Dallas Regional Government is in talks with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company. The advent of the successful technological Tesla car company and the cost efficient Boring Tunnel Company has changed the way tunnels are made.

“Technology has an important role to play in the development of the Dallas-Fort Worth transportation system, and our region continues to attract leaders in the field of transportation innovation,” Brian Wilson, liaison for ‘North Central Texas Council of Governments’

Elon Musk’s The Boring Company has met with the North Central Texas Council of Governments, a voluntary association of local governments, to discuss the possibility of The Boring Company putting tunnels, professionally engineered loops, under their busy Metropolis to ease transportation issues. 

“We have had initial conversations with The Boring Company, which has expressed interest in partnering with entities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on projects of mutual benefit,” Brian Wilson, email to Dallas Business Journal

According to Dan Lamar of the NCTCG, 

“Our transportation system is very congested and we are rapidly running out of room on the surface to be able to expand that transportation system and so we’re investigating aerial rights as well as subsurface rights to try to utilize for transportation purposes.”

Lamar stated that The Boring Company expressed that they were working on a twice as big machine compared the the current 12ft tunneling diameter machines, that could accommodate two-way traffic, even big enough to accommodate an underground rail system. 

There is an area in Dallas, Central Expressway with Mocking Bird Land to Love Field, that could possibly be turned into a Boring Tunnel Project to help daily long commute drivers by-pass Park Cities.

A consideration of tunneling, for the Dallas City Subway Silver line of DART, once put aside because of costs, city officials are now looking to expand lines with a willingness to reconsidering underground tunnels. Tunnels underground with a subway cut down on the noise of a surface level subway.

These would not be the first subway tunnels in Dallas, but they would be the first ones The Boring Company is looking into building at a quite considerably lower cost to create. 

The Boring Company, is a company specializing in boring tunnels underground at a fraction of the cost of regular tunnels.

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, 

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,

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 that can be hailed via a specific app for the Vegas tunnels. For those with specific needs such as a wheelchair, model Xs are available.

Boring Company drivers are currently being employed in the early stages of the tunnels’ opening launch.

The 60-80 vehicle Tesla fleet that will be used 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 Teslas.

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.

Find out more about The Boring Company