Las Vegas Loop

The Las Vegas Loop is an underground, all-electric transit system where passengers ride in Tesla vehicles through tunnels straight to their destination, with no stops along the way. Built and run by Elon's The Boring Company, it started as the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop, a 1.7-mile, three-station system that opened in April 2021 to move convention-goers across a huge campus in about two minutes instead of a 45-minute walk. It was the first commercially operating Loop in the world, and it has since grown into the wider Vegas Loop, adding connectors to Strip resorts and reaching 11 stations in operation today.

What is the Vegas Loop?

The Vegas Loop is a point-to-point ride system buried beneath the city. Instead of a train that stops at every platform, a rider boards a Tesla at a station and gets carried nonstop to the station they picked. The original LVCC Loop covered 1.7 miles and three stations, and a 2024 expansion brought it to 2.1 miles and five stations, adding the Riviera and Central Plaza stops. Beyond the convention campus, the wider network now links Strip resorts including Resorts World, Westgate, and Encore.

Why the Vegas Loop Exists

The idea began with a complaint. On December 17, 2016, Elon posted on X (then Twitter): "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging." That post launched The Boring Company. The thinking, in the company's own words, is that to solve soul-destroying traffic, roads have to go up and down instead of just side to side, using tunnels that spare valuable surface land, stay out of the way of existing transport, and grow by stacking more levels underground. Las Vegas, with its packed tourism strip and a convention authority willing to sign a firm-fixed-price contract, became the first place to test that idea as a real business.

How it Works

A rider boards a Tesla and travels with no stops in between, and that is the whole trick, because a system that never makes you wait at a platform in the middle feels less like a train and more like a private car that happens to share a tunnel. The Boring Company advertises the Loop's tunnel speed at up to 150 mph, more than double a normal subway car's top speed, though the Vegas tunnels run well below that in practice.

The network is a core with connectors branching off it. The LVCC campus tunnels form the spine, with newer single-bore and double-bore links reaching out to Resorts World, Westgate, and Encore. The Encore connector, a single 2,320-foot tunnel, was built in under 10 weeks and carries riders in about 55 seconds.

That pace, including tunneling beneath live conventions of 100,000-plus attendees without closing a single road, is the part The Boring Company most wants other cities to notice.

The Economics of the Vegas Loop

The original LVCC Loop was delivered for roughly $47 million on a firm-fixed-price basis, which means the contractor commits to a set price no matter how much it ends up costing to build. The Boring Company points to that figure as proof tunnels can beat ordinary subways, which often cost roughly ten times more per mile. On the money side, rides across the LVCC campus are free, while trips to places beyond the campus need a paid ticket. Every connector finished in weeks instead of years strengthens the company's pitch to the next resort or city partner, and the expansion has driven Boring Company land and infrastructure investment across the Las Vegas tourism corridor.

Current Status of Vegas Loop

As published in 2026, the Vegas Loop is up and running, with 11 stations open and more tunnels under construction. The Boring Company says it has carried more than 4 million passengers. Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have approved a build-out to 68 miles of tunnel and 104 stations, roughly nine times the stations open today.

There is a matching gap in how many people it can move: the LVCC Loop handles over 4,500 passengers an hour now, while the finished design aims for up to 90,000 an hour.

What Comes Next

The approved map points straight at the city's busiest spots: Harry Reid International Airport, Allegiant Stadium, the Strip, and downtown, with planned trips between two and eight minutes. The economics rest on a simple chain, more stations times more rides, set against a per-mile tunneling cost the company says its firm-fixed-price approach holds down. If that 90,000-an-hour figure ever arrives, the Loop stops being a convention-hall novelty and becomes a real layer of city transit.

The Bottom Line

The Las Vegas Loop is the first place where Elon's tunnel idea stopped being a post and started carrying passengers, more than four million of them and counting. Whether it grows from 11 stations to the approved 104 will decide if it stays a clever shortcut under a convention center or becomes the template Elon has long said it could be. Given his record of turning a single frustrated post into a working business, that is not a bet to make lightly against him.

Related

Keep reading: Hawthorne Test Tunnel, Hyperloop. Zoom out to the The Boring Company overview, or open the Ventures Map.