Elon Musk unveils the Boring Test Tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., in December 2018. Photo: Robyn Beck-Pool/Getty Images
Elon Musk tweeted late Friday that his startup Boring Co. will have a transportation tunnel it's building in Las Vegas "hopefully fully operational in 2020."
Why it matters: Per Axios' Joann Muller, Vegas is the first paying customer for Musk's hyperloop idea aimed at easing traffic woes in highly congested cities, which began as a joke tweet in 2016. The transit system would shorten what would be a 15-minute walk to a one-minute ride.
The big picture: Boring Co. announced in November that the convention center tunnel would be completed by January 2021. Preliminary work on the $48.7 million project, including pit construction, began in September.
- The Vegas tunnel is the firm’s "only major project so far other than a mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California," Bloomberg notes. But Musk indicated on Twitter more projects were in the works:
Go deeper: In photos: Elon Musk reveals Boring Co.'s underground tunnel