Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau
LVCVA CEO and President Steve Hill speaks during an event to launch the Regional Transportation Commission’s (RTC) “Trip to Strip” rideshare service Tuesday, June 25, 2019, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company underground drill is chewing through dirt and rock under the massive Las Vegas Convention Center.
When the $52 million project is completed by 2021, the drill will have dug two mile-long tunnels under the convention center, where autonomous vehicles with Tesla chassis will shuttle people back and forth.
Yet the underground shuttle service for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority may only be the beginning of the underground tunnel technology in Las Vegas, said LVCVA President and CEO Steve Hill.
In an interview on Nevada Newsmakers, Hill said the underground technology may someday serve a much larger area in Las Vegas.
“We do think that over time, this just doesn’t have to be just a convention center or just a (Las Vegas) Strip type of transportation system,” Hill told host Sam Shad. “This can be a system that everybody in the valley can take advantage of.”
Hill, who helped broker the deal that brought Musk’s Tesla gigafactory to Northern Nevada when he was Gov. Brian Sandoval’s economic development chief, believes in the leader of Tesla and the Boring Company. It is why he foresees Musk’s underground transportation technology someday spreading across the Las Vegas Valley.
“Elon’s companies are very innovative, always looking at the next best thing, the best practice,” Hill said. “So they are working hard and having a lot of success, speeding up the tunneling process, which lowers the cost, looking at the autonomy of the vehicles, maximizing the ridership of the vehicles.”
The Boring Company plans for the underground system were the best the LVCVA saw when they invited requests for proposal from potential bidders.
“The Boring Company’s technology and response really stood out,” Hill said. “Not only did it have the highest capacity, it had the least disruption during the construction process and it was also substantially less expensive that the other options. So it was a pretty easy choice.”
It was a choice with the future in mind, even though the LVCVA project is the first application of the Boring underground drilling technology.
“We also see it as a real opportunity to solve some of the congestion problems in Las Vegas going forward,” Hill said. “So it is helpful to start at the convention center, make sure that it works, work the kinks out and then look at the opportunity of moving into the city.”
