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City Cast Las Vegas

Elon Musk’s Boring Company spent years pitching cities on a novel solution to traffic, an underground transportation system to whisk passengers through tunnels in electric vehicles. Proposals in Illinois and California fizzled after officials and the public began scrutinizing details of the plans and seeking environmental reviews.

But in Las Vegas, the tunneling company is building Musk’s vision beneath the city’s urban core thanks to an unlikely partner: the tourism marketing organization best known for selling the image that “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

The powerful Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority greenlit the idea and funded an 0.8-mile route at its convention center. As that small “people mover” opened in 2021, the authority was already urging the county and city to approve plans for 104 stations across 68 miles of tunnels.

The project is also realizing Musk’s notion of how government officials should deal with entrepreneurs: avoid lengthy reviews before building and instead impose fines later if anything goes awry. Musk’s views on regulatory power have taken on new significance in light of his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump and his role in a new effort to slash rules in the name of improving efficiency. The Las Vegas project, now well under way, is a case study of the regulatory climate Musk favors.

Because the project, now known as the Vegas Loop, is privately operated and receives no federal funding, it is exempt from the kinds of exhaustive governmental vetting and environmental analyses demanded by the other cities that Boring pitched. Such reviews assess whether a proposal is the best option and inform the public of potential impacts to traffic and the environment.

The head of the convention authority has called the project the only viable way to ease traffic on the Las Vegas Strip and in the surrounding area — a claim that was never publicly debated as the Clark County Commission and Las Vegas City Council granted Boring permission to build and operate the system beneath city streets. The approvals allow the company to build and operate close to homes and businesses without the checks and balances that typically apply to major public transit projects.

Meanwhile, Boring has skirted building, environmental and labor regulations, according to records obtained by ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas under public records laws.

It twice installed tunnels without permits to work on county property. State and local environmental regulators documented it dumping untreated water into storm drains and the sewer system. And, as local politicians were approving an extension of the system, Boring workers were filing complaints with the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration about “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and severe chemical burns. After an investigation, 

“The Boring company is at it again,” an employee of the Clark County Water Reclamation District wrote to the agency’s general manager and legal counsel in June, after video showed water spilling from a company-owned property into the street near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Tyler Fairbanks, a Boring Company manager, emailed the county official, saying “we take this very seriously and we are working to correct what is going on.” In August, a Las Vegas Valley Water District staffer documented a similar issue. On both occasions, the county issued cease-and-desist letters but did not fine Boring.

Financial penalties wouldn’t put a dent in the company’s bottom line, John Solvie, a Clark County water quality compliance manager, told county Public Works Director Denis Cederburg in an email. Still, the concerns were significant enough that Solvie asked if the department would “consider revoking permits (essentially shutting down their operations until they resolve these issues).”

A county spokesperson declined to answer how the incidents were resolved, or whether the Public Works Department had ever revoked any of Boring’s permits. Solvie and Cederburg declined to comment.

Boring did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story.

As Boring begins hauling passengers beyond the convention center in the first-ever test of an underground road network using driver-operated Teslas, it has successfully removed yet another layer of county oversight. Last year, 

Boring requested that the county no longer require it to hold a special permit

 that, among other things, mandates operators of private amusement and transportation systems to report serious injuries and fatalities, and grants the county additional authority to inspect and regulate their operations to protect public safety.

The result is that key questions about the operation and maintenance of an unproven transportation system are unanswered. The county declined to respond to detailed questions about its oversight role since the special permit ended. It provided a statement saying that Boring is “responsible for the safe operation of its system and retaining a third-party Nevada registered design professional to conduct annual audits of their operations.” The county can review those audits and inspect the system “as deemed appropriate.”

Ben Leffel, an assistant professor of public policy at UNLV, said in an interview with ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas that the private project’s ability to expand without the same scrutiny required of public projects is a major gap in oversight. Vegas Loop customers will expect Boring to follow the same standards as a public transit system, Leffel said, and it “should receive the same amount of oversight and maintenance,” more so because of the company’s construction and labor citations.

Former Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who completed her third and final term in December, said she too is concerned about safety, as well as accessibility for riders with disabilities. She had questioned whether the tunnel project was the best transportation option for the city. “I have been totally opposed to it from the beginning and still remain so,” she said.

Other elected and appointed officials have offered nearly unanimous support.

, is now leading the president-elect’s 

recommending cuts to the federal bureaucracy and its ability to regulate

. And Boring Company CEO Steve Davis is helping 

Given Musk’s role advising Trump on ways to slash regulations and government oversight, Boring and the Vegas Loop might be a harbinger for the country.

In 2014, Musk stood on the steps of the Nevada Capitol with a man named Steve Hill, who was heading the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. They were celebrating a deal to build a Tesla Gigafactory outside Reno.

Hill, as the state’s negotiator, had worked feverishly on the agreement, which provided $1.25 billion in tax incentives to Tesla. Musk would later praise Nevada as “a real get-it-done state.”

Soon after the battery factory opened in 2016, Musk’s Boring Company was looking for a place to build a project testing its solution to urban congestion, an idea 

that sprang from Musk’s frustration with LA traffic

. Leaders at the city of Los Angeles were interested. A regional transportation authority, Metro, has a say on 

public transit in the city, and California law requires an environmental review

. But Boring and the city tried to sidestep the state law, claiming an exemption for building in urban areas.

Residents, however, weren’t as eager to turn Boring loose. When neighborhood groups in West LA 

 over the lack of environmental review, Boring settled with them and looked to build elsewhere.

Musk has frequently railed against government scrutiny of his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX, and claims excessive government oversight has made it nearly impossible to build big projects in parts of the country.

“Environmental regulations are, in my view, largely terrible,” 

he said at an event with the libertarian Cato Institute

 in June. “You have to get permission in advance, as opposed to paying a penalty if you do something wrong, which I think would be much more effective. To say, ‘Look we’re going to do this project; if something goes wrong we’ll be forced to pay a penalty.’ But we do not need to go through a three- or four-year environmental approval process.”

Everywhere Boring tried, it struggled to start digging. In Chicago, where then-Mayor Rahm Emmanuel was a supporter, 

 about whether Boring could build an airport loop without public funding. 

, where Boring and federal officials completed a draft environmental review in 2019 for a high-speed link between Baltimore and Washington, 

In 2018, an executive who’d met Hill during the Tesla Gigafactory negotiations called him to discuss potentially bringing Boring to Las Vegas, Hill said. (Hill said Musk himself had previously pitched Hill on a Boring Company project in Northern Nevada.) Hill, now a leader at the convention authority in Las Vegas, was in a position to help. Funded by about $460 million in annual revenue from hotel room taxes and conventions, the authority is a force in local politics, channeling the influence of the gaming and tourism industry.

The authority happened to be looking to build a people-mover to link exhibit halls at the 4.6 million-square-foot Las Vegas Convention Center. Hill said he already had a sense that the Boring Company’s concept “would work pretty well here.” Nine companies submitted bids, and two were finalists. Boring’s bid was about a third of the cost of the other credible proposals, Hill said. A week before the board was to select the winner, 

 and announced the Boring partnership. He pointed to a map of a tunnel system extending far beyond the convention center — to the airport and toward Los Angeles.

The authority boasted that news coverage of its Boring partnership was picked up by 1,200 outlets, providing 

The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada is the planning agency for the Las Vegas metropolitan area, overseen by local elected officials. But because Boring’s project started so small and didn’t use federal funding, the commission wouldn’t have a say. The convention authority’s governing board, which focuses more on supporting tourism than transportation for local residents, took the lead. Nearly half of the authority’s 14-member board represents private interests, primarily the gaming industry. Goodman and two others voted against the partnership.

To fund the convention center loop, the authority committed $52.5 million in bonds that will be paid back by the agency. Since it opened in April 2021, Hill said the authority has paid Boring about $4.5 million a year to operate the convention center loop, which provides free rides to conventioneers. The authority also spent $24.5 million to 

 out of bankruptcy, giving Boring the right to tunnel in the monorail’s noncompete territory.

Hill has repeatedly claimed, to elected officials, to local environmentalists and in an interview with ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas, that the loop is the only viable way for Las Vegas to address its traffic congestion. “It’s not really a debate. There’s no reason to explore the other options,” he told members of the Sierra Club during a meeting to discuss public transit, according to Vinny Spotleson, volunteer chair of the environmental group’s regional chapter.

Hill acknowledged to ProPublica and City Cast, however, “that’s a prediction. That’s not a mandate. I don’t have the standing to make that decision. I think people listen to what I have to say periodically."

The Clark County Commission — which governs the Las Vegas Strip and surrounding areas — was listening when, just a few months after the convention center loop opened, Hill told them that Boring had already proven “how great a system this is, that it can be done, and I think provided confidence for this community to move forward.”

At the urging of Hill, casino executives and labor union leaders, the County Commission approved a 50-year agreement giving Boring the right to operate a “monorail” above and below ground on county property. The 2021 vote was unanimous.

In Las Vegas, Boring had achieved what it could not in Maryland, Chicago or LA.

“All of their company, it seemed like, was dependent on Vegas working out,” said Spotleson, who first met company representatives around 2019 when he was district director for U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas. “That we were the test case that they wanted to take to the Chicagos and Bostons and other cities of the world and say, ‘Look at what we did in Vegas. We can do that here.’”

The Boring Company has completed more than 5 miles of the 68-mile system. Despite the proposal’s massive scale, it has been approved with little public input.

When the County Commission considered the expansion plans, they were listed on agendas under the obscure names of limited-liability companies, making it difficult for anyone but the company and its supporters to track. For example, the county approved a roughly 25-mile expansion and 18 new stations at a 2023 zoning meeting through a notice that gave no indication it was related to the Vegas Loop: UC-23-0126-HCI-CERBERUS 160 EAST FLAMINGO HOTEL OWNER L P, ET AL. In 2021, the commission approved an extension for Caesars Entertainment hotels under the name UC-20-0547-CLAUDINE PROPCO, LLC, ET AL, and about 29 miles of tunnel under UC-20-0547-CIRCUS CIRCUS LV, LLC, ET AL.

Boring uses a machine known as Prufrock to excavate its 12-foot-in-diameter tunnels, applying chemical accelerants during the construction process. For each foot the company bores, it removes about 6 cubic yards of soil and any groundwater it encounters, according to a company document prepared for state environmental officials. It is required to obtain permits to ensure the waste does not contaminate the environment or local water sources.

Public records — including emails, notices, photos and videos, and other documentation — obtained from Clark County, the Clark County Water Reclamation District and Nevada Division of Environmental Protection through public records requests show the company has been less than meticulous in handling the waste.

In June, an employee with the county road division tailed a Boring Company truck that spilled mud onto city streets, according to the records. The trucks “have no marking and no license plates,” wrote Dean Mosher, assistant manager for the roads division. A truck route that the company had reported to the county must have been “totally false,” Mosher concluded.

A few months later, a truck hauling waste from the project spilled gravel, rock and sand onto Interstate 15, slowing traffic for more than four hours during rush hour. The driver was fined $75 for an unsafe or unsecured load, according to court records.

Given Musk’s role advising President-elect Trump on slashing regulations and oversight, the Vegas Loop might be a harbinger for the country.

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City planning may not be the most glamorous topic, but it’s one that could have the greatest impact on your day-to-day life. With that in mind, the Las Vegas City Council is 

considering a site development plan review tomorrow

 for a proposed temple by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Lone Mountain community. City of Las Vegas Planning Commissioner Jeff Rogan addresses the issue and how residents can successfully oppose unwanted developments in their own neighborhoods.

What's the most contentious topic you've heard debated at a Planning Commission meeting?

“Oh, this is easy. It’s the Lone Mountain Temple. The LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) owned a big parcel of land in the Northwest Valley near Lone Mountain for a long time. And they wanted to build a new temple here in Las Vegas … It's a very large structure, has a lot of lights, and it’s near a lot of residential properties that have a lot of open space. (Residents) are not used to such large buildings with a lot of light. So they’ve organized and opposed the structure being built near their homes.”

So what exactly is a Planning Commission?

“We're really just an advisory board. Most of the issues that would go before the City Council regarding planning — special-use permits, variances, planning maps, things like that — come before a Planning Commission. We'll discuss them and make a recommendation to the City Council or at the county level, to the (Clark) County Commission. Sometimes applications that come before us are final action, meaning we're the final arbiter of whether your sober living home (for example) should go into a neighborhood or not.”

What kind of public comments from concerned residents are the most impactful at a Planning Commission meeting?

“Comments supported by facts. For example, ‘Hey, we already have three of these in our neighborhood. Putting four in here is a burden that we shouldn't have to bear’ … Things that are less impactful? We often hear ‘traffic.’ … We don't have as much congestion as New York, Boston, or other cities on the East Coast, but people will come in against applications and say, ‘Well, the traffic is going to be horrendous. Don't put this in.’ It just depends on the use or request before us as to whether we give more or less weight to a particular point of view the neighbors are presenting.”

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It’s a bone of contention among Las Vegas locals: Where does the Strip end and Downtown begin on Las Vegas Boulevard? There’s a lock and stock concrete answer, but then again, it may depend on your thoughts about The Strat.

If you want to be technically, legally correct, Sahara Avenue is the border between the Strip (under the jurisdiction of Clark County) and the City of Las Vegas. The most obvious difference: the presence of cannabis dispensaries north of Sahara. Yet there’s a certain spirit to the intersection that caps the north end of the Strip. The 

 hotel feels new again after recent renovations while the 

 steakhouse provides a sense of history to the area, even as it expands with a 

 will always be the “Stratosphere” despite the rebranding. Standing 1,149 feet high, it’s the tallest freestanding structure in not just Las Vegas, but the entire state of Nevada. It’s hard to imagine the skyline without it, which is why visitors often assume it’s part of the Strip, while locals argue that it already is — or should be. The property has seen some improvements in recent years to the rooms, casino, pool decks, and dining scene (with 

 continuing to be a bucket-list experience with a rotating dining room on the 106th floor. In other words, The Strat is a presence you can’t ignore and a worthy anchor to mark the north end of the Strip.

In an effort to sort all this out, the City of Las Vegas built a pair of illuminated 80-foot-tall arches that cross each other over Las Vegas Boulevard — just south of The Strat tower, but next to the hotel itself. If you’re driving on LVB, you can’t avoid passing underneath them. Does that make the arches the “gate” between the Strip and Downtown? You could make a strong argument for it. The arches replace a “Welcome to Fabulous Downtown Las Vegas” sign (based on the larger, more famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign), which was in the center of Las Vegas Boulevard for years before it was destroyed by a car crash in 2016.

It's a fierce debate among locals. Where does the Strip end and Downtown begin? The answer isn't so simple. 

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 recalls another investigation on the Strip not too long ago. In 2008, Las Vegas Sun reporter Alexandra Berzon started looking into an unusual number of construction deaths at the CityCenter project —

. Her months of reporting revealed that 24 hour construction schedules on congested sites had created unsafe conditions — and moreover, that the authorities responsible for oversight, including Nevada OSHA, federal OSHA, and union officials, fell short in their duties.

Berzon, along with her colleagues, published 53 stories and 21 editorials on the issue, and their reporting was cited in Congressional hearings on OSHA reform. And crucially, in the wake of the Sun’s work, construction workers joined forces, walking off the job together to demand safer conditions, after which no more deaths occurred.

For their courageous reporting, The Las Vegas Sun was awarded a 

 in 2009. As echoes of this story resound today, some questions remain: Have we learned our lesson? And what price are we willing to pay for the breakneck pace of growth and development in our city?

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