Photographer: Bridget Bennett / Bloomberg
Photographer: Bridget Bennett / Bloomberg
Nate Calabrese almost skipped the ‘driver wanted’ ad on the Indeed.com job posting website because it offered so little detail. As it turned out, the broadcast for the Boring Co. was, Elon Musk’s tunnel company. That’s how Calabrese, 27, drove people under the Las Vegas convention center on Friday in one of the first public looks at the so-called “Loop” that Musk has built there.
The company’s first major commercial project was to be unveiled in January at the glitzy annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but the Covid-19 pandemic got in the way. Now it’s ready for its first big bet at the June 8-10 World of Concrete event, city tourism officials said Friday.
The Loop ride itself is short and corresponds to the tunnels – about 0.6 kilometers long for each of the four sections, making a total of about 2.7 kilometers of tunnel. But they make up for their brevity in fun, with enough pulsating colored lights that the staff dubbed the slick track ‘Rainbow Road’.
The Boring Co. Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Photographer: Bridget Bennett / Bloomberg
The system consists of a fleet of modified Tesla sedans that – as the name implies – makes three stops and can carry passengers up to 40 miles per hour. The idea is to move people in shows that routinely attracted tens of thousands of people before Covid, in a sprawling space made up of four different exhibition halls. The cost is free to conference attendees, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Riders boarding at the South or West station stops wait outside for their Teslas and enter tunnels that descend through entrances lined with painted gray rocks, theme park style. Drivers boarding at Central Station will descend 12 meters via an escalator to a large open hall with space for Teslas to retract to allow passengers to get on or off. Each car currently seats three people due to Covid’s restrictions, but can accommodate as many as five.
Drivers all had to pass tests, including a driving test, Calabrese said – and a surprising number of candidates cannot sustain the portion required for them to reverse safely, he said. The group had to drill for a number of emergency scenarios, including bomb threats, active gunners and tunnel collapse.
Parked Tesla vehicles at the Boring Co. Convention Center Loop.
Photographer: Bridget Bennett / Bloomberg
The Vegas Loop was approved and built in May 2019 for $ 52.5 million paid for by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Association. Most of the money came from hotel taxes. Boring has also said it would like to build a Loop to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles from a nearby metro stop. That potential project is still undergoing an environmental analysis. The only existing project is a test tunnel in Hawthorne, California, which was completed in 2018.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop could one day tap into a wider network designed to connect more parts of the city, including the Strip, and possibly even the airport. Those plans are in the permit and approval phase for land use, according to a spokesperson for Clark County, Nevada, where much of the route would go.
Calabrese really likes the job so far, and at $ 17 an hour plus benefits, he said he is doing much better financially compared to his old life as a cab driver in Vegas. However, he will eventually have to find new work. Steve Hill, Chief Executive Officer of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said Friday that once the cars are certified for driverless transportation and passengers are comfortable with the idea, they will drive independently. “We will work on autonomy,” he told reporters.