Could the Elon Musk High Speed ​​Tunnel in Las Vegas solve the country's infrastructure problem?

LAS VEGAS – The founder of Boring Company, Elon Musk, and his vision of creating high-speed transit tunnels to help solve the country's high infrastructure costs for a fraction of the price could finally materialize in the desert.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority voted earlier this week to advance contract negotiations with Musk's Boring Co. to build a tunnel transportation system connecting the convention center with a length of about two miles.

"And if we could create something that the rest of the industry – in China, Denver, Atlanta – said," My God, we would have liked, I would have liked, "Chuck said. Bowling, who works for LVCVA. The board of directors, as well as the chairman of Mandalay Bay, said at a committee meeting Tuesday about continuing negotiations with The Boring Company.

Although a majority of the board members have been enthusiastic about the prospect of being a testing ground for innovation, the idea does not make any sense. was not without skepticism – including Mayor of Las Vegas, Carolyn G. Goodman.

"The Boring Company has no documented success or achievements report. It's exploratory right now, and we plan to leave the reins of our industry the most important, "said Goodman, who also sits on the LVCVA board of directors. "I would like to have more information on the whole of this project for the benefit of LVCVA's inclusive board."

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Despite several other proposals / projects being prepared in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC and Maryland, Boring Co. has not yet built a test tunnel within three kilometers of Hawthorne, in California.

Russell Holly, chief editor of Mobile Nations, notes that the founder of Tesla has "an impressive record of overproduction," but said that if the Boring company were successful in following Las Vegas, it could be "a huge deal for the company and lead to many other contracts. "

"Tesla is raising prices for all of its cars and the legendary $ 35,000 model will be virtually unavailable," said Holly, referring to a car company announcing a 3% price increase for most of its vehicles. "So, there is a lot of, you know, too promising about Tesla. I see no reason to think that the boring company is going to be different, especially because it has not been proven. So, it's hard to say seriously.

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What distinguishes Musk from other companies is not the tunnel itself, but the extremely low cost with which it claims to be able to build it – another concern raised at the LVCVA committee hearing on Tuesday.

Boring Co.'s $ 35 million to $ 55 million proposal for the Las Vegas Convention Center would feature Tesla vehicles operating in express tunnels linking the Convention Center's main halls and carrying approximately 11,000 passengers per hour .

"The purpose of our society is not to say that we invented the construction of tunnels, it would be ridiculous; it means we can do it faster, and we can do it a lot cheaper and we are ready to put our money where our all price and performance based contracts are based on the company, "he said. Steve Davis, president of Boring Co., at the committee meeting held on Tuesday.

To put it in perspective, San Francisco's central metro cost $ 920 million per mile and the Seattle U-Link at $ 600 million per kilometer, according to data compiled by Alon Levy for CityLab, a writer and researcher in the field of transport.

The New York subway extension in 2015 for the East Side of Manhattan would cost $ 2.5 billion per mile, while the addition to Line 7 would cost $ 1.5 billion, the New York Times said.

If Las Vegas became the first successful example of The Boring Company, it could help solve the country's infrastructure problem and reduce the gap of about $ 1 trillion between our current infrastructure spending in Canada. national level and what we need to spend, "said Michele Nellenbach, director of strategic initiatives at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Fox News.

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"We are certainly not without necessity, and we need innovative solutions that hopefully will reduce some of the costs. For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of what Musk has proposed is that if the boring technology works as expected it would really reduce the cost of some of this underground work, "she said.

President Donald Trump's 2020 budget provides for at least $ 1 trillion in infrastructure spending.

As for Las Vegas, Tina Quigley, chief executive of the Southern Nevada Regional Transportation Commission, said the low cost of Musk's proposal is truly intriguing, as the city "lacks space" .

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"We have a geometry problem in some corridors where we simply can not integrate more personal vehicles without a large footprint," said Quigley, adding that "it's impossible to decouple the technology, the transport and transport. They are related and, well, they should be because there are many opportunities to get more with less, they need space or something. "

If everything goes as planned, LVCVA President Steve Hill expects the tunnel to be completed in time for the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show and thinks it could be expanded later to connect the Strip. from Vegas.