Elon Musk’s Boring Company is tunneling beneath Las Vegas with little oversight
Summary
Elon Musk's Boring Company is rapidly expanding the "Vegas Loop," a 68-mile underground Tesla-based transit system approved with minimal public input and regulatory oversight.
Backed by the Las Vegas tourism authority, the project bypasses federal environmental reviews and standard public transit scrutiny.
Despite safety, labor, and environmental violations, Boring faces modest fines and continues construction.
Critics, including former Mayor Carolyn Goodman, highlight concerns over safety, accessibility, and untested technology, but local officials and businesses support the project, viewing it as a vital traffic solution.
The Loop may set a precedent for deregulated infrastructure projects.
https://www.propublica.org/article/elon-musk-boring-company-las-vegas-loop-oversightOpen linkView original on lemmy.world345
Comments67
ah, yes, dipshit manchild reinventing the subway. I'd almost forgotten about that.
Someone really needs to show him public transit sometime. Then again, if it keeps him busy, perhaps we should just let him. I would rather his attention be focused on making a shittier version of a subway than on trying to fuck up Europe too.
I have news for you: he not “busy” with anything past the idea phase. How can you tell? You don’t see news pieces about Boring Company workers being effectively forced into slave labor a la Twitter post-takeover and Tesla during the Model 3 roll-out. He expects everything to run like a startup because it’s the only thing he’s ever remotely “managed” in his life.
yeah but… he's not doing shit. he uses his only power, money, to delegate. the trouble is that as the world's richest dickhead, he has a lot of power to delegate
I'm not sure he'll even be able to see the public transit from the private jet he flies in all the time.
I hope it ruins the foundation of one of the bigger casinos, the fight would be amazing.
I'm hoping it makes the site of the new stadium they are building for the A's cave in, they did Oakland dirty and deserve whatever bad karma they get.
Lol, MGM owns most of the strip and it's entire enterprise value is ~$40B. Not market cap, that's only $9B. In the year of our Lord 2025, I'm not sure I see courts making for a fair fight when you throw in politically targeted retribution that would come.
Historically, casinos didn't engage in legal fights. They had the mob to do that work for them.
Absent a functioning, fair political and judicial system, all sorts of things are going to start reappearing on the US landscape that have been dormant for generations. Very doubtful in the current environment, but when transparent political retribution is transpiring and powerful, rich folks are on the receiving end, there will come a point where drastic measures will become among the most reasonable options they have.
Shit like this is a potential problem where the tunnel gets transferred to a shell company, the tunnel doesn’t make money or beings to fail, the shell declares bankruptcy and the tunnel and all of its problems get handed off to the taxpayer.
Gotta love that capitalism's "efficiency" that everyone keeps mentioning as a positive
It excels at making money as efficiently as it can, the issue is the “efficient” action of dumping unprofitable things on the public. I’m expecting all the multiple
thousandsmillions of gas wells that were drilled over the last 20 years to be transferred to a shell, bankrupted, and dumped on the public for the massive cleanup requiredToo bad capitalism is the only system 😔
We’re told it is by the people who don’t want any changes made because it will interfere with their profits. I’m not suggesting communism or something, so no need for making things a hyperbolic binary choice. Capitalism can absolutely be reined in with strong social policy without being socialist, but again, point #1, that cuts in to power and the profits of those who don’t want to lose any.
Pumping that shit with Tesla©® concrete will solve all problems.
US Tax Payer: "Corporate investors of last resort."
Musk is a dangerous idiot and I hope he dies.
Advocating for a persons death is also dangerous, but unfortunately in some cases there is no counter argument to be made
I won’t say I’m advocating it but as the saying goes…some obituaries I will read with delight.
He's not a person, he's a parasite.
There can always be a counter argument
Unfortunately, people dont really like torture
Its less efficient and doesnt accomplish the goal better, but its not dangerous i think
Wondering if I can get Delilah to make a special dedication to Elon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKHHdqwVes
Eventually one of his cars is going to blow up in the tunnel and they won't be able to get fire and rescue personnel to it.
"some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." - Lord Farquaad
Not only that, but this just sounds like a fuck load of lithium bombs waiting for a fuse. That fuse would be water buildup in the tunnels. You couldn't pay me to be in a Tesla underground with that same companies workmanship.
Author has never seen a subway... Or doesn't know what "novel" means.
Comparing it to a subway is totally unmerited. This system is all the bad parts of a subway combined with all the bad parts of roads, with not an ounce of the benefits. It's truly a stupid thing.
I wasn't comparing musk's solution to a subway. I was comparing the author's description of "an underground transportation system to whisk passengers through tunnels in electric vehicles" to a subway system.
Sounds like it'll be like the highways from iRobot.
It's just going to be a private highway for Tesla's to drive in lol. Sooooo dumb.
And for people to die in if one of them catches fire.
What, that would never happen. Tesla has a bulletproof reliability rating and rock solid quality control. They use extensive reporting techniques to catch issues before they happen. Their self driving feature is 1000 time better than a human, hence why we need to dig a tunnel to isolate them from everything else.
Don't forget apocalypse-proof.
If memory serves you can't even open your doors down there, right?
It doesn't look like it would be easy to get out from the photos I've seen, and if there's a fire suppression system, the photos have not made that apparent to me either.
Doesn't matter, the doors wouldn't open anyway, they lock up when their cars catch on fire.
Hopefully it's on billionaires weekend
If the tunnel could collapse while Elmo is visiting it, that would we great.
Even better, while Musk is giving Trump a tour of his new toy.
Stahp! You I'll get me too much hope.
"sploosh"
Vegas floods almost every time it rains. Sometimes it floods when it rains nearby like on Mt Charleston. I've nearly avoided flash floods hiking in red rock canyon, and seen people on the news get killed in washes on a regular basis. I trust the casinos to care more about their victims than president Elon.
I was looking for this response, as I thought the same, those tunnels are gonna flood so easily.
Bro, Las Vegas is gonna collapse for this shit. "Let's just drill a bunch of random tunnels beneath our DESERT CITY with no oversight or plan, THAT'LL GO WELL!!!" - a moron. When the ground gives out and half the strip collapses into it, I doubt Musk will pay the fees for it.
Creating a strong tunnel is the easy part though. The hardest part is the boring itself and safety for people in the tunnel. Tunnel fires are far more common than a collapsing tunnel. So I'd be more scared of the extremely dangerous firehazard you'll be cruising in at high speeds than the tunnel itself.
Teslas tend to get very toasty when crashing? I'm not sure I'd want to be in a tunnel with a lot of them. Imagine if it'll become like the Salang Tunnel after a while?
If the tunnel has decent structural integrity, Musk will be long dead before he would need to pay the piper on this one.
50 years from now, teenagers in Las Vegas will tell stories about the "secret tunnels under the city." And at some point a very expensive building is going to collapse into a tunnel and the kids will be shocked that the urban legend was real.
And everyone will have basically forgotten that Elon Musk was responsible for, and later abandoned, this ill-conceived vanity project.
Are they not already telling those stories?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-live-tunnels-under-las-vegas/
I know for a fact Elon still hasn’t contacted 811 before they started digging
If one of his employees dies, there's always someone else he can hire, am I right?
You're missing the bigger picture: if an employee dies, Elon's unemployment insurance fees won't go up!!
Ah, the cost of doing business.
When casinos start falling over maybe they will wake up.
Here's a thought: maybe we as a species shouldn't keep supporting an adult Disneyland in the middle of a desert.
I know, a pipe dream.
Eh. It is relatively close to a major body of water and local ordinances address that they are living in a water scarce environment. They should densify Clark County, but a city in a desert is relatively common.
A major artificial body of water fed by a declining river.
Drilling tunnels under Las Vegas? C'mon... This is the plot of a heist movie, not reality.
Boring....boring....boring...
In a decade or two, when cancer rates skyrocket and sinkholes start swallowing buildings, I'm sure they won't exist anymore to suffer any consequences. Until then, I hope people enjoy their regulation-less sludge tunnels.
Radon?
The. Fuck.
We've been digging holes for millennia without this kind of shit. These days tunnel boring machines practically do the job by themselves without needing to put anyone in danger.
Is Musk intentionally trying to do this thing in the worst, most inefficient and dangerous way possible in a nostalgic attempt to emulate his father's apartheid emerald mine or what..!?
The more I know about this arsehole the less I wish I knew about him, seriously. At this point the only thing I want to know about him is that he died of haemorrhoids.
The Loop may set a precedent for deregulated boondogles.
Anyone remember the HyPeRlOoP? Eloser clearly doesn't.
I'm sure it'll be fine. Right guys? Its just a hole in the ground. Nothing could possibly go wrong with little oversight right,?
Do you want sandworms? Cause this is definitely how you get sandworms.
Yes cause we either get Dune Sandworms, which means spice. The Spice must always flow. Or we get Beetlejuice sandworms which means we get a bureaucratic afterlife.
All I see is free housing and the possibly for casinos to collapse. Also cars being forced underground if it somehow doesn't fail.
I support all of these things.