When Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, announced the plan for The Boring Company’s underground shuttle bus, it would take visitors to different parts of the city’s sprawling convention center campus. Travel between distant stations will take less than two minutes.

According to the Las Vegas Review, Hill said in June 2019: "If the system does not work, we will withdraw all funds."

According to an email between a Boring Company (TBC) representative and LVCVA, the media repeated this two-minute promise recently in April. The email is part of a 5,051 page document obtained by Plainsite under public records legislation.

So far, the two-minute goal still seems out of reach.

A detailed itinerary report from the same record request shows that in the first six weeks of operation, Tesla taxis on the LVCC Loop took an average of nearly four minutes to cross the system.

The data covers more than 30,000 free rides and 75,000 passengers, indicating that no day has an average travel time of less than 3 minutes, and an average day of 5 minutes. (TechCrunch does not include days when the system transported less than 1,000 people in total.) A video of the ride taken at a major car conference last week (the time is too close to be included in this batch of public documents) shows similar travel times.

Of course, a delay of a few minutes will not have much impact on ordinary conference participants, but if TBC fails to reach the passenger target during CES and other large exhibitions, it may cause huge economic losses. This difference also makes TBC question the commitment to build a larger public Loop network in Las Vegas, which was recently approved. Ultimately, the performance of the LVCC Loop may indicate whether Musk’s underground taxi can become a viable form of urban transportation, or more like a Tesla-promoted ride.

During the media preview of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 9, 2021, a digital map was displayed at Grand Central Station. Image credit: Getty Images / Ethan Miller

During the media preview of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 9, 2021, a digital map was displayed at Grand Central Station. Image credit: Getty Images / Ethan Miller

The plan for the larger Vegas Circle Line system includes 51 stations and approximately 29 miles of tunnels, connecting many tourist attractions in the city. On the Las Vegas Loop project page, TBC suggested that the trip from the city’s NFL stadium to the convention center would also take four minutes, although the distance is more than four times longer than today’s LVCC loop.

Real-world travel data also cast doubt on whether LVCC Loop can meet its capacity goal of 4,400 attendees per hour.

TBC achieved this number in a demonstration event in May by squeezing three passengers (without luggage) into each of the 62 Tesla Model 3, X, and Y vehicles in the system. However, in fact, during the opening period to attendees in early June and mid-July, each Loop vehicle only had two passengers on average.

A contract signed by TBC in 2019 provides for a fine of US$300,000 for large meetings where each TBC cannot move about 4,000 people per hour. Such a large fine may affect Loop's viability, and Loop earned only US$230,500 for transportation services in its first month of operation in June. (TBC also receives a monthly management fee of $167,000, regardless of how many cars it operates.)

As of mid-July, the maximum number of passengers carried by LVCC per hour was 1,355. An important reason for this is that in the hot summer in Nevada, LVCC usually does not hold the largest conferences, and there are not so many passengers in need of transportation. For example, at a beauty conference in June, the Loop operations engineer wrote to LVCVA: "I have reduced [number] cars now because we see very low passenger numbers." Some nights, 15 minutes after no passengers entered the system Later, the Loop management department will shut down the system in advance.

Loop has three levels of service. There are only five cars on the 2nd floor and no station attendants. At this time, there are no active meetings on the LVCC campus. There are 23 vehicles on the 3rd floor and can accommodate up to 20,000 tourists. Level 4, 30 to 62 Tesla, is used for the largest activities.

The test of the system is likely to be the January CES conference, which will attract 185,000 attendees. As TechCrunch predicted in August, last week, Loop received a license to operate 70 vehicles. Even so, it needs to either shorten the travel time or convince each vehicle to have at least three passengers to avoid capacity loss. It must also reduce the number of "ghost cars" that are driven without passengers-which actually accounted for most of the trip during the opening of the Loop in early June.

The current tunnel seems unlikely to accommodate more vehicles. In a test of 70 vehicles last week, a city inspector pointed out: “In some cases, the time interval between vehicles entering and exiting the tunnel in the station is 1 to 2 seconds.” Loop’s safety analysis is based on the difference between two vehicles. Maintain a distance of 6 seconds between vehicles.

The good news is that riders seem to like Loop. "Customers really like this system, which is obviously their preferred way to travel on campus. In the largest wave, the waiting time can be controlled at about two minutes at most," Seth Hooper, Director of Loop Operations ) Wrote at the end of June. Due to the needs of riders, the multi-color "Rainbow Road" tunnel lights that were originally turned on for only two minutes every quarter of an hour are now almost permanent fixtures.

In fact, one of the biggest problems with the system is still unauthorized visitors. In addition to the intrusion vehicle disclosed by TechCrunch in October, Loop has also been hacked by convention center employees many times, and they obviously want to take a peek. "The biggest culprit of unauthorized vehicles is the LVCVA trolley," Hooper wrote.

Even animals are involved. In late July, two TBC employees tried to rescue a kitten that fell into the sewer near the south station of the system.

TBC and LVCVA did not immediately respond to questions about the cat’s ultimate fate, nor did they respond to other detailed inquiries about travel data. However, TBC is cataloguing the safety and security incidents faced by any transportation system. At least 3 times, the Loop driver hit the fence or bollard when he misjudged the turn, causing minor damage. The only injury to a passenger (as of the end of June) was that a Loop passenger suffered minor cuts and bruises on his fingers when another passenger closed the door with his hand.

All this data is invaluable to TBC because it plans to expand the technology to serve the entire city. It is not clear whether the Vegas Loop is different from the LVCC system, whether it can accommodate children and pets, or how much the ticket fee of the paid system will cost.