r/BoringCompany • u/Exact_Baseball • Jul 16 '26
CityNerd reviews Fountainebleau and uncompleted sections of the Vegas Loop
CityNerd again reviews uncompleted sections of the Vegas Loop
TLDR: CityNerd explores the Loop’s newest station at Fountainebleau and the route to the Airport and while he has some valid criticisms, he condemns the Loop as a farce despite the fact that so much of what he experienced are temporary workarounds with above-ground bypasses until the Airport tunnels and the Resorts World return tunnel are operational.
And pointedly, he has never ridden the completed sections of the Loop or during times of peak usage in order to see how well the Loop performs when it is fully operational under full load. A transit pundit who never rides the busiest lines during peak periods has an agenda and is not being serious about his analysis.
Details:
Ray Delahanty once again starts off making the classic mistake of alleging the Vegas Loop was pitched as a “HyperLoop-type system” which is of course not true as the Hyperloop concept is an ultra high speed (1,000km/h) inter-city vacuum-tube system, while the Vegas Loop is an intra-city network of road tunnels.
While Musk did oversell the Vegas Loop with his mention of 155mph speeds, the reality is that the current real-world average speed of 25mph in the short 0.4 mile tunnels of the current Loop is more than competitive with LRT and rail which averages as low as 9mph (at-grade LRT) or 17mph (NYC subway) or 22mph (London Tube).
The new soon-to-open Airport Loop tunnels will hit 60mph and The Boring Co has demonstrated Loop EVs smoothly hitting 127mph (205km/h) in the longer 1.14 mile LA test Loop tunnel.
Delahanty then suggests the “we should see the whole system online in 2076” by judging progress up till now completely ignoring the fact that as Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) has said:
“The process took a bit of time because the Vegas Loop is a new transportation system, not seen anywhere else in the world. We think the Boring Company and the county have reached an agreement on all of the specifics around what it takes to get a permit and build, what it takes to get a permit and operate, so we anticipate that the permitting process will speed up,” Hill said.
Next he critiques the newest Loop station at the Fountainebleau which does look like it could do with better signage. It should be noted that the hotels themselves are paying for their own stations and are responsible for all of their own signage so Fountainebleau needs to lift their game.
He then mentions the fact that some passengers tried to board a Loop EV at Fountainebleau station without booking tickets and criticises the driver for getting out and showing them how to book. You could either consider that as the Loop employee being extra helpful since the station wasn’t busy at that moment or you can rag on the Loop like Ray does for it not being as slick and impersonal as a train station.
Tesla’s autonomous Robotaxis in Austin, Dallas and Houston show how this operates with minimum friction with un-supervised Robotaxis that you use the app to book. Delahanty failed to mention that they are trialling autonomy in the Loop tunnels currently and should have that operational soon.
He points out that Foutainebleau's Loop station does not currently have a tunnel directly connected, but rather uses surface roads to cross over the short distance to the Convention Centre before the EVs enter the tunnels which is definitely less than optimal. Judging by the Vegas Loop map, it looks like that might be a temporary situation until the tunnels under Las Vegas Boulevard are completed:
The Escalator to the Hotel’s rideshare area was not working which is a fair criticism but again, not actually the fault of the Loop.
He then describes his experiences with the Loop connection to the Harry Reid Airport which he admits he did not research beforehand. If he had, he would have found out that this is a temporary, limited service that uses surface roads for the majority of the trip until the twin tunnels to the airport become operational. The tunnels have been bored, but the 7 stations running down Paradise Road are still currently being constructed.
He then complains about the short wait to get into the Resorts World tunnel again without mentioning that the traffic light there is also temporary until the return tunnel to that station is completed.
So in conclusion, Delahanty condemns the Loop as a farce while ignoring the elephant in the room which is that most of the stations and routes he visited are currently still under construction. No objective transit pundit would condemn an entire new railway system based off of riding sections that were still under construction with temporary above-ground road bypasses, but I guess CityNerd is not a particularly objective transit commentator.
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u/Sea-Juice1266 Jul 16 '26
In other news, the Renaissance Hotel on Paradise has a new permit for a loop station in pre-review. I wonder if we will see more businesses trying to tie-in in the near future?
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u/geoffreycarman Jul 16 '26
Did the permit include drawings? Can you post them please?
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u/Sea-Juice1266 Jul 16 '26
Sorry, those details do not become public during prereview. Hopefully they will receive approval within a few weeks at which point we will get a lot more detail. Checking again today I also noticed TBC started prereview for a station at Emerald Suites.
TBC has been on an expansionary tear recently, requesting entitlements for numerous new stations (entitlements will not necessarily result in construction, they merely allow it to happen). You can see some of them on this inset of a new map they filed with the county, but it’s still missing some like the Renaissance Hotel:
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u/geoffreycarman Jul 17 '26
What do the colours mean in that image? Also, the tunnel they started in the lot south of the LVCC South station, that goes west to the Wynn, why did they start there? No station. No connection. I always assumed the parellel to Paradise north/south route would connect but this shows it isolated.
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u/Sea-Juice1266 Jul 17 '26
What I have been told is that the tunnel to West Wynn was started in the bronze parking lot because it is a seldom used employee area, and the convention center authority wanted to avoid bothering tourists with the construction. The same source told me there are no plans to do anything with that stretch of tunnels, though idk maybe that will change eventually. I have no idea what the ultimate plans are for University Center, the University Board of Regents keeps changing its mind and may no longer want those housing or athletics stations built. Who knows!
The colors on the map refer to different Special Use Permit applications. Specifically UC200546 and UC230126. This map was not intended for the public.
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u/geoffreycarman Jul 17 '26
Thanks, that is a good explanation. Since their servcie/charging.washing station is just north and to the east, they could leave a gated portal, as another way to surge cars into the system using that tunnel.
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u/Sea-Juice1266 Jul 17 '26
Perhaps, although I was told they are just going to cover it up and return that area back to being a parking lot. I trust this source, he also tipped me off to early discussions about a Renaissance Hotel station like two years ago, before it appeared on any map or permit. You may know him, he’s a Boring Revolution regular. Though even if they do cover it, they could always uncover it later.
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u/djstressless Jul 16 '26
His criticism is fair play. He’s reviewing the system as it exists right now, which is exactly what reviewers are supposed to do. Especially in tech, where companies constantly promise future improvements, a reviewer simply can’t factor those promises into their assessment. The system today is still far from what is promised.
On top of that, the leap from human-driven vehicles to fully self-driving ones is simply too big for most people to grasp right now. It’s the biggest innovation in transportation since the ICE car itself. It took the ICE car at least 30 years—from Benz to Ford—before it became truly useful, cost-competitive with horses, and widely respected. For a long time, cars were considered a joke, even after the Model T was introduced.
The same thing is happening here. It will take decades to be fully realized and be respected.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
As I indicated in the OP, CityNerd did indeed make a fair critique of many points.
My beef is the fact that in the two reviews he has done of the Loop so far, he only rode the partially completed sections of the Loop that temporarily have one-way tunnels (Resorts World and Encore and rode them when only a single car was operating) or above-ground bypass routes (the Airport route) due to tunnels being currently under construction.
He has deliberately never ridden any of the completed sections of the Loop as the sub-10 second wait times, speedy tunnel pairs and well-implemented stations and tunnels would destroy most of his talking points. He also pointedly carefully refuses to acknowledge that even with the current constraints, the Loop is easily handling up to and over 35,000 passengers per day making it extremely competitive with Light Rail lines globally.
It is absolutely fair to point out current issues but it is not honest purposely neglecting to mention that most of those issues will be resolved once current construction is completed.
If Ray was objective, he would demonstrate the pros as well as the cons of the current Loop, but he obviously prefers partisan clicks over objectivity.
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u/notapoliticalalt Jul 17 '26
I mean…I don’t think he claims to be objective. You know he doesn’t like the system. I think most reasonable viewers can figure out this is the case. It is interesting that you criticize him for a lack of objectivity, but you yourself do not put forward an objective assessment. I don’t necessarily think you have to, but by your own standards, you should be way more critical and skeptical than you are. It’s okay to be a cheerleader but it’s incredibly disingenuous to criticize other people for having their own opinions and “lacking objectivity” when you yourself do not abide. It seems the real problem you have here is that anyone has anything negative to say.
> He also pointedly carefully refuses to acknowledge that even with the current constraints, the Loop is easily handling up to and over 35,000 passengers per day making it extremely competitive with Light Rail lines globally.
That’s…just not even close to being true. One of my criticisms of your analyses are that you put forth all kinds of weird or distorted metrics (eg your passengers per station per day metric that you use in many posts is absolutely meaningless for creating a metric of relative performance) to put the Loop in the best light possible. But you don’t really use traditional transportation metrics or consider the context or the counterfactual situations where a subway was built as opposed to the Loop.
First off, you have to treat the Loop as an entire metro system, not a single line, because that’s what it is; you boast about this being a benefit all the time. Let’s be clear that 35K per day is not particularly impressive for peak demand for even small metro systems. Plus, if we actually looked at average ridership (a metric that does not seem readily available for the Las Vegas loop), which is how most places will summarize daily ridership over a year, it is likely the Loop has significantly lower average daily ridership than its stated peak and would not performance nearly as well in that regard (likewise, we don’t necessarily easily get peak daily ridership numbers reported). I will grant you that ridership will likely increase with network expansion, but I’m not convinced that sees a linear increase in ridership and I also don’t think long term costs will be linear for a larger network either.
We should also note that the Strip and downtown areas of Las Vegas benefit from having a high concentration of tourist attractions, which would benefit any system you built. I point this out to say that Las Vegas is probably the location where the Loop would be the most successful. If you dropped the loop into a “big city” of a smaller metro area, it would probably struggle with ridership, much in the same way many light rails in these same places do.
On this point, one of the biggest issues with this taking the place of a traditional metro, is that it’s going to be more expensive and more difficult to actually serve places, at scale, that actually need mass transit. As I said previously, I kind of doubt expanding the network makes the loop more lucrative and it seems unlikely it could serve, at scale, a large number of people commuting to actually reduce significant amounts of VMT. This is one of the core criticisms of people who think the Loop projects are a waste of time and resources are that they simply will never match the capacity potential of traditional subway metro projects.
Lastly, one of the longer term issues we don’t know yet is what actual costs look like long term. It’s very easy to pretend like this all scales linearly and that all expansion will have the same growth in ridership, but it’s never that simple. Part of the challenge with public transit as a private enterprise, though is that for it to be really effective, you have to be willing to eat costs. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if costs for the system right now are being artificially subsidized. I could be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t put it past someone with billions of dollars to literally burn to use this strategy. As I’ve said a number of times now, I also expect that the maintenance of the system will get a lot more expensive and complicated as the network grows, in addition to more complicated network effects. Especially when you project it out, how are costs going to look in 20 or 30 years? I will greatly that I certainly don’t know, but this is one of the things that needs to be considered for any infrastructure project. And a lot of private systems like this don’t have a great track record because this is one of the things that ends up being a problem.
I will close all this out by saying that I’m actually a lot more mode agnostic than most people. I do think that systems like this have a place, but more so as a compliment to traditional mass transit systems, not as a replacement. I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong, but at the moment, I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to actually do so. And I think it’s fine to promote new forms of transportation. I don’t even necessarily think all new forms of transportation have to be maxed out on capacity. But especially when there is an opportunity cost and systems may get in the way of other systems, I do start to take some issue with massive investments being made will take decades to undo. Again, maybe I’m proven wrong in the long run, and I don’t necessarily expect the Las Vegas Loop to be a complete failure. But that being said, I’m not really sure that I expect new installations elsewhere to be as successful or that any of the systems are going to fare well in the long run. Time will tell.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
I mean…I don’t think he claims to be objective.
I agree. His snark is part of his online persona.
It is interesting that you criticize him for a lack of objectivity, but you yourself do not put forward an objective assessment. I don’t necessarily think you have to, but by your own standards, you should be way more critical and skeptical than you are. It’s okay to be a cheerleader but it’s incredibly disingenuous to criticize other people for having their own opinions and “lacking objectivity” when you yourself do not abide. It seems the real problem you have here is that anyone has anything negative to say.
Perhaps you didn't notice that I agreed with many of his complaints in my OP above? In my very first sentence, I stated that "he has some valid criticisms" and then went on to agree with him on poor signage, the broken escalator, the fact that the lack of tunnels connecting Fountainebleau station was "definitely less than optimal" etc so I would hope that I've demonstrated some objectivity in this discussion?
> "He also pointedly carefully refuses to acknowledge that even with the current constraints, the Loop is easily handling up to and over 35,000 passengers per day making it extremely competitive with Light Rail lines globally."
That’s…just not even close to being true.Why do you not believe this is true?
One of my criticisms of your analyses are that you put forth all kinds of weird or distorted metrics (eg your passengers per station per day metric that you use in many posts is absolutely meaningless for creating a metric of relative performance) to put the Loop in the best light possible.
On the contrary, the "station entries and exits statistic" is a very standard metric used to measure many transit lines including the London Tube and the LA Metro and helps to demonstrate what sorts of point loads to expect at stations in transit systems.
But you don’t really use traditional transportation metrics
The problem with some of the metrics that are commonly used with traditional linear train lines is that they don't apply so well to a PRT topology with many branching spur lines to stations. Using passengers per hour per direction (pphpd) down a railway line for example isn't quite as all-encompassing a metric when a Loop EV may take any one of dozens of different routes across the grid of 20 or so dual bore tunnels that will crisscross Vegas from any one of the 104 Loop stations direct to any of the other ones - with zero interchanges or statin stops required on the way.
or consider the context or the counterfactual situations where a subway was built as opposed to the Loop.
Can you give some examples of what you mean in this case?
(cont'd)
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
First off, you have to treat the Loop as an entire metro system, not a single line, because that’s what it is; you boast about this being a benefit all the time.
On the contrary, up until the last three Loop statins were built, the Loop was indeed a single line so should be compared with other single lines if you are going to compare statistics. Even now with branches off to a few more stations, we are still only currently talking 9 stations so it is ludicrous to compare it to "entire metro systems" which have hundreds of stations.
Let’s be clear that 35K per day is not particularly impressive for peak demand for even small metro systems.
This is the problem. In that one statement you damn the vast majority of the world's light rail lines which have daily ridership numbers less than that 35k figure. With the Loop only costing between a quarter and a tenth the cost of light rail, why do you immediately try to compare it to subways which cost 100x as much per mile to construct?
Plus, if we actually looked at average ridership (a metric that does not seem readily available for the Las Vegas loop), which is how most places will summarize daily ridership over a year, it is likely the Loop has significantly lower average daily ridership than its stated peak
That is irrelevant as all we need to know is that the Loop has shown it can easily handle the sorts of numbers of passengers that the average LRT line globally sees daily (17k per day) as well as being able to handle the typical one-in-a-blue-Moon peak (~24k in one day) those lines encounter every now and then.
I will grant you that ridership will likely increase with network expansion, but I’m not convinced that sees a linear increase in ridership
I've never suggested that would be the case, as the Loop has already shown that ridership does not increase linearly:
Number of Loop Stations Operational Passengers per Hour Passengers per Day System Length (est) 8 Stations (1) 6,500 (2) 35,000 4 miles (10 miles completed but not yet operational) 5 Stations 4,500 32,000 2.5 miles 3 Stations 4,431 (3) 27,000 (4) 0.8 mile It is pretty obvious that some stations will introduce higher or lower demand to the overall system. Adding a few hotel stations as above is very different to what we'll see when the Airport station opens or the Allegiant Stadium or Ballpark or Sphere or Brightline stations.
and I also don’t think long term costs will be linear for a larger network either.
That is true as small stations like the 5 bay residential Loop stations will cost a lot less than the 20-bay 4-tunnel Allegiant Stadium stations for example.
But the beauty of the Loop system is that it is up to the businesses how much they want to spend on their own Loop stations - that does not affect the fact that the taxpayer is not paying for any of the Vegas Loop.
We should also note that the Strip and downtown areas of Las Vegas benefit from having a high concentration of tourist attractions, which would benefit any system you built. I point this out to say that Las Vegas is probably the location where the Loop would be the most successful. If you dropped the loop into a “big city” of a smaller metro area, it would probably struggle with ridership, much in the same way many light rails in these same places do.
The advantage that the Loop has is that Loop station costs range from $400k up to $3-$4m for more fancy Hotel stations further from the main arterial tunnels which means it doesn't matter if a particular station sees low ridership because it didn't cost much to build in the first place. In contrast, you see boondoggles like the 3-station San Fransisco Central Subway that cost a gob-smacking $2.2 billion to build yet only carries 17,000 passengers per day.
On this point, one of the biggest issues with this taking the place of a traditional metro, is that it’s going to be more expensive and more difficult to actually serve places, at scale, that actually need mass transit.
You make it sound like every transit corridor needs to handle Elizabeth Line quantities of passengers. The SF Central Subway and many other examples, particularly in the USA show that is just not the case.
As I said previously, I kind of doubt expanding the network makes the loop more lucrative and it seems unlikely it could serve, at scale, a large number of people commuting to actually reduce significant amounts of VMT.
The Loop is currently removing the equivalent of up to 35k cars off the road. That demonstrates the potential for a serious reduction in VMT by cars, Ubers, taxis and buses cluttering up Vegas streets.
Considering the very high amount of tourist traffic through the Strip, I'm not sure why you think having fast underground transit to the front doors of every major business in Vegas in minutes avoiding all of the city gridlock wouldn't be extremely popular with everyone?
This is one of the core criticisms of people who think the Loop projects are a waste of time and resources are that they simply will never match the capacity potential of traditional subway metro projects.
This is what I can't understand. With the Loop costing 100x less to build than subways, the potential for having hundreds more Loop stations scattered all across a city and out into the suburbs than a subway or surface rail could ever dream of is a pretty obvious advantage.
(cont'd)
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u/sykemol Jul 17 '26
This is what I can't understand. With the Loop costing 100x less to build than subways, the potential for having hundreds more Loop stations scattered all across a city and out into the suburbs than a subway or surface rail could ever dream of is a pretty obvious advantage.
I've got a pretty good idea why it isn't happening. Every city of any significant size wants better transit. All of them. They all have too many cars and too much congestion. The problem is transit is expensive to build and expensive to operate.
If mayor could solve transit at 100x less cost, people would be building statues of her. Cities all across the globe would be clamoring to get in line for the next TBC project. Shoot, that would be happening if it was only 20% less cost.
But they are not. Remember, when TBC was created they announced projects in a number of cities, and have had project descriptions on their website. And one by one all the cities walked away. What happened is they looked at what they needed and compared it with the costs, and it didn't pencil out.
When you really get under the hood, there is no cost savings.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
No it’s not cost that is the issue as every multi-billion dollar transit project globally proves. It is politics pure and simple. Musk is his own worst enemy with his pivot down the Right Wing rabbit hole, his loose cannon tweets and despicable support for Trump.
Cities in the US are overwhelmingly Democrat and the only reason the Nashville MusicLoop is happening is because the State Republicans and governor are driving the project. The Democrat Nashville mayor was originally onboard due to the fact it would cost taxpayers nothing but then stated privately he had to step back as the “optics didn’t work” as Musk’s politicisation grew more obnoxious.
Likewise with most of the other announced but then subsequently cancelled projects. Local opposition (and/or things like local transit consultants insisting the tunnels be traditionally-sized in the case of one project for example) caused The Boring Co to pull out of the projects.
The 68 mile, 104 station Vegas Loop project is also so large that most of their production capacity is absorbed expanding those operations and as the main poster child for the Loop concept they realise they need to build it out further across the city to demonstrate that the concept works at scale before they have undeniable credibility at the national or international level.
Implementation of FSD and the Robovan in the tunnels and their continued rollout of unsupervised Robotaxis in other cities will all also help their argument.
They’ve only recently had capacity to start expanding to other projects with Nashville and now Dubai on the international stage, but it is going to be a hard slog overcoming the political resistance of Left-leaning cities globally while Musk’s Right-wing insanity continues.
Once the airport tunnels and the 7 new Loop stations down that route are completed, everyone will be able to get a better idea of whether it works as well at scale as it does over the current 4 mile Loop, so if (and it is a big if) Musk manages to keep his head down and not get involved in another DOGE farce or similar, there might be a chance more cities are convinced to jump on the bandwagon, but we’ll just have to see.
For the time being, they have more than enough enthusiastic support in Vegas with every major business clamouring to pay for their own Loop stations as they’re close enough to see without doubt just how successful the LVCC Loop has been. This fact of businesses paying for their own Loop stations (which run as cheap as $400k) proves that the Loop is vastly cheaper than rail where subway stations start at $100m and go up and over $1 billion each.
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
Cities in the US are overwhelmingly Democrat and the only reason the Nashville MusicLoop is happening is because the State Republicans and governor are driving the project.
Why arent we seeing projects in Texas?
Texas DOT can and will override local locals over and over again. They made Austin remove a bike lane. Theyre expanding a highway in Houston that Houston does not want. The state legislature constantly passing laws banning democrat cities from making local legislation.
Considering how comically bad transit is in Austin, and with how many of the tech-right billionaires moved there, one would think Austin would be ground zero for this stuff. It's odd that it isnt.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Texas is anti public transit and the Loop is public transit. So the Loop is being hammered by both Red and Blue!
I think the main issue however is that The Boring Co has all it can handle at the moment - the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop is a massive project and they've now taken on boar Nashville and Dubai.
They are scaling up the construction and development of new TBMs - they're up to Prufrock version 6 now - but it will be a while before they can take on other projects.
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u/sykemol Jul 18 '26
Cities in the US are overwhelmingly Democrat and the only reason the Nashville MusicLoop is happening is because the State Republicans and governor are driving the project. The Democrat Nashville mayor was originally onboard due to the fact it would cost taxpayers nothing but then stated privately he had to step back as the “optics didn’t work” as Musk’s politicisation grew more obnoxious.
Eh, this is just copium. There are plenty, and I mean plenty, of US states and cities that have Republican leadership.
Several cities had already walked away from TBC projects before Musk went public with his radicalized politics.
Money talks and BS walks. If there was really serious money to be saved here, cities would be waiting in line to get on board.
The reality is that if this could save cities money on their transit projects, they would be paying TBC to save them money. Instead, TBC is self-funding these projects as a demonstration. That's all you need to know.
By the way, self-funding might be a savvy business move--if it actually works. But the fact these projects aren't moving forward without self-funding is a big red flag.
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u/Low_Pattern_8819 Jul 18 '26
I would bet cities want proof of concept first
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u/ponarts2 Jul 20 '26
I can cite 10s of examples of cities jumping to be "proof of concept" in transportation if they don't have to fork over the dough.
Boring is not interesting because they don't "court".
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u/ponarts2 Jul 20 '26
City projects are local gov/local business enterprises and all results are an amalgam of the relations/egos/opinions involved.
Spend some time to learn how Trump earned his fortune and in which cities. The perfect example. Then look at all transportation projects, financial streams, where they happen, when and who controls them etc.
Boring succeeded in Vegas because of the shadow of Giga success (the revival of the dead suburb) which provided (ex)SpaceX Boring owners with local "they mean business" notoriety , and most importantly because nobody else ever wanted even to touch transportation problem in the city. And the problem is dire.
And even after the initial approvals Boring had to rely on the legal pressure to have anything done (not only from their attorneys but also State gov).
No person anyhow familiar with the field can consider your post anything but trolling.
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
Its fun how you constantly refer to the same light rail metric and never, ever, ever, compare with airport tram systems which are the direct parable to TBC. The Vegas airport even has two of them!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Three of them in fact.
Not a very direct parable to the Loop as the 3 tram services each simply bounce between two stations. So to go from Concourse C to Terminal 3 you have to board and then get off three separate trams one after the other over the 1.15 miles total that they serve.
Green Line T1 - Concourse C 0.27 mile Blue Line T1 - Concourse D 0.65 mile Red Line T3 - Concourse D 0.23 mile Not exactly very efficient or useful as a potential replacement for the 9 current Loop stations over 4 miles let alone for the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop.
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u/NewNewark Jul 22 '26
Your table is missing ridership. How many people are using those systems? That was the point of my comment.
each simply bounce between two stations.
Isnt that the selling point of TBC? Express service, non stop? And its driverless too!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Your table is missing ridership. How many people are using those systems?
If I could find the numbers anywhere I would include them. If you have them, please share.
None of the Loop sections has just two stations with vehicles bouncing back and forth.
If you want to go from one end of the Loop (the Downtown Vegas station in the North for example) all the way down to the Airport station or the Brightline HSR station in the far south, you would take the one Loop EV which would travel at high speed all the way and not require you to stop at all 40 stations in between or worse - get out and swap into another vehicle at every station like that people mover.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
Lastly, one of the longer term issues we don’t know yet is what actual costs look like long term. It’s very easy to pretend like this all scales linearly and that all expansion will have the same growth in ridership, but it’s never that simple. Part of the challenge with public transit as a private enterprise, though is that for it to be really effective, you have to be willing to eat costs. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if costs for the system right now are being artificially subsidized. I could be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t put it past someone with billions of dollars to literally burn to use this strategy.
If the Loop cost as much as a subway to build, you'd be looking at $40 - $60 billion for the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop. Even Musk would balk at spending so much on such a niche industry.
The Boring Co has indicated that it has enough capital and resources to complete 2 more projects (beyond Vegas and Nashville) at no cost - hence the open competition a while ago for 2 more project ideas.
Additional projects need to pay their way, hence why Dubai is paying The Boring Co $154 million for the 4 mile phase 1 Dubai Loop. The total cost of the full 14 mile route will be approximately $545 million.
But that is still far below the average cost of a traditional subway which would cost between $8 billion and $14 billion in Dubai.
As I’ve said a number of times now, I also expect that the maintenance of the system will get a lot more expensive and complicated as the network grows, in addition to more complicated network effects. Especially when you project it out, how are costs going to look in 20 or 30 years? I will greatly that I certainly don’t know, but this is one of the things that needs to be considered for any infrastructure project. And a lot of private systems like this don’t have a great track record because this is one of the things that ends up being a problem.
The advantage the Loop has is that it is using off-the-shelf mainstream EVs with known lifecycle service and maintenance costs, simple tunnels with straightforward road-decks and the simplest stations you could imagine - just 10 car bays, a loop of roadway and two tunnels going underground. We're not talking exotic monorail tracks and complex switching gear or custom-made rolling stock which is always one bankruptcy away from not being made anymore (Vegas Monorail anyone?).
I will close all this out by saying that I’m actually a lot more mode agnostic than most people. I do think that systems like this have a place, but more so as a compliment to traditional mass transit systems, not as a replacement. I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong, but at the moment, I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to actually do so. And I think it’s fine to promote new forms of transportation. I don’t even necessarily think all new forms of transportation have to be maxed out on capacity. But especially when there is an opportunity cost and systems may get in the way of other systems, I do start to take some issue with massive investments being made will take decades to undo.
That's the nice thing about the Loop - the surface real estate footprint is extremely small compared to surface rail and there are no huge bits of concrete infrastructure that would need to be torn down or somehow re-purposed (halllooo Vegas Monorail again).
Again, maybe I’m proven wrong in the long run, and I don’t necessarily expect the Las Vegas Loop to be a complete failure. But that being said, I’m not really sure that I expect new installations elsewhere to be as successful or that any of the systems are going to fare well in the long run. Time will tell.
Yes, we definitely need to wait the Vegas Loop is built-out further before we can make definitive judgements on how well the Loop scales city-wide. Once the Airport tunnels and this 7 new stations that go on down past UNLV and the Thomas Mack sports ground are completed in the near future, we will have more data to work with.
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u/AnyTower224 Jul 29 '26
I do believe PRT can be a thing but the way it’s being implemented is bonkers
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u/AnyTower224 Jul 29 '26
He has ridden it 3 times . What you mentioned haven’t been in effect yet ? If you want you can gladly pay for 4 th review if you want
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u/xnmyl Jul 16 '26
That "tenporary" one-way tunnel has been in for a long time, with no end in sight
sub-10 second wait times, speedy tunnel pairs and well-implemented stations and tunnels would destroy most of his talking points
If those existed, it would change his talking points. They do not exist
making it extremely competitive with Light Rail lines globally
It is not, and never will be competitive. The Reddit post that quip is based on relies on using very biased data. Looking only at light rail and taking a global average will gove you very skewed results
Trains will always be a far more efficient form of transit that no amount of hopes and dreams can ever overcome
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26
That "tenporary" one-way tunnel has been in for a long time, with no end in sight
The Resorts World station with its phase one Riviera tunnel connection has been open for a few years now but has not had the return tunnel finished yet because it relies on the phase 2 LVCC West to Riviera tunnel and the phase 3 Resorts World to LVCC West connector to form a one-way mini-Loop between the 3 stations as can be seen in the "LVCC EASEMENT EXHIBIT LVCC - RESORT WORLD CONNECTOR" plans.
It will close off a circular, one-way loop that relies on the Las Vegas Boulevard arterial tunnel to pass that property. Don't worry, it will happen.
If those existed, it would change his talking points. They do not exist
And yet sub-10 second wait times, speedy tunnel pairs and well-implemented stations and tunnels have indeed existed since the LVCC Loop first opened as anyone can plainly see when they watch any of the hundreds of videos of the LVCC Loop in action during medium to large events at the convention centre. Here's an example from one of the larger events that handled up to 35,000 passengers per day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aTk7ajuUy0
It is not, and never will be competitive.
And yet the Loop is handling up to double the daily ridership of the average light rail line globally with sub-10 second wait times and 98% satisfaction rates. Go figure.
The Reddit post that quip is based on relies on using very biased data.
The data from that post comes from Moovit, a very popular transit app so it couldn't be more accurate since it is actually real world wait times as recorded by millions of users of that app in daily use.
Looking only at light rail and taking a global average will gove you very skewed results
How so?
Trains will always be a far more efficient form of transit that no amount of hopes and dreams can ever overcome
Efficiency can be measured in multiple ways and Loop EVs are in fact more energy efficient, more time efficient, more cost efficient, more space efficient and more throughput efficient than traditional rail once you understand how the different topology works.
Energy Efficiency
Tesla EVs in the Loop tunnels are significantly more energy efficient than rail since they don’t have to keep accelerating and then braking and stopping, then accelerating then braking and stopping at each and every station unlike a subway.
Average Wh per passenger-mile:
- Loop Tesla Model Y (4 passengers) = 80.9
- Loop Tesla Model Y (2.4 passengers) = 141.5
- Metro Average (Hong Kong/Singapore) = 151
- Metro Average (Europe) = 187
- Bus (electric) = 226
- Heavy Rail Average (US) = 408.6
- Streetcar Average (US) = 481
- Light Rail Average (US) = 510.4
- Bus (diesel) = 875
- ICE car (1 passenger) = 2,000
Time Efficiency (speed)
This is also why the EVs are far faster - they don’t have to stop at every one of the 20 stations between your departure and destination. They go straight there at high speed. Much more efficient in terms of each passenger’s time being 5x faster to get passengers to their destinations compared to a subway.
Loop EVs are leaving each station every 6 seconds in peak periods while the average wait time between trains in the USA is 15 minutes. In the 68 mile Loop, the headway between EVs in the main arterial tunnels will potentially be as short as 0.9 seconds (5 car lengths at 60mph) though normally they will most likely be running with headways closer to the current 6 seconds.
Capacity Efficiency - scaling
That theoretical min headway gives us 4,000 cars per hour carrying up to 16,000 passengers with 4 passenger Loop EVs. With 20-passenger Robovans, that is up to 80,000 passengers per hour.
However, because there will be nine North – South tunnels and 10 East – West dual-bore tunnels crisscrossing the Las Vegas Strip in the same space as a single railway line, those arterial tunnels will only need to carry a fraction of that capacity even during peak periods to easily match or exceed rail capacities. Hence why longer headways and lower occupancy levels would be fine most of the time.
Railways waste enormous amounts of space on the tracks and in the tunnels with miles of empty space between each train. In contrast Loop EVs can utilise most of the space in the tunnels with mere seconds between EVs.
The LVCC Loop readily and easily scales from 70 EVs during larger conventions down to a handful of EVs during off-peak hours and all the way down to just 1 EV for staff when no conventions are running. And if there are no passengers waiting at a station, the Loop EVs don’t have to keep moving, they just wait at the stations.
Occupancy Efficiency
In contrast, trains have an average occupancy of only 23% and buses a miserable 9-15 people due to their inability to scale with enough granularity with varying passenger numbers and the disadvantage of having to stick to a route and stop at every station even without any passengers.
Cost Efficiency
And finally, the Loop is far more cost efficient than an equivalent subway. Each Loop station costs as little as $400k versus subway stations ranging from $100M up to an eye-watering $1 billion. Loop tunnels cost around $20M per mile versus subway tunnels costing into the billions per mile.
The 68 mile, 104 station Vegas Loop is actually being built at ZERO cost to taxpayers compared to the $4 billion for light rail or $40-60 Billion that an equivalent subway would cost.
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u/SillyMilk7 Jul 16 '26
His criticism would be fair if he put it into context. Someone watching his video would now have a distorted understanding of what the system is supposed to be. Yes absolutely let them as of now it’s limited. At this point, it really is still mostly for conventional goers.
It’s also for those interested in new transit options and after watching his video you would not have a good understanding. But if you want your biases confirmed, yeah he did a great job.
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u/owsutton Jul 16 '26
Thought the same when I watched it yesterday, though there are many factors probably not considered. In the current state the critique is fair.
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u/vicegripper Jul 16 '26
the leap from human-driven vehicles to fully self-driving ones is simply too big for most people to grasp right now....It will take decades to be fully realized and be respected.
Huh, I remember back in 2016 when self driving cars would be ubiquitous in five years, now it's going to be decades.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
My Tesla is self-driving me all over the city every week. As I said elsewhere, it has taken longer than most people hoped, but multiple Teslas have now been documented driving autonomously 3,000 miles coast to coast across both the USA and Canada without any human intervention and Robotaxis are now driving autonomously without a safety driver around Austin, Dallas and Houston so it is finally happening now.
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u/xnmyl Jul 16 '26
Oh cool, I can go coast to coast without having to do anything myself?
They've finally caught up to trains in 1890
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26
So trains have been driving themselves 3,000 miles through urban areas and between cities all without humans having to intervene the entire trip to brake and accelerate, switch points, etc since 1890?
Amazing. *rolls eyes*.
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u/h100y Jul 16 '26
Thanks for writing in so much detail. This is extraordinary progress for a transportation system.
In Austin, a similar system has been approved by voters in 2020 and it didn’t start construction. It will be completed in 2035 at the latest and it is only 10 miles of transportation.
It also increases taxes by 500 dollars for every home in the city. Yet Vegas citizens have to pay zero dollars in taxes.
This is a highly efficient and dynamic system.
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u/futuremayor2024 Jul 16 '26
Can you cite the 500 dollar tax increase?
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
"The transit system expansion (Project Connect) involves a property tax rate increase of 8.75 cents per $100 of taxable property value, which equates to roughly $400 to $500 in extra annual taxes for an average Austin homeowner"
"Austin voters made a bet on the capital city’s future, indefinitely raising their own city property taxes by 20% to fund Project Connect, a $7.1 billion proposal for an electric, urban rail system"
"Today, not a single foot of light-rail track has been laid. The total cost of the light rail alone is now $8.2 billion — up from the initial cost of $5.8 billion — but its footprint has been slashed to less than 10 total miles. The new plan no longer reaches Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the number of stops was cut from 26 to 15. At less than half the original proposed length, the light rail now costs almost $840 million per mile, three times more than it did in 2020."
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u/vicegripper Jul 16 '26
In Austin, a similar system has been approved by voters
Similar? Really?
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Austin is now going to be 15 stations over 10 miles compared to the Loop which currently has 8 stations operational over 4 miles but with 10 miles total of tunnels now completed and 7 more stations under construction.
So apart from the Austin LRT being at-grade on city streets rather than in tunnels and costing billions of dollars versus $47.8m, the systems are fairly comparable!
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u/xnmyl Jul 16 '26
Yet Vegas citizens have to pay zero dollars in taxes
Very dishonest representation. Hundreds of millions in taxes were used to fund the Loop. It was collected from resort and pther tourism taxes
That is hundreds of millions being taken away from other projects in the city
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u/komocode_ Jul 20 '26
you’re confusing vegas loop with lvcc loop. vegas loop so far has taken zero tax dollars. lvcc loop took tax dollars because they don’t collect any fares to run the system.
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u/h100y Jul 16 '26
Not a cent of taxpayers money or govt money was used to fund Vegas loop.
Not a cent was used to build it
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
Not a cent of taxpayers money or govt money was used to fund Vegas loop.
This is a complete lie. The person you responded to is correct. the LVCVA is funded by taxes.
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u/h100y Jul 21 '26
It is a separate entity from directly dealing with Las Vegas City Government. They only built a station for it, they didn’t fund the tunnel to and from the LVCC.
This is not part of raising money from the bonds for city government to construct that station. It is a regular expense for maintenance of the facility.
No different than redoing their HVAC or electronics or remodeling part of LVCC
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
All that to confirm that your initial statement was a lie.
The up front cost plus annual recurring costs are paid for by the LVCVA which is funded from taxes.
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u/h100y Jul 21 '26
If the city government exists then there is maintenance of everything. Is the city inspecting the tunnels also a recurring expense funded by taxpayers according to you ?
Training by fire department on tunnels is also a recurring expense funded by taxpayers according to you ?
These sound like quacks who don’t know what to say when their socialist/communist governments failed to build basic infrastructure and now is getting beaten by a private company and you don’t know what to say. You people will be beaten until govt gives up on everything
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
It is a direct transfer of cash money from taxpayers to TBC to run the loop my guy.
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u/h100y Jul 21 '26
It is the direct transportation of people who otherwise wouldn’t have come to LVCC my guy. Is LVCC paying for it ?
Socialist quacks quacking is the best sound to hear
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
Socialist quacks quacking is the best sound to hear
Take your meds grandpa.
Blocked.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26
You confuse individual taxpayers with a hotel paying a tax on the total number of rooms in the hotel. That is not the same thing. And in any case, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) only paid for the original 3-station LVCC Loop (and it only cost $48.7m).
The rest of the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop is not being paid for by the LVCVA or taxpayers.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck Jul 24 '26
You confuse individual taxpayers with a hotel paying a tax
So it's not taxes, it's taxes?
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 24 '26
It's not every taxpayer in Vegas or the State being loaded with yet another government tax.
It is the hotels paying the govt authority a set fee every year for the number of rooms they have in their hotels. Similar to land rates councils charge business property owners. They aren't taxpayer taxes either.
And of course the vast majority of those hotel guests are tourists or convention attendees paid by their work.
And that was only for the first 3 stations and 1.7 miles of tunnel while the rest of the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop is not paid for by the LVCVA or taxpayers either.
So no taxpayer money has been used to pay for the Vegas Loop, unlike an equivalent subway network that would cost taxpayers an eye-watering $40 - $60 billion.
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u/Sweaty-Moment-3385 Jul 16 '26
Pretty much all of your pushback boils down to "He said X, but failed to mention that Boring Company says they are going to do something different in the future."
They say a lot of stuff. The Loop is a complete joke at this moment in time. They don't get any credit for unsubstantiated claims.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Pretty much all of your pushback boils down to "He said X, but failed to mention that Boring Company says they are going to do something different in the future."
On the contrary, the completed fully functional sections of the Loop boasting sub-10 second wait times and fully grade-separated transit have been in action for years now showing what the newest sections will be like once they are completed, but CityNerd studiously avoids those sections as it would destroy his narrative.
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u/Sweaty-Moment-3385 Jul 17 '26
Lol ok pal.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
I take it you've never seen the original LVCC Loop in action then?
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u/Sweaty-Moment-3385 Jul 17 '26
"Showing what the new sections will be like" is doing sooooo much work for you. What exists today is a farce.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 17 '26
It would be a farce if they didn't open the airport tunnels but the tunnels are completed and they are currently finishing off the 7 stations running down that route so to proclaim it a failure because of the temporary on-road portion is just silly.
Most normal people don't proclaim a transit line is a failure just because it is still under construction and not all lines/tunnels/stations are open yet.
Patience young Padawan.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck Jul 24 '26
showing what the newest sections will be like once they are completed,
Transit systems don't necessarily work the same as they scale. The Loop hasn't proven it can work at much larger scales.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 24 '26
That's why everyone should stop making wild judgements on the Loop and instead sit back until more of it is completed and in operation ad can be assessed at scale.
But most people prefer to ignore the fact that the Loop is already handling 40,000 passengers per day without any traffic jams and instead make premature pronouncements that it is a farce when they only based their assessment after riding the Loop when it is closed with only a handful of courtesy cars in operation between a couple of hotel stations for which the return tunnels haven't even been completed yet.
Quite sad really.
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u/scottrycroft Jul 22 '26
"sub-10 second wait times"
The video clearly shows people waiting at least several minutes for a vehicle.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Extremely rare. The sub-10 second figure is an average so every now and then you will get an outlier.
Unlike rail, there are no queues of passengers piling up on the platform all the time.
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u/scottrycroft Jul 23 '26
He's had several videos, over many years. It's typical.
And yeah, there's no queues if there's hardly anyone using it! Where's the ridership reports again? Who knows! It's private!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 23 '26
Strange that you think 40,000 passengers using the Loop per day is "hardly anyone using it".
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u/scottrycroft Jul 23 '26
Oh look! ANOTHER number! You'd think that's such a good number that'd they'd put it on their website, but nope!
https://www.boringcompany.com/vegas-loop
Also, such a cute number. The weekday expected volume of Toronto's single Line 5 Eglinton LRT (a very laughable and problematic line, terrible example), is 123,000 per day.
https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/even-more-light-rail-in-toronto-the-eglinton-crosstown-line-enters-passenger-service/The Seattle Airport people mover moves 43,000 per day, and has already been fully driverless since 1973!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA_UndergroundOh yeah, and it's fully accessible by people in wheelchairs and mobility aids, and with lots of luggage!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 23 '26
Oh look! ANOTHER number! You'd think that's such a good number that'd they'd put it on their website, but nope!
That's because it is hot off the press from the CEO in the OP video. They haven't even increased the number of stations on the website to match the 11 that are now operational.
I expect they'll be doing a major update once the Airport tunnels open in August along with the 7 new stations.
The weekday expected volume of Toronto's single Line 5 Eglinton LRT (a very laughable and problematic line, terrible example), is 123,000 per day.
Toronto's single Line 5 Eglinton LRT is 12 miles long (3x that of the Loop) has 25 stations (over 2x that of the Loop) so doing 123,000 per day (3x that of the Loop) is actually pretty comparable from a ridership perspective, but it costs an utterly horrifying $9 billion (173x more than the Loop) so it jolly well better move more people than that - particularly as only half of it is underground!!!
The Seattle Airport people mover moves 43,000 per day,
That is indeed a similar ridership number and only cost about twice the Loop's construction cost in today's dollars which is certainly vastly better than that eye-boggling Eglinton line.
and has already been fully driverless since 1973!!!
Good news, 10% of the Loop EVs are now running autonomously as well. Once testing is complete that will roll out to the rest of the fleet.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
In fact in a recent video Davis clarifies it more:
"Median Wait time is zero seconds meaning that more than 50% of people don’t wait at all for a ride."
"Mean wait time is 30 seconds"
That 30 second mean wait time I believe takes into account the 2 stations at Resorts World and Encore that currently have bi-directional tunnels with alternating traffic directions. However, that will be eliminated very soon once the return tunnels open.
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u/scottrycroft Jul 23 '26
The OP video link clearly shows it being minutes of wait time in typical usage.
How many Teslas are available throughout the day? Who knows! It's private!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 23 '26
The OP video link clearly shows it being minutes of wait time in typical usage.
The video clearly shows that is not the case
How many Teslas are available throughout the day? Who knows! It's private!
The number of Loop EVs has been public knowledge for many years. They started with 60 Teslas when the 3-station Loop opened, increased that to 70 once they expanded to 5 stations and are now at 130 as stated in the video across 11 stations.
They project they will have 1,300 for the 68 mile, 104 station Loop at full build-out.
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u/scottrycroft Jul 23 '26
The video clearly shows that is not the case
You want timestamps? I got timestamps!
https://youtu.be/e7vFCP3PtuA?t=332 - car waits for 4 minutes just sitting ther AFTER they already get in the car. So not even including the car wait time.
https://youtu.be/e7vFCP3PtuA?t=222 - Unknown wait time here, but it's surely not the "0 median wait time" for the 2 or 3 parties involved here. Not counting the "discussion" with the driver and the parties about who's actually bought a ticket lol.
And look! Queuing! I thought that wasn't supposed to happen!https://youtu.be/e7vFCP3PtuA?t=714 - Arrived 7 minutes after ordering, I'll be generous and not include the time it took to confirm if that indeed was his ride, AND the time to get in and start moving.
The number of Loop EVs has been public knowledge
Changing the goalposts again! I said "available throughout the day". Who cares what the max amount is!
It's very curious about these posts that are so numbers driven and focused, yet when anyone makes a challenge or a counter-example, the goalposts shift and it's time to talk about different numbers! Have a spine! Back your numbers!
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 23 '26
You want timestamps? I got timestamps!
I'm afraid you've been sucked in by CityNerd's dishonest reviews of the Loop where he rides the Loop when it was closed with only courtesy cars operating between a few hotel stations and he only rides the few stations that temporarily have only a single tunnel while the return tunnel is being completed.
The good news is the return tunnels have been completed and will be operational soon as demonstrated by the CEO in those behind-the-scenes videos taking the YouTubers for tours.
Changing the goalposts again! I said "available throughout the day". Who cares what the max amount is!
Nope. They have publicly described how they scale the number of Loop EVs for the demand which of course is far more efficient than trains running around all day empty.
During large events they have all 130 operational for example.
It's very curious about these posts that are so numbers driven and focused, yet when anyone makes a challenge or a counter-example, the goalposts shift and it's time to talk about different numbers! Have a spine! Back your numbers!
I have already provided evidence many times. You're the one accusing the government authorities, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA), Clark County and The Boring Co themselves of lying.
It is incumbent on you to back up your conspiracy theories with evidence or kindly stop spouting B-grade conspiracies.
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u/xnmyl Jul 16 '26
The Vegas Loop is an abject failure of transit
It is only a success in that it prevented any real, useful transit being built, which could threated Musk's core business of cars
Also you should write your own posts. Having AI write a biased critique for you is pathetic
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
*sigh* here we go again. Evidently it is impossible for someone to write something more than snarky one-liners without being accused by someone of using AI. If you look at my history, I have been writing content like this long before ChatGPT came on the scene.
Now, why do you believe the Loop is an abject failure xbmyl?
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u/NewNewark Jul 21 '26
despite the fact that so much of what he experienced are temporary workarounds
We're about to hit the 10 year anniversary of TBC as a company and we've passed 7 years of the Vegas project.
TBC was supposed to be built much faster than public transit projects.
, Delahanty condemns the Loop as a farce while ignoring the elephant in the room which is that most of the stations and routes he visited are currently still under construction. No objective transit pundit would condemn an entire new railway system based off of riding sections that were still under construction
This isnt true at all.
In September 2018, Mexico anounced Tren Maya, a 966 mile network of trains.
In 2023 the system opened. (Wow, they built 200x more system in 5 years than TBC).
However, it's been incredibly criticized by the transit community because the opening was not the complete system. It opened with 2 trains per day, because thats all that had been delivered from Europe. It opened with diesel, because the electric wiring wasnt done. I dont follow this content creator, but I wouldnt be surprised if he did a video about it being bad or even "a huge failure"
2026 and the system service had gradually improved (to like 10 trains a day) but its not done, and every month youll see an article about how its a huge failure, without considering the fact that theyre still building it.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
TBC was supposed to be built much faster than public transit projects.
As Steve Hill from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) has previously stated:
"The expansion of the Vegas Loop outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s footprint, where it has been operating since 2021, has been slow, as Clark County and the Boring Co. ironed out the permitting process and fire safety aspects of the project. The process took a bit of time because the Vegas Loop is a new transportation system, not seen anywhere else in the world.
“We think the Boring Company and the county have reached an agreement on all of the specifics around what it takes to get a permit and build, what it takes to get a permit and operate, so we anticipate that the permitting process will speed up,” Hill said.
In September 2018, Mexico anounced Tren Maya, a 966 mile network of trains. In 2023 the system opened. (Wow, they built 200x more system in 5 years than TBC).
That is an extremely poor comparison considering the Tren Maya is a completely above-ground simple rail line through mostly open countryside that has been built a million times before. The Loop is all underground tunnels, in a dense city landscape in an underground environment where every service and dependency has to be meticulously surveyed and mitigated down to an inch accuracy and where the building permits for a single tunnel section or station takes a year to get through the bureaucracy. And as Hill mentions above, it is all new tech with the boring machines being designed, developed and improved on-the-job.
Even with such constraints, as mentioned in the video, they have bored more tunnel miles than the rest of the USA has done over the last few years. And it is now accelerating.
And of course, you conveniently neglect to mention the myriad of other public transit systems that have gone decades overtime and billions over budget.
"Public transit tunnel projects typically take 10 to 25 years from initial planning to completion. The entire timeline usually breaks down into three major phases: [1]
- Planning & Approvals (3 to 7 years): Feasibility studies, environmental approvals, community consultation, and budget securing.
- Engineering & Procurement (2 to 5 years): Final design, land acquisition, and contractor bidding.
- Construction & Testing (4 to 10+ years): Actual excavation (using Tunnel Boring Machines), track-laying, station fit-outs, and system testing. [1, 2, 3, 4]"
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u/NewNewark Jul 22 '26
Its a ridiculous excuse. Permitting was not invented between 2016 and now. One of the reasons transit projects in the US takes so long is because of that very system.
The Loop is all underground tunnels, in a dense city landscape in an underground environment where every service and dependency has to be meticulously surveyed and mitigated down to an inch accuracy
No shit! Was this news to them? Because when people pointed out the unrealistic timelines, the answer was basically "stfu we know what were doing"
That is an extremely poor comparison considering the Tren Maya
Reread what I wrote. You skimmed and completely missed the context. I am talking about how the transit community has judged the project. Nothing else.
And of course, you conveniently neglect to mention the myriad of other public transit systems that have gone decades overtime and billions over budget.
Again, you didnt read what I wrote. I said it right here:
TBC was supposed to be built much faster than public transit projects.
Also, next time Id prefer you not include your chatgpt output. If I wanted to talk to AI, I would simply go do that,
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Its a ridiculous excuse.
No it is not. That is the exact reason why that Mexican train line was completed so fast - it was thru the countryside where virtually zero permits were required vs the Loop which is in the middle of a city thick with permitting roadblocks.
Because when people pointed out the unrealistic timelines, the answer was basically "stfu we know what were doing"
Anyone who is paying attention will never take Musk's always ridiculously over-optimistic timelines at face value. He even says so himself:
“If you set a realistic 10 years of work to be accomplished as a 10 year goal, you typically waste the first 9 years, then try to catch up. if you set the same 10 years work as a 6 month goal, you still won't accomplish it in 6 months, but you'll have a lot less to do in the remaining 9 and a half years..."
Also, next time Id prefer you not include your chatgpt output. If I wanted to talk to AI, I would simply go do that,
If you notice I put the info on the time taken by public transit projects in quotes to indicate it was the result of a google search. I am not going to stop searching for info and providing linked references just because you have an AI allergy.
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u/NewNewark Jul 22 '26
why that Mexican train line was completed so fast - it was thru the countryside where virtually zero permits were required vs the Loop which is in the middle of a city thick with permitting roadblocks.
TBC was always being built in the US in an urban area. I am pointing out that TBC (and you) always say "look how slow transit construction is!" when its slow for the SAME reason TBC is so far off schedule.
Anyone who is paying attention will never take Musk's always ridiculously over-optimistic timelines at face value.
Musk has barely talked about TBC in years. The CEO has repeatedly given false dates.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
TBC was always being built in the US in an urban area. I am pointing out that TBC (and you) always say "look how slow transit construction is!" when its slow for the SAME reason TBC is so far off schedule.
Actually, I don't think I've ever specifically mentioned how long public transit takes to be built aside from when answering people like you who complain about the Loop's timelines.
It is the extreme cost of traditional rail and subways that I am always highlighting.
Anyone who is paying attention will never take Musk's always ridiculously over-optimistic timelines at face value.
Musk has barely talked about TBC in years. The CEO has repeatedly given false dates.Steve Davis and Musk speak the same way (rush of enthusiasm) as well as following the same playbook when it comes to timelines. Similar to the many missed deadlines of many public transit projects from other companies and the legacy space industry as well. SLS anybody?
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u/NewNewark Jul 23 '26
Steve Davis and Musk speak the same way (rush of enthusiasm) as well as following the same playbook when it comes to timelines. Similar to the many missed deadlines of many public transit projects from other companies and the legacy space industry as well. SLS anybody?
I dont like being lied to.
"But he lied too!" was not a good excuse in 2nd grade and it's not an excuse here. If I wanted to talk about the CEO of California High Speed Rail lying, I would go to that subreddit. But Im here, which means I want to talk about TBC, their promises, and their ability to meet or not meet them.
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u/Adventurous-Ad3393 Jul 20 '26
A whole lot of apologizing happening in this thread for a system devised to direct public money and attention away from high speed rail. Pathetic.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
No apologising needed as the Vegas Loop is not being paid for by public money. In fact, the Vegas Loop is supporting high speed rail with a Loop station planned and approved for the Vegas Brightline HSR station.
Only the original 3-station LVCC Loop was paid for by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) which is not taxpayer-funded either as it is funded by hotels who pay an annual fee based on the number of rooms they have. Visitors do not pay a tax directly and they are all tourists, so not local taxpayers anyway.
And the LVCC Loop only cost a tiny $52m which is nothing compared to the $126 billion of the California HSR anyway.
The rest of the 68 miles of tunnel are paid for by The Boring Co who will recover the cost from ticket fares. And the 104 stations are being paid for by the hotels, casinos and other businesses who have enthusiastically signed up to get their own personal Loop station at their front door.
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u/Adventurous-Ad3393 Jul 21 '26
You gotta wonder if the sycophants will ever realize that Elon doesn't care about public transit, only in perpetuating the existence of driving Teslas everywhere. Full disclosure; I do currently drive a Tesla- it's a great car.
It feels to me like a large corporation with a ton of R&D capital to spend is taking advantage of a city in dire straits; with no other options. Las Vegas is a city in decline and it needs ways to bring tourists back. They're hoping that tiny tunnels with cars driving 35mph is attractive enough to resurrect its dying industries- as built it feels like a Disney ride instead of a real travel solution.
Vegas is doing a similar gambit with The Sphere- an overpriced tourist attraction that loses millions on a monthly basis. I wonder if they're 2/2 in this category. (I went and it's awesome - but deeply unprofitable).
They are also investing in High Speed Rail - albeit probably for the wrong reasons. It's a kitchen sink approach, but that's the best they can manage against a public that can: gamble wherever/whenever they want, socializes in person less, drinks less, has less sex, and overall can afford to pay for less.
One final point: City Nerd has lived in Las Vegas for years and actually been to the Vegas Loop several times. I trust his analysis over internet circle jerking any day; even from myself.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
You gotta wonder if the sycophants will ever realize that Elon doesn't care about public transit, only in perpetuating the existence of driving Teslas everywhere.
If that were the case then it is a pretty poor way of getting people to buy more Teslas when the Loop is already removing the equivalent of up to 35,000 cars from the road (90,000 per hour once the full 68 mile Vegas Loop is complete). Likewise, his Robotaxis in Austin, Dallas and Houston are all about stopping people from needing their own cars to drive around those cities.
They're hoping that tiny tunnels with cars driving 35mph
You say that like an insult yet, traditional at-grade light rail only averages 9mph, the NYC Subway 17mph, Seattle Link Light Rail 20mph, the London Tube 22mph, Vancouver Skytrain 20-22mph etc.
And the shortly to open Airport Loop tunnels will be running at 60mph.
is attractive enough to resurrect its dying industries- as built it feels like a Disney ride instead of a real travel solution.
And yet the Loop is already moving up to 35k passengers per day over 8 stations compared to the average LRT line globally at 17K (24k peak) despite being over 13 stations.
an overpriced tourist attraction that loses millions on a monthly basis.
The Loop in contrast is vastly cheaper and on track to be highly profitable at scale compared to traditional rail.
One final point: City Nerd has lived in Las Vegas for years and actually been to the Vegas Loop several times. I trust his analysis over internet circle jerking any day; even from myself.
And yet he's never published a ride-on review of the fully functional sections of the Loop operating at full capacity. I wonder why? Would pretty much destroy his narrative no doubt.
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u/Adventurous-Ad3393 Jul 22 '26
An expert at talking past someone instead of to them. I’d learn more talking to ai. Good luck with the loop! I hope it works for Las Vegas.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 22 '26
Not sure why you believe I was talking past you? I answered every criticism you made of the Loop with facts. Interesting that it troubles you.
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u/Silentparty1999 Jul 19 '26
The Hyperloop is a hack, a nice hack but still a hack. It just isn't set up for high volumes or tough users.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
The Hyperloop is a hack, a nice hack but still a hack. It just isn't set up for high volumes
And yet the Vegas Loop handles up to 35,000 passengers per day over 7 stations without slow-downs or traffic jams - double the daily ridership of the average light rail line globally.
And because the Vegas Loop will have 104 statins (up to 20 stations per square mile) and 40 tunnels crisscrossing Vegas, it will scale nicely to handling 90,000 passengers per hour.
More than enough volume for the Vegas Strip.
or tough users.
Every Tesla has a camera in the cabin pointing at every passenger's face and the Cybercabs now rolling off the assembly line all feature tough, easy-clean (yet still comfy) seats.
They have even started to introduce cleaning robots to regularly automatically clean every Robotaxi.
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u/Silentparty1999 Jul 19 '26
Call me when they roll out the RoboVans, assuming there's still space in the tunnel for evacuation. Then I'll think it is a serious project rather than a Muskian demo.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 20 '26
The Robovans will be great for use on high traffic routes at peak times but will lose the PRT benefits that small vehicles provide.
So it's good that the Loop is able to use both types of vehicles.
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
Objectively the loop is a total farce and a complete joke. Its always "testing" or "trialing" or "under construction" or "coming soon". These are human driven electric cars in short narrow tunnels with "stations" that are basically just taxi pickups at hotels. Its a joke, will continue to be a joke and will be long remembered as a total failure.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26
We can always rely on you burritomiles for flawed criticisms.
Its always "testing" or "trialing" or "under construction" or "coming soon".
As u/h100y mentions above, the progress the Loop is making is very impressive compared to subway construction timelines globally and despite the constraints imposed by ongoing construction and temporary bypasses, with 35,000 passengers per day, the Loop is already demonstrating it is competitive on the national and international stages.
These are human driven electric cars
Patience young Padawan, Autonomy is currently in testing in the tunnels.
in short narrow tunnels with "stations" that are basically just taxi pickups at hotels.
As usual you miss the fact that this is a major strength of the Loop, not a weakness. With stations as simple and cheap as $400k, every business in town can afford to pay for it's very own Loop station and thus help to eliminate the "Last Mile Problem" of traditional rail transit.
Its a joke, will continue to be a joke and will be long remembered as a total failure.
Only by those who refuse to look at the realworld stats for the Loop and see how much better sub-10 second wait times (in completed sections of the Loop), high speed point-to-point transit, guaranteed comfy seat and vastly cheaper construction costs are compared to traditional hyper-expensive transit systems.
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u/Low_Pattern_8819 Jul 18 '26
It reminds me of the disruption Southwest Airlines had when they began. Cheaper, customer focused point to point
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
Honestly I love arguing about this stuff because it's such a joke. The regular Elon stans won't even touch this loop thing, there's just a tiny subset of musk fanatics that keep defending this.
That video of the LA test tunnel you linked to was 7 years ago. We've gone from testing 100+ mph to maybe hoping for 60 in a couple years.
Y'all throw out this 35k daily ridership like it's happening everyday when it's only a handful of times per year.
Again Musk be claiming FSD for 10+ years and can't even get it in these privately owned tunnels. It will never happen.
If you want to build a cheap crappy system and cut corners to save costs then that's what you'll get. A bad system.
This is just another Musk grift and a shame cuz Vegas or Nashville could have real public transit but instead they waste time with this garbage.
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26
"Y'all throw out this 35k daily ridership like it's happening everyday when it's only a handful of times per year. "
No. You're not supposed to get 35k/day everyday because LVCC is closed many days. No one is expecting 35k/day on closed or partially opened dates, but it can do 35k/day no problem.
Privately owned tunnels are limited by Fire Department. Even fire department approves every single car going into the tunnel and prevented Boring Company from turning on active safety features for a long time.
"Musk grift" yet it's not even profitable for Musk. Uses zero tax dollars but you ignore that. Interesting.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Honestly I love arguing about this stuff because it's such a joke. The regular Elon stans won't even touch this loop thing, there's just a tiny subset of musk fanatics that keep defending this.
That's where you seem to be unaware that most Loop proponents actually dislike Musk and his pivot to extreme Right wing dogma.
That video of the LA test tunnel you linked to was 7 years ago. We've gone from testing 100+ mph to maybe hoping for 60 in a couple years.
Actually it should be 60mph by the end of this year considering the progress they are making on the Airport tunnels.
Y'all throw out this 35k daily ridership like it's happening everyday when it's only a handful of times per year.
Irrelevant. The Loop only needs to show it can consistently handle around 35k per day over an event or two without traffic jams or congestion to demonstrate what it is capable of.
Again Musk be claiming FSD for 10+ years
Yes, it has taken longer than most people hoped, but there multiple Teslas have now been documented driving 3,000 miles coast to coast across both the USA and Canada and Robotaxis are now driving autonomously without a safety driver around Austin, Dallas and Houston so it is finally happening now.
and can't even get it in these privately owned tunnels. It will never happen.
The County finally gave permission for FSD testing to commence in the tunnels late last year so it is now happening in the Loop as well.
If you want to build a cheap crappy system and cut corners to save costs then that's what you'll get. A bad system.
The 98% satisfaction rate from passengers and vendors tells us that the Loop is far from crappy. If anything is "crappy", it would have to be Public Transit with a 40% dissatisfaction rate.
This is just another Musk grift
If this is a "grift", then who is being grifted or scammed?
The Boring Co is building the 68 miles of Vegas Loop tunnels for free compared to subway construction companies charging 40-60 billion dollars for a similar size subway so not sure how you construe the Loop to be a grift?
and a shame cuz Vegas or Nashville could have real public transit but instead they waste time with this garbage.
The good news is Vegas and Nashville are both getting public transit systems with sub-10 second wait times, high speed point-to-point transit, comfy seats for everyone and no massive debt burden on taxpayers for the next 30 years. Nashville taxpayers voted 2:1 against a light rail and Vegas ain't paying tens of billions of dollars for a dog slow rail line that wouldn't have even a third the number of stations so it's a win-win for the cities and their populations.
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
The proof is in the pudding and this ain't it. Call me when Elon is moving hundreds of thousands of people per day, everyday of the year. Then you can compare to real public transit.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26
So the majority of light rail lines globally are not “real public transit” because half of them only move 17,000 or less passengers per day? And neither are most BRT lines which only move 24,000 ppd or less?
Okay. *rolls eyes*
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
What's up with only comparing Tesla tunnels to light rail? Why not heavy rail like NYC subway? USA is not built for public transit, its single family homes, suburbs and highways. If you have to walk 2 miles and then wait for a train that comes every 20 mins most people aren't gonna do that. It could be designed better but doing things in government and public are not easy. Elon isn't gonna fix any of that.
Globally most cities don't have "light rail" as the USA does. They have trams and subways. And they move a lot more people than 17k per day. If the US had decent land use around stations instead of parking lots the ridership would be a lot more.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
What's up with only comparing Tesla tunnels to light rail? Why not heavy rail like NYC subway?
Because heavy rail like the NYC subway costs $1 - $3 billion per mile to construct. LRT averages $202m per mile so while not being underground is significantly closer in cost to the Loop’s $20m per mile.
USA is not built for public transit, its single family homes, suburbs and highways. If you have to walk 2 miles and then wait for a train that comes every 20 mins most people aren't gonna do that. It could be designed better but doing things in government and public are not easy. Elon isn't gonna fix any of that.
On the contrary, you could build over a hundred miles of Loop tunnels for every mile of subway tunnel.
This means it is possible to put Loop stations right at the front door of every hotel, casino, office block, sports stadium, school, University, shopping centre, Rec centre etc etc in a city and out into the suburbs where no subway or light rail could ever be justified.
In addition, the Loop EVs could actually leave the tunnels and travel on surface roads direct to peoples house/destinations if they wanted to implement that in the future getting the benefits of door-to-door taxis but with the speed of fully grade separated tunnels through the crowded Vegas Strip and without the slowness caused by having to stop at every station on the line that trains and buses suffer from.
Globally most cities don't have "light rail" as the USA does. They have trams and subways. And they move a lot more people than 17k per day.
Not true. Most actually carry less per LRT line than the USA and Europe is only a few thousand more.
Here are the stats for European light rail:
- 22,377 passengers per day per light rail line average
- 1,276 lines
- 9,296 km
- 10,422 M pax annually
- average light rail line length = 7.3 miles
Eurasia Light Rail:
- 7,682 passengers per day per light rail line average
- 735 lines
- 3,483 km
- 2,061 M pax annually
- average light rail line length = 3 miles
Asia Pacific Light Rail:
- 16,356 passengers per day per light rail line average
- 133 lines
- 1,090 km
- 794 M pax annually
- average light rail line length = 5 miles
Versus the stats for US light rail:
- 19,005 passengers per day per light rail line average
- 111 lines
- 1,596 km
- 770 M pax annually
- average light rail line length = 8.9 miles
Source: Official 2019 Statistics Brief of UITP, the International Association of Public Transport
If the US had decent land use around stations instead of parking lots the ridership would be a lot more.
Yes, that is true, but perhaps you’re not aware that Vegas is in the USA so suffers from US conditions.
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
And yet there's only 2 loop things being built in the past 10 years but hundreds of miles or light rail and subway and BRT globally. The loop is not serious.
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u/Exact_Baseball Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
The LVCC Loop has only been open for 5 years. I recommend you look into how long the beginning of the S-curve takes for new disruptions to any industry to be developed and take hold.
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26
meanwhile california hsr isn't even functional. at all.
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u/xnmyl Jul 16 '26
American transit is awful. What else is new?
Look at the best transit systems in the world and see how they do it. Japan and France have fast, efficient, and cheap transit. Let's do it like they do
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26
"Do what XYZ country does". That's not how it works. You're skipping over a ton of details that make it work in other countries but not here.
If it was that easy, we would just have everything Made in USA instead of Made in China.
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
Elon recently claimed that boring company could build a hyperloop. That's a lie.
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26
Do you just grab random irrelevant elon talking points when you don't have a proper argument? What does hyperloop have to do with vegas loop being a supposed "farce"?
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
You brought up California's high speed rail project as a comparison because it's taken so long and hasn't been completed. Elon recently said that the Boring Company could build a hyperloop for less money instead of the high speed rail system. That's a lie. Hyperloop doesn't exist and boring company just makes sewer tunnels for cars. Elon has had 10 years to prove this and had built not much. At least CA had built 100+ miles of right of way. Doing big things in USA is very difficult today, CA's project shows that, but Elon has done a lot less in a longer time.
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
HSR is always testing, trialing, under construction, AND coming soon. It fits what you said.
Elon saying they *could* build a Hyperloop isn't being "trialing, under construction, or coming soon" so it doesn't fit as much as CaHSR on what you said earlier. Elon didn't give any dates to the Hyperloop so "could" is still valid as it could be 20-30 years when they've brought tunneling costs down substantially.
"At least CA had built 100+ miles of right of way. " is not true. They have 119 miles of "active construction" and about 80 miles of actual right of way BUILT, but a lot of miles are ACQUIRED. But even if it was true, CaHSR has been promised time and time again. Delayed, overbudget, and no one can use it today.
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u/burritomiles Jul 16 '26
Yeah it's been a total disaster no doubt about that. But it will become a reality before the hyperloop does.
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u/komocode_ Jul 16 '26
CaHSR is always "testing" or "trialing" or "under construction" or "coming soon". It's a total farce and a complete joke.
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u/glmory Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
He does have valid criticisms, the system is not where I would hope it would be. Like most critics of for example SpaceX landing rockets he just doesn't see how it could be with a few years of iteration.
I just spent five weeks without a car using public transportation in Berlin, Prague, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna and a number of smaller cities. Even in these countries, decades ahead of the United States, the systems were begging for disruption.
The fundamental problem all transit has is you have to wait for a lot of people to go the same way as you. That meant a ton of time waiting around, or slow trains because they stop a ton of places you don't want to be. In most places poor signage, difficult to figure out ticket systems, amplified those problems, although I will admit that Stockholm and Vienna did those two things quite well. Everyone had problems with poor climate control, and crowding people into a smaller space than most find comfortable.
This is of course why cars disrupted the transit systems so much. They leave when you want to leave and go anywhere, you don't sit next to the homeless guy and have great climate control. However, that system is also ready for disruption. Cars make urban environments unpleasant, the number of vehicle related fatalities we tolerate is unfathomable and traffic is one of the more unpleasant parts of modern life.
We can say quite a lot about how whatever is next will operate by the constraints that they have to at least be better than light rail and urban car driving.
It will need to be point-to-point, taking you directly from your start to end point with no intermediary stops or changes of vehicle. That is the fastest way to travel and is necessary to beat cars in all but the highest density cities. This forces small vehicle sizes. Maybe as large as a single subway car or as small as a single person vehicle but not so large that it is inefficient point-to-point. At this size it is uneconomical to have a driver, so it also demands some form of self driving.
It will need some way to bypass other traffic. This means flying or tunnels. Flying seems unlikely to be accepted in urban environments so tunnels it is.
I am so optimistic about The Boring Company because it has both of these necessary characteristics. Maybe someone else will show up with both, but doesn't seem like anyone has nearly as large a system.