore in Maryland have quietly been dropped.
“I think there was an expectation from Tesla that, ‘We will start digging a hole and when something gets in our way we’ll deal with it and we’ll keep digging,’” former secretary of transportation for Maryland Pete Rahn told NBC News.
“That’s just not how the system works in the public environment.”
Editor of industry magazine Tunnelling Journal Tris Thomas said the low costs of Mr Musk’s tunnels was likely due to the relative simplicity of the first example.
Longer tunnels, however, have to go through lengthy planning and environmental processes, utilities like sewers have to be moved or avoided, and a huge number of different land owners become involved. The actual digging can be the easy bit.
“With the transport method being a small fleet of his own Teslas it screams ‘vanity project’,” Thomas said.
Was our privilege to provide transportation for @LVCVA at an amazing @CES convention. Fun Loop stats: average ride time < 2 min, average wait time < 10 sec, 94k+ total passengers, 10k+ passengers to/from Resorts World, and average Q4 LVCC Customer Experience Score > 4.9/5.0! pic.twitter.com/Uspcmyb9sn
— Jeremy "Looking for Arrows" Zorek🚰 (@jeremyzorek) April 9, 2021
But others says the naysayers are whingers.
Scott Roeben, publisher of website Vital Vegas, said critics were “clueless”.
“The Vegas Loop isn’t mass transit, it’s a public relations tool. Las Vegas is about creating a splash, and the Vegas Loop already has.”
A massive extension has been approved for the Vegas Loop connecting casinos and the airport. Even with TBC’s claims of cheap digging, it’s still likely to cost billions.
If the expanded Loop does get off the ground, then the world will see if this really is the future of transport. Or if it’s just a small, low-capacity, high-staffed road tunnel with cool lights.
