The Boring Company’s tiny Las Vegas Loop is all that’s come of Musk’s promises to build superfast mass-transit “hyperloops.” Workers say its tunnels are packed with chemical sludge.

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The [tunnel’s] accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”

admiralteal
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Man, I keep getting this incredibly Mandela-effect like feeling that this entire Vegas tunnel project was something I made up.

Glad to see news that it wasn’t. The idea is just so colossally and obviously stupid compared to actual transit investment that it really FEELS like something a lefty type would’ve made up as a hypothetical to illuminate the kind of idiotic shit happens in American urban planning.

Ephera
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Well, I’ve heard the theory that Musk made this project up, because the city wanted to build like a proper subway or something. He didn’t need this ridiculous tunnel to actually work. He just needed to derail (pun intended) the sensible infrastructure project, so he could sell more shoddy cars.

You think he would develop and build a whole tunnel boring machine and dig through Vegas just to sell a handful more cars? It’s not like the people potentially buying Teslas in the US would even consider going for a subway instead. If anything those people might use the subway in addition to driving a Tesla.

Opposition to sane transit is real and Musk admitted this.

Ephera
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I mean, why not? If he’s getting publicly funded to build a useless tunnel, he might as well build a useless tunnel. Or rather delegate it, of course.

Scrubbles
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Yup, he did the same with Cali HSR. Even most current day negative statements about it are just parroted about things he said years ago. “It’s too expensive”, “it is going over it’s timelines”, “no one will use it”.

Which, newsflash to people saying that, all major infrastructure projects have that said about them. Look at the Chunnel now, or most suspension bridges and tunnels in the US. They always go over budget, they are always delayed, only some people think they’re useful, but after they’re built people think “how did we ever live without this?”

Facts are that Elon owns a car company, so he’ll say anything negative about any project that isn’t going to put more cars on the road. HSR, Vegas subways, BART, he just wants us to buy more Tesla’s at the expense of our own convenience and deserved infrastructure

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