Posted on: October 8, 2024, 01:45h.
Last updated on: October 8, 2024, 02:19h.
Elon Musk’s underground transit system in Las Vegas is a magnet for trespassers who have to be escorted out.
According to a new Fortune.com report, at least 67 trespassers have breached the Vegas Loop’s tunnels since they opened in 2022. Most entered on foot, though one was creative enough to skateboard through a tunnel, forcing a shutdown of the entire system.
He of she couldn’t have gotten very far, however, because while the tunnels are supposed to eventually connect most of the Strip to downtown and the airport, the only functioning part of the Vegas Loop open so far consists of three tunnels spanning a 1.7-mile loop under the Las Vegas Convention Center, in addition to a connection to Resorts World that opened in July 2022.
More InterLoopers
The 67 reported trespassers don’t include 22 vehicles that entered the system since the beginning of last year, piggybacking on security-gate openings at surface stations for authorized Teslas.
The monthly reports from the Boring Co., which digs the tunnels, didn’t say whether these trespassers tried to evade capture — though how could the skateboarder have not? — or how many of the unauthorized vehicular entries were accidental.
A spokesperson for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which owns the tunnels, told Fortune.com that all the cars entered “inadvertently,” their drivers believing that they were accessing a parking structure or ride-share pickup location.
All of the unauthorized drivers were intercepted by security before they could enter a tunnel, the spokesperson claimed, except for one who made it inside.
The spokesperson also promised that the LVCVA is “actively working” with TBC “to eliminate opportunity for inadvertent intrusion.”
Some of the 67 incidents took place in the above-ground stations, not inside the tunnels themselves, and no intrusions resulted in an injury.
Fortune.com was only able to obtain this information because it filed a Freedom of Information Act request forcing the LVCVA to fess up.
Tunnel Vision?
When TBC secured its $48.7M contract with the LVCVA in 2019, it promised to build an “express public transportation system” of self-driving shuttles that zipped passengers through pneumatic tubes at speeds of up to 155 mph. Renderings of those shuttles showed them carrying 18 passengers at a time.
Five years down (under) the road, however, that original promise has given way to the reality of regular Teslas driven by humans at a top speed of 40 mph. That’s why virtually nobody refers to the system by its proper name, the Vegas Loop, instead preferring “Tesla Tunnels.”
