The Boring Company is looking under Miami and entertaining the idea of helping the city alleviate surface road congestion.
The City Officials of Miami have been, for the last couple years, proposing having The Boring Company create tunnels for the city.
Now, The Boring Company has submitted a proposal to construct a roughly 6 mile tunnel in North Beach.
The tunnel would use Teslas to deliver people to seven stations under Florida State Hwy 826. The tunnel would be called ‘The North Miami Beach Loop’. The Loop proposal states the cost to be around $200 million.
Loops are different than subways and roads. TBC Loops are very effective at transit and distinct from subways.
Loop is an express public transportation system that resembles an underground highway more than a subway system.
If a subway line had 100 stops, a train would typically stop at each station, so the trip between Stop 1 and Stop 100 would be long. In contrast, Loop passengers travel directly to their destination, anywhere between Stop 1 to Stop 100, without stopping at the intermediate stations. Also, the express system allows Loop vehicles to travel faster than conventional subway cars (up to 150 mph vs. up to 65 mph).
— The Boring Company
The Founder of “The Boring Company” Elon Musk created the first Boring Company operational tunnel the LVCC (Las Vegas Convention Center) Loop, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Boring Company, is a company specializing in boring tunnels underground at a fraction of the cost of regular tunnels.
‘The Boring Company’ tunnels are technically called Loops, designed specifically for electric vehicles. As quoted from The Boring Company website, “Loop is an all-electric, zero-emissions, underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported directly to their final destination with no stops along the way.”
Without the need to ventilate the tunnels from toxic CO2 the tunnels are significantly cost effective in comparison to similar tunnels designed with expensive air ventilation systems to keep clean air in the tunnels.
When asked “Why tunnels?” Elon Musk explained —
“To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels are needed. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight, and won't fall on your head.
Tunnels minimize usage of valuable surface land and do not conflict with existing transportation systems. A large network of tunnels can alleviate congestion in any city; no matter how large a city grows, more levels of tunnels can be added.”
The Boring Company set out in 2016 to solve traffic congestion on surface streets. Since then many short tunnel projects within a few major cities have been busy projects currently for TBC.
Boring Tunnels, the ones being built right under Vegas, are traditionally built to fit a Tesla in the the Boring Company’s typical 12 foot diameter tunnel.
Two giant boring tunnel machines doing the majority of the tunneling are Godot-Plus and Prufrock, named after TS Eliot’s written work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
As per TBC website, “Prufrock is designed to tunnel at a speed of 1 mile per week, which is 6 times faster than The Boring Company’s previous generation TBM (Godot-Plus). This is still 4-5 times slower than a garden snail, but Prufrock is catching up!”
Within the Teslas and tunnels there will be no carbon monoxide from exhaust, long wait times, noisy engines, or inclement weather issues.
Most of the passenger vehicles for the tunnels are Tesla model Ys. For Vegas these can be hailed via a specific app for the Vegas tunnels. For those with specific needs such as a wheelchair, model Xs are available.
In Vegas, The Boring Company drivers are currently being employed in the early stages of the tunnels’ opening launch.
The 60-80 vehicle Tesla fleet used in Vegas, twill be in the tunnels exclusively, noted as a Ride Hailing system, will significantly cut back transfer time between different locations in Vegas. What could have been a 45 minute surface street walk will Now be 2-5 minutes. There will be no need to bother walking far or waiting on a corner for transportation help.
The LVCC Loop, is a three-station transportation system consisting of 1.7 miles of tunnels, aimed to be built in approximately one year of beginning construction and tunneling in mid 2019 and ended mid 2020, but due to Covid restrictions and closures wasn’t open to the public until mid 2021. The LVCC Loop cost was $47 million which included two tunnels and three large stations, two surface and one subsurface.
The three stations in the LVCC Loop are The South Station, Central Station, and the West Station, that anyone can select from.
The LVCC Loop is part of connecting tunnels, as well as to multiple casinos in the near future when the full Vegas Loop is finished.
As for the Vegas Boring Tunnel Systems, transportation will be 4,400 people per hour for the LVCC Loop system and it’s 3 large stations while the Vegas Loop 57,000 passengers per hour with 51 medium stations.
The Vegas Loop a significantly larger project, is expanding to 29 miles and 51 stations total. Clark County team partnered with the County Commissioners for an unanimous approval of expansion, fall 2021.
Originally, the Vegas Loop project overall was to be approximately 10.5 miles long, of two parallel tunnels, a total of 24 miles of tunnels, on either side of Las Vegas Boulevard South. The Tunnels will still be 12 foot diameter, located approximately 40 feet below ground. Total, the Vegas Loop was to connect approximately 50 stations on the Loop but now it is 51.
This is in addition to the previous work already underway to connect multiple casinos and stations, 51 sites overall, in one big 29 mile underground loop transporting passengers at a rate of 57,000 people per hour in Tesla.
The tunnels are lit-up with RGB LED lights adding a fun sensory element to the service. The tunnels are outfitted with CCTV video systems, secure wireless communication, passenger cell phone service, blue light stations, fire safety system, ventilation systems, project engineering, codes and permits, environmental engineering, all part of the packaged TBC projects.
For more information checkout The Boring Company.
