- Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is expanding its tunnel system under Las Vegas.
- Fortune reported that the company mistakenly exposed the base of the pillars that support the Vegas monorail.
- The monorail was temporarily shut down and the company was fined for violations, Fortune reported.
The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s startup which is expanding its network of tunnels under Las Vegas, has received several Clark County violations and accused of creating a “potential hazard” by exposing the structural foundations of the Vegas monorail, according to a new report from Fortune.
The Boring Company opened a 1.7-mile tunnel project in 2021 to transport passengers under the Las Vegas Convention Center to Teslas. The company is now expanding the tunnel system to create the Vegas Loop, which is expected to include the LVCC Loop and the airport, downtown Vegas and more, with 68 miles of tunnel approved by the county and city.
However, the expansion has not gone smoothly. Fortune, in part through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained documents showing that Boring Company workers mistakenly dug too close to the pillars supporting the monorail, a 3.9-mile transit system the along the Vegas Strip.
Clark County reported three violations to the company related to two incidents in June and October of last year in which the base of the monorail’s pillars were exposed, the news outlet reported.
For the June 15 incident, the county ordered the monorail system temporarily suspended. Fortune reported that an engineering firm was brought in to assess the risk and that the next day a construction company poured a cement mixture onto the base of the pillar. The monorail reopened on the evening of June 16.
The Boring Company, Clark County, the monorail and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which owns the monorail, did not respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority acknowledged the incidents to Fortune, saying of the June incident that the Boring Company was “repairing a broken irrigation pipe and inadvertently exposing a monorail foundation.” So we took appropriate steps to fix this, including suspending operations for a day.
Regarding the October incident, the spokesperson said concerns had been raised but were “unfounded” and the monorail had not been stopped.
“We put the public at risk for whoever was on that monorail at that time,” a former Boring Company employee working near the June incident told Fortune.
These incidents are not the first time security concerns have been raised about Boring Company. In February, Fortune also published an investigation in which former employees said they didn’t feel safe working there.
Bloomberg also reported in February that the Boring Company was facing safety violations, with workers suffering chemical burns and potentially dangerous accidents.
Some employees were left with scars after having to walk through two feet of chemical mud that made their skin feel like “fire,” according to Bloomberg, citing an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
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