One Million vs. One Billion

The Pitch

The Boring Company was founded as a SpaceX subsidiary in 2017 after Musk tweeted that Los Angeles traffic was "driving me nuts" and that he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging." What followed was a cascade of announcements, each more ambitious than the last.

The initial concept: an underground network where cars would ride "skates" at up to 150 mph through tunnels built for $10 million per mile. Musk claimed he could reduce tunneling costs by a factor of 10 compared to conventional methods and bore 10 times faster than existing machines. The first project would connect Los Angeles International Airport to Culver City.

Then the ambitions scaled further. In 2017, Musk tweeted that he had received "verbal govt approval" for a Hyperloop from New York to Washington, D.C., promising the trip in 29 minutes at 760 mph. A formal proposal for a Baltimore-to-D.C. tunnel was submitted, with construction slated for January 2018. A Chicago O'Hare Express was announced: autonomous 16-passenger pods at 150 mph connecting downtown to the airport. Proposals followed for Los Angeles (the Dugout Loop to Dodger Stadium), Fort Lauderdale (downtown to beach), Miami (a two-mile tunnel under the Miami River for $30 million in six months), San Antonio (airport to downtown), Austin, and Nashville.

The pitch was consistent: conventional tunneling is slow, expensive, and outdated. The Boring Company would be faster, cheaper, and fundamentally different. The Hyperloop would make high-speed rail obsolete before it was even built. The company sold 20,000 branded flamethrowers and 50,000 branded hats to generate buzz. The valuation reached $5.7 billion.

That was the pitch. Here is what happened.

The Graveyard of Cancelled Projects

New York to Washington, D.C., Hyperloop (announced 2017): Musk claimed verbal government approval for a 760 mph tube connecting the two cities in 29 minutes. No construction began. No environmental review was completed. No permits were sought. The project was never mentioned again after the initial tweets.

Baltimore to Washington, D.C., Loop (announced 2017): Maryland's Transportation Authority approved the project. A conditional permit was granted. A 411-page draft environmental assessment was released in 2019. Then silence. By 2021, the project was no longer listed on The Boring Company's website. The federal government received no indication the company wanted to move forward. TBC dropped the Maryland lobbyist it had hired for the project and declined to comment.

Chicago O'Hare Express (announced 2018): Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel selected The Boring Company to build a high-speed link from downtown to O'Hare Airport. Autonomous pods, 16 passengers, over 100 mph. The estimated cost was under $1 billion. When Lori Lightfoot won the mayoral race in 2019, she said bluntly: "We don't need the O'Hare Express." The project was dropped.

Los Angeles (Dugout Loop, Sepulveda, LAX to Culver City): Multiple LA projects were announced between 2016 and 2018. The Dugout Loop would connect central LA to Dodger Stadium. A test tunnel on Sepulveda Boulevard was proposed. The LAX-to-Culver-City tunnel was the company's first announced project. All were removed from the website by 2021. None broke ground.

Fort Lauderdale (announced 2021): The city accepted a proposal for a 3-mile Las Olas Loop from downtown to the beach. The price tag was $90 to $100 million. By December 2022, the city suspended efforts to continue the project. The former vice mayor later said: "Does it actually solve a problem or does it create more of a problem?"

San Antonio (announced 2022): Bexar County selected The Boring Company to build a transit link from downtown to the airport in March 2022. The company then "ghosted" the city. Communications stopped. No construction began.

Miami (discussed 2021): Musk proposed a two-mile tunnel under the Miami River for $30 million, built in six months. The local transit authority estimated the same project at $1 billion over four years. Nothing materialized.

The pattern is documented across multiple cities by researchers and former officials. Dr. Juan Matute, deputy director of transportation studies at UCLA, and Dr. Warren Sturman, former vice mayor of Fort Lauderdale, have both described The Boring Company's approach as a cycle: an exciting proposal, a period of engagement, communications that fall through, and eventually the city being quietly removed from the website.

In nearly a decade of operation, The Boring Company has broken ground on one commercial project outside of test tunnels: the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop. Every other announced project in every other American city has been cancelled, suspended, ghosted, or quietly deleted.

What Actually Got Built

The Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop opened in April 2021. It is a 1.7-mile tunnel network connecting stops within the convention center campus. It cost approximately $47 million and was built in roughly one year. By those narrow metrics, it was a success: on time, on budget, and functional.

But compare the delivered product to the original vision:

Promised speed: 150 mph. Delivered speed: 35 to 40 mph. That is roughly 25% of the promise, and just 5% of the Hyperloop's 760 mph target.

Promised vehicles: autonomous 16-passenger pods. Delivered vehicles: human-driven Tesla Model Y sedans carrying 3 to 4 passengers. There is no autonomous operation. Each car has a human driver.

Promised cost: $10 million per mile. Delivered cost: approximately $28 million per mile. Nearly three times the target.

Promised capacity: 4,400 vehicles per hour at 250 km/h. Delivered capacity: a fleet of roughly 70 Tesla vehicles, with a claimed peak throughput of 4,500 passengers per hour during large conventions.

The system has since expanded modestly. As of May 2026, the Vegas Loop has 8 completed stations (5 at the convention center, plus Resorts World, Westgate, and Encore). Approximately 10 miles of tunnel have been bored, though only about 4 miles are in active passenger service. Rides cost between $4.25 and $15 depending on distance. Total annual ridership: approximately 1 million.

A note on that ridership figure: it comes from The Boring Company itself. The milestones (1 million in March 2023, 2 million in May 2024) were announced via the company's own X account and amplified primarily by Tesla-aligned media outlets. There is no independent ridership audit. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which operates the LVCC Loop under a franchise agreement, has cited similar numbers but has not published independent ridership methodology or third-party verification. Compare this to the New York MTA, which publishes granular station-by-station ridership data daily, undergoes regular audits, and has its methodology publicly documented. Or the Chicago CTA, which recently restated its ridership figures upward by 19 million rides after voluntarily overhauling its counting methodology and publishing the documentation on the city's open data portal. The Boring Company's ridership data is self-reported, unaudited, and unverifiable. Even if we take the 1 million figure at face value (and for the purposes of this article, we will), the comparison that follows is devastating. If the real number is lower, it only gets worse.

The planned full buildout calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 104 stations. After five years of operation, the system is 5.9% complete on tunnel mileage and 7.7% complete on stations. At the current pace, full buildout is decades away.

There are also operational problems. In February 2024, Nevada's Occupational Safety and Health Administration found eight serious safety violations at The Boring Company and imposed $112,000 in fines. Workers reported chemical burns from sludge while working in the tunnels, with multiple employee accounts describing conditions as "almost unbearable." A January 2025 investigation by ProPublica alleged that the company had evaded county and state oversight on environmental and labor matters. State lawmakers have raised concerns about untreated groundwater discharged into storm drains and excavation that exposed the foundation of Las Vegas Monorail support columns.

The Scale Test: One Million vs. One Billion

This is where the "reinvention of transit" narrative collapses under the weight of real numbers. The Boring Company's entire operational system serves approximately 1 million riders per year. Here is what actual transit systems do:

New York City Subway: In 2025, the subway carried approximately 1.3 billion paid riders, up 7.7% from 2024. It set a post-pandemic daily record of 4.65 million riders in a single day. The MTA system as a whole (subway, bus, commuter rail, paratransit) carried nearly 1.9 billion trips in 2025. The subway system spans 248 route miles across 472 stations and has operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for over a century.

To put the comparison in concrete terms: the NYC subway serves the Vegas Loop's entire annual ridership in approximately seven hours.

Chicago CTA: In 2025, Chicago's CTA rail system (the "L") provided 135.2 million rides. The full CTA system (rail plus bus) carried 319.2 million rides. The L covers 102 miles of track. The Vegas Loop's annual ridership is what the Chicago L does in roughly three days.

Japan's Shinkansen: The bullet train system carries more than 420,000 passengers on a typical weekday, translating to approximately 153 million passengers annually. Trains run at up to 320 km/h (200 mph) on dedicated tracks. In over 60 years of operation, there have been zero passenger fatalities due to accidents. The Tokaido Shinkansen line between Tokyo and Osaka alone carries more passengers per year than most countries' entire rail networks. The system that Musk implied was outdated does 153 times the Vegas Loop's annual volume, at five times the speed, with a perfect safety record.

China's High-Speed Rail: China operates the world's largest high-speed rail network at 48,000 kilometers of track. The system carried approximately 4 billion passenger trips in 2024. Trains run at 250 to 350 km/h (155 to 217 mph). China's HSR now carries more than twice as many passengers as its domestic airlines. The Beijing-to-Shanghai line alone, at 1,318 km, reported over $1 billion in net operational profit. China built this entire network from a standing start in 2008, completing more infrastructure in 16 years than The Boring Company has managed in nine.

The numbers are not close. They are not in the same category. The Vegas Loop operates at a scale comparable to a moderately busy airport shuttle, not a transit system. Calling it a reinvention of transportation is like calling a golf cart a reinvention of the automobile.

The Brightline Comparison: Private Rail That Actually Works

For those who argue that American infrastructure is simply too bureaucratic for rail to work, Brightline exists as a direct counterargument. Brightline Florida is the first privately owned and operated intercity passenger rail system built in the United States in decades. It is operational. It is growing. And it is carrying real passengers at real speeds.

In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Brightline Florida served more than 900,000 passengers, a 13% year-over-year increase. Revenue grew from $188 million in 2024 to $214 million in 2025. Annualized, Brightline Florida is on pace for roughly 3.6 million passengers per year, nearly four times the Vegas Loop's annual ridership, on actual intercity routes between Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando.

Now Brightline is building Brightline West: a 218-mile, all-electric high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Southern California. Trains will operate at over 186 mph, cutting the drive time in half. The project received a $3 billion federal grant under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Construction is actively underway at the Las Vegas station site, with major civil works beginning along the I-15 corridor. Revenue service is targeted for late 2029.

This is the direct comparison that matters. In the same city where The Boring Company operates human-driven Tesla sedans at 35 mph through a 4-mile tunnel serving 1 million people per year, Brightline is building a 218-mile high-speed rail line designed to carry millions more at five times the speed. One company promised to make rail obsolete. The other company is actually building rail. The market will judge which approach delivers.

And it is worth noting: approximately 50 million one-way trips are made between Los Angeles and Las Vegas every year, with 85% by car. That is the actual addressable transportation need. The Vegas Loop, even at full buildout, is not designed to serve intercity travelers. Brightline West is.

The Cost of Hype

The cancelled projects are not just embarrassing. They carry a real cost: the opportunity cost of cities that invested time, political capital, and staff resources in Boring Company proposals that went nowhere.

Chicago spent months evaluating the O'Hare Express proposal before it was dropped. Maryland completed a 411-page draft environmental assessment for the Baltimore-D.C. tunnel and never heard back. Fort Lauderdale negotiated for over a year before suspending the project. San Antonio was ghosted. Nashville is still navigating a proposal that has raised transparency concerns with the Metro Council.

Each of those cities has real transportation problems. Each allocated planning bandwidth to evaluate a proposal that ultimately evaporated. For some, the attention paid to The Boring Company may have delayed or displaced consideration of conventional solutions that would have actually worked.

There is a broader cost as well. The Hyperloop concept, which Musk popularized in a 2013 white paper, spawned an entire ecosystem of companies that have since failed. Hyperloop One (later Virgin Hyperloop) raised over $450 million before declaring bankruptcy in late 2023. It achieved a maximum crewed speed of just 107 mph, roughly 14% of the design goal. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies built a 320-meter test track in France that never achieved operational speeds before the company was evicted from the site. A planned SPAC deal at a $600 million valuation collapsed when no institutional investors committed.

The Hyperloop concept did not fail because the engineering was slightly off. It failed because the physics were never economically viable at scale. Every company that pursued it has either gone bankrupt or pivoted to something else entirely. Meanwhile, conventional high-speed rail (the technology the Hyperloop was supposed to replace) continues to expand globally, carrying billions of passengers per year in Japan, China, France, Spain, Germany, and South Korea.

The Bull Case: Why the Vegas Loop Might Still Matter

Intellectual honesty requires presenting the strongest version of the opposing argument, and The Boring Company's defenders have a few legitimate points.

First, the convention center use case genuinely works. During large conventions, the LVCC Loop reduces a 45-minute cross-campus walk to approximately 2 minutes. Customer satisfaction is rated 4.9 out of 5.0. During CONEXPO 2026, the system transported approximately 82,000 passengers over the course of the show. For the narrow purpose of moving convention attendees across a large campus, it is effective and popular.

Second, the expansion is continuing. Airport connector tunnels are under construction, with rides to Harry Reid International Airport already operating (partially above ground at $12 per trip). The City of Las Vegas issued permits in January 2026 for expansion into downtown, with five planned stops along Fremont Street. Three Chinatown stations are in the pipeline. Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have approved the broader 68-mile, 104-station buildout plan.

Third, the tunneling technology itself has improved. The Prufrock-series boring machine demonstrated a "porpoising" technique (emerging from the ground without a crane or retrieval pit) that reduced construction timelines. The Encore connector was completed in under 10 weeks from site access to tunnel completion.

Fourth, comparing a 5-year-old startup tunnel system to the NYC Subway (which has been operating since 1904) or the Shinkansen (operating since 1964) is, by definition, comparing different stages of maturity. Every transit system started small.

These are fair points. The question is whether they justify the original claims that The Boring Company would revolutionize transportation, tunnel at a fraction of conventional costs, and make high-speed rail obsolete. By those stated goals, the data is unambiguous: it has not happened, and the trajectory does not suggest it will.

The Bottom Line

The Boring Company was not pitched as a convention center shuttle. It was pitched as the future of transportation. Hyperloop. 760 mph. Coast-to-coast in minutes. The end of traffic. The obsolescence of rail. Nine years and approximately $800 million in total funding later, the delivered product is a network of narrow tunnels in a single American city where Tesla sedans carry 3 to 4 passengers at 35 mph, serving 1 million riders per year. Every other proposed project in every other city has been cancelled, suspended, or abandoned.

Meanwhile, the technologies Musk positioned The Boring Company against continue to operate and expand. The NYC Subway carries 1.3 billion riders per year. Japan's Shinkansen carries 153 million at 200 mph with a perfect safety record. China built 48,000 kilometers of high-speed rail in 16 years. Brightline is building real high-speed rail between Las Vegas and Los Angeles right now, at 186 mph, with a $3 billion federal commitment and active construction.

The comparison is not between a startup and a mature system. It is between what was promised and what was delivered. And that comparison extends beyond The Boring Company. As we documented in The Perpetual Promise Machine, the same gap between announcement and execution appears in Tesla (TSLA) Full Self-Driving (a decade of "next year" promises), xAI (AGI timelines that shift annually), and across the broader Musk enterprise. In The Musk Shell Game, we traced the financial architecture that connects these entities. The Boring Company fits the same pattern: a bold public promise, a wave of media attention and political engagement, and then a quiet retreat to something much smaller than what was pitched.

At Wealth Engine Pro, we believe the most important question an investor can ask is not "What is the vision?" It is "What do the numbers say?" The numbers say that conventional mass transit, the technology Elon Musk called outdated, moves more people, at higher speeds, more safely, and more efficiently than anything The Boring Company has built or proposed. That is not an opinion. It is arithmetic.