Here’s All the Vegas Loop News You Can’t Use
There’s been a flurry of news about our beloved Vegas Loop recently, and we’re here to wrangle it for you, despite the fact it will be of virtually no use to you.
The Vegas Loop, of course, is the underground Tesla transportation system from Elon Musk’s Boring Co. that to-date has mostly shuttled people to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The recent news we’ll dig into here: A new Loop “station” has opened at Fontainebleau, the Loop is doing its first drop-offs at the Las Vegas airport and Boring Co. has been issued a permit for the City of Las Vegas, opening the door to Loop tunnels downtown for the first time. It’s time you had some words stuffed into your brain about these happenings, and we are just the blog to stuff you, so let’s have at it.
The Vegas Loop currently has stations in three locations at the Las Vegas Convention Center (West, Central and South) and others at Encore, Resorts World and Westgate.
We’ve seen them all and ridden each leg of these tunnels, and we can say with certainty this glorified rideshare system is a hoot. It’s also cheaper than taxis and regular rideshare, so we are a fan.
Important note: Boring Co. is paying for the Vegas Loop. Hotels pay for their stations. This is the main reason skeptics need to keep their yappers shut. A project of this type, if paid for by taxpayer dollars, would already have rung up a tab in the neighborhood of $3 trillion.
Now, the Vegas Loop has a “station” at Fontainebleau (pronounced “fountain-blue”). Yes, we went to check it out. We are an award-winning blog. Although, our last award was in 2014, but that is neither here nor there. Some Las Vegas magicians have advertising featuring their 1976 “Best of Las Vegas” award. Bronze.
The reason we haven’t won any awards lately is there aren’t any awards for Las Vegas blogs. None. What is the deal with that? Just because there aren’t awards for something doesn’t mean one isn’t award-worthy. For example, there are also no “Biggest Blogger Penis” awards. Again, how is that not a thing? How many other awards are there that we deserve but which do not exist for some reason?
Anyway, if you’re wondering why we keep using quotation marks around “station,” it’s because the new Fontainebleau “station” isn’t really a station. It’s a stand. No new tunnel. Drivers just zip across from the convention center (roughly 30 feet away) and pick people up near Fontainebleau’s rideshare area. Then, riders are taken to the convention center’s Riviera station, and into the tunnels they go.
At the moment, outgoing rides are free at Fontainebleau. You have to get a ticket to get back.
Hey, we told you up front this is news you can’t use.
Should you wish to get into the Vegas Loop system from Fontainebleau, you have to find the giant sculpture and take a nearby escalator down to the rideshare area.
Staff members very helpful, and seem to understand the Vegas Loop is a smidge confusing, especially when it comes to how things work, like the airport drop-off thing. Which should be the focus of the next paragraph of our story, probably. We have no idea what will be next. We don’t do outlines. We wing it. Winging it is what makes blogs award-worthy. Ditto penises.
So, the Vegas Loop has recently dipped its toes into dropping people off at the Las Vegas airport. That entire sentence should probably be in quotation marks, because the whole thing is baffling. Basically, Teslas used in the tunnels take passengers from Resorts World and Westgate for $12.
That’s a fantastic price. It’s just a little unclear how that’s part of the “Vegas Loop.” Like we said, it’s rideshare in Teslas.
Currently, there’s no set schedule for this service. We’re pretty sure it’s just a way to keep Vegas Loop drivers from losing their minds driving in the same tunnels for 45 seconds each way. With tickets between the Las Vegas Convention Center and nearby hotels being so cheap, you know people aren’t tipping. So, a trip to the airport provides some hope, however remote, Vegas Loop drivers will be retained.
While the airport drop-off isn’t accomplishing very much for Boring Co., it did do one thing: It provided a shot across the bow for taxis and Lyft and Uber.
A $12 ride is a major disruptor, even if it’s just a few drop-offs a day. No, they don’t do pick-ups. It’s sort of the reverse of how escalators and people-movers used to work in Vegas. They’d take you into the casino, but not out. Elon Musk is different. He named it Boring Co., for chrissake.
The flat rate for a taxi to the airport from Fontainebleau, Resorts World, Encore and the Las Vegas Convention Center is $29. Taxi fares are now standardized by “zones” after Lyft and Uber forced the Taxi Authority to get its shit together and prevent long-hauling.
Ultimately, the surface street portion of the ride to (and possibly from) the airport won’t be as long in the not-too-distant future. There will be stations at Virgin casino (already under construction) and near University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). UNLV declined to have a station on campus.
One of the biggest benefits of the Tesla tunnels is they avoid surface street traffic and the constant irritation of having to fill out paperwork after running over pedestrians, which is Nevada’s Official State Pastime.
Finally, our third bit of completely useless news about the Vegas Loop: Permits!
Yes, permits are the most boring part of the Las Vegas experience if you don’t count Criss Angel talking about himself.
Boring Co. now has the approval of the City of Las Vegas to extend its system northward from The Strip, into downtown. (The Strip is not in the City of Las Vegas, it’s in Clark County.)
The first Vegas Loop tunnel in the City of Las Vegas will go from the Convention Center to Strat.
Yes, Strat is part of downtown, despite all the keychains and fridge magnets that completely disagree with that legal designation.
No timeline has been given for Boring Company’s first foray outside Clark County.
The former mayor of Las Vegas, Caroline Goodman, hated the Vegas Loop and was pretty much the only one who opposed the project from day one. The current mayor, Shelley Berkley, whom we’re confident we could handily beat in a mayoral race without even trying, is all for it.
“The city is excited to bring an innovative transportation option to downtown Las Vegas and create another way for visitors to experience all that the city has to offer,” said Mayor Shelley Berkley.
If there’s one thing public officials are good at (and there’s literally one), it’s being excited about things. They are excited to ring in the New Year on New Year’s Eve, they’re excited about the opening of taco shops and pharmacies, they’re excited about easements. Mayors spend much of their day talking about easements. They have entire staffs to make PowerPoint decks about easements, despite having no idea what easements actually are.
The point at which visitors can actually take the Vegas Loop to the Strat or other places downtown is years away. The hope is the system will eventually have stops at Fremont Street Experience, Circa, Plaza, El Cortez, along with places nobody cares about going like City Hall or World Market Center.
Sorry, it’s not nobody. People without lanyards don’t care.
Big picture, Boring Co. says the Vegas Loop will someday have 104 stations in Las Vegas.
From the progress so far, you can expect the 104th Vegas Loop station to open around the same time flying cars make the whole thing moot.
As we’ve shared in the past, critics (they are legion) don’t seem to get that while the Vegas Loop might seem silly by every objective measure, it’s still a great fit for Las Vegas. Las Vegas wasn’t built on pragmatism! It was built on flair and gumption and lecherous old guys exposing themselves to massage therapists until the Wall Street Journal did stories about their behavior, ultimately leading to their downfall.
The Vegas Loop isn’t a mass transit system, it’s marketing. It’s a convention center shuttle, but it’s also a conversation piece. It’s a buzz machine. It’s a Las Vegas attraction, drawing eyeballs to Sin City like the Sphere, High Roller Ferris wheel and cleavage.
There’s a very good chance the whole project dries up in the next few years, as loss leaders aren’t a thing in Las Vegas anymore, but at that point, Boring Co. has provided our town with massive, free bomb shelters, and it’s hard to get too mad about that.
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