The Boring Tunnel Ain’t Boring

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Attending CES 2023 wasn’t the only first for us lately. Beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), a network of tunnels has been ‘bored’ connecting the LVCC West Hall with the North, Central and South Halls, reducing a 25-minute cross-campus walk time to approximately 2-3 minutes. The Vegas Loop opened in April 2021 for the Mecum Motorcycle Auction and has operated at all subsequent conventions ever since, including CES 2023. When we saw the sign for the Loop, we just had to try it.

We were expecting autonomous cars, Teslas, of course, traveling through the tunnels at high speed. They weren’t. We did ride in Teslas for our two rides, but they were driven by humans traveling at 25-35 mph and the ride took ~3 minutes. The wait for a ride was short, a couple of minutes at most, with 16 or 20 vehicles moving in and out of parking spots constantly. In truth, it’s nothing more than a shuttle service… but a pretty darn cool shuttle service.

Our ride coming into the station

We were in the backseat and our view was somewhat obscured by the screens.

The tunnels are narrow and curvy with various colored lights illuminating them.


So… why tunnels? The Boring Company (TBC) has all the answers on their website and I paraphrase:

  • Traffic: to solve the problem of traffic, roads must go 3D.

  • Beautify cities: existing transportation networks occupy valuable space in cities where land availability is scarce. Tunnels minimize usage of surface area and could move entire transportation networks underground repurposing roads into community-oriented spaces.

  • Enable Hyperloop: Hyperloop networks unlock high-speed regional transportation enabling access to individualized, point-to-point high-speed transportation.

In 2019, TBC won a ~$49 million bid to construct a tunnel system underneath the LVCC to shuttle visitors between convention halls… using two Prufrock machines

BTW, Elon Musk has an interesting sense of humor (no kidding). Obviously, The “Boring” Company is a play on words. But naming his boring machines the Prufrock and the Godot was tongue-in-cheek humor, also.

Prufrock (proof rock) is taken from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem by T. S. Eliot in which Eliot stresses how social anxiety affects Prufrock's ability to interact with those around him (might be one of Musk’s issues?). Godot comes from an absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett in which two characters are waiting for something to happen (the arrival of Godot) and it never does. In the case of the Boring Godot, it definitely does arrive and in total the two Prufrocks bored 1.7 miles of tunnel in about a year.

Take a look at The Boring Company (TBC) website for an outstanding video of the ‘borer’ doing its ‘boring’ thing. https://www.boringcompany.com/tunnels

The Boring Company published these stats in a tweet after the CES convention.

The tunnel also now services Resorts World with plans for much more expansion in the future. For convention stops, the fare was free. It costs $4.50 to ride to Resorts World. Tunnels to Westgate and Encore are currently under construction.

If you’re in Las Vegas for a convention in the future, consider heading down the escalator to the Vegas Loop. It definitely ain’t boring!