Vegas Loop to Use Existing Monorail Pylons to Elevate Tunnel Teslas
Posted on: April 27, 2026, 11:18h.
Last updated on: April 27, 2026, 11:18h.
When the already outdated Las Vegas Monorail is discontinued, its tracks will be replaced with elevated roadways for Elon Musk’s Vegas Loop, allowing the tunnel Teslas to emerge from their subterranean tubes and fly over traffic from the MGM Grand down to the Sahara.
We’ve already known about these plans for about a year, but last week, Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which purchased the monorail out of bankruptcy in December 2020, gave a clearer picture of exactly what that may look like.
“It will incorporate the monorail,” he said in a speech to the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association (NHBA) on Thursday, as reported by Las Vegas Advisor. “We’ll take the track off, put a pre-cast two-lane road on top, incorporate it into the Boring Company system, and use the existing monorail stations.”
In 2020, the LVCVA said the monorail would be closed and dismantled as early as 2028, but definitely by 2030. Last year, the organization extended that timeline to 2033-2035.
End of the Line for Monorail
The Las Vegas Monorail, has been a 3.9‑mile fixture of the resort corridor since 2004. But according to Hill, the system is nearing the end of its useful life. The problem is that operating the monorail has become like driving a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California SWB Spider. Sooner or later, it will break down and require a replacement part that can’t be obtained on eBay.
The monorail employs nine Innovia 200 trams, each with four cars, which its track was custom-designed to fit. Those trams were only manufactured by Bombardier out of Quebec, which no longer makes them. In fact, after racking up billions of dollars of debt, it no longer makes trams at all. Bombardier sold its rail business for $6.7 billion to French competitor Alstom in 2021.
Alstom only manufactures a newer model, the Innovia 300, whose beam width of 27.2 inches renders it incompatible with the 26-inch older model.
For a while, monorail executives reportedly rooted for Disney World to upgrade its Mark VI trams so they could buy the retired stock. (The first monorail tracks to operate in Vegas, connecting the MGM Grand and Bally’s from 1995 to 2002, used two retired Disney World Mark IVs.)
However, the Mouse House is in the same no-win situation as Las Vegas. It can buy an all-new monorail system but would need to construct all-new tracks. It’s not impossible for a company to develop a new monorail to fit the existing one’s tracks but nobody is rushing to step up to that very niche plate.
Crazy Train
So why would the LVCVA pay $24.3 million in December 2020 for a doomed transportation system – one they needed to pay a Los Gatos, Calif. company up to $500K annually to operate?
Because the monorail had a noncompete clause that prohibited any other company from building another off-street transportation system for the Strip. And the LVCVA had already signed, in 2019, a $48 million contract with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Vegas Loop, which would probably have violated the monorail’s noncompete clause.
Track to the Future
Rather than dismantling the elevated guideway, Hill intends to reuse the monorail’s right‑of‑way and support pylons as part of the Vegas Loop.
“When you get to the MGM station, we’ll tie it into the parking garage and use it as part of a station with ramps to get in and out of it,” he told the NHBA.
In other words, there would be no need for the Boring Co. to dig a separate four-mile-long tunnel connecting the South Strip to the North Strip near Las Vegas Boulevard.
Last Comments ( 1 )
When will they get the new Teslas so they can get more people around town in The Loop? Oh wait, Elon needs to actually build those