In November 2021, Elon Musk tweeted “It’s either traffic forever or tunnels.” Well, that does not really seem to be the case.
On Thursday there was a major traffic jam in an underground tunnel built by The Boring Company – run by Musk – at the Las Vegas Convention Center. And it happened during a less-than-crowded CES.
The jam was caught on video by a Twitter user who posted the video which has since gone viral on multiple platforms.
“Is there often a lot of traffic here?” the passengers ask the driver of the Tesla.
The Loop – which runs underground from an area near the Convention Center’s West Hall to the South Hall, involves bringing people into Teslas at “stations.” They are then driven by a human – sorry folks, no self driving in the tunnel – through it to a drop-off point. Teslas were deployed to handle some of the lackluster crowds at the event.
It was the second major test of the system.
“We are thrilled to debut the Convention Center Loop to CES attendees,” Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spokeswoman Lori Nelson-Kraft said in a statement. “Since the system debuted in June, customer feedback consistently ranks the Convention Center Loop as entertaining, innovative and their favorite part of their convention experience.”
The first real test of the system happened in November during SEMA, which saw about 100,000 attendees. However, it does not seem to have fared all too well this time around.
More posts have surfaced online that also appear to show cars jammed up inside the 1.7 mile long tunnel during CES.
Surprisingly, Musk has yet to make any statements on social media about these underground traffic issues.