The Boring Company appears to have its first paying customer

Enlarge / A view of the exit of The Boring Company’s test tunnel in Hawthorne. (credit: The Boring Company)

On Wednesday, the board of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) voted to grant The Boring Company—Elon Musk’s private tunneling venture—a $48.6 million contract to build a two-mile Loop at the expanding Las Vegas Convention Center.

LVCVA officials recommended The Boring Company’s proposal to the board back in March, saying that it had the most competitive price among the transportation companies that submitted proposals. At the time, Boring Company officials said they could build the Convention Center’s transportation system for between $33 million and $55 million. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the final cost for the project is expected to be $52.5 million.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company wants to ameliorate traffic by moving people through tunnels on electric cars or electric skates at speeds of up to 155 miles per hour. Musk has said he can significantly reduce the cost of tunneling through the company’s technical improvements to boring machines, the reuse of dirt to create concrete reinforcement, the use of continuous tunneling and reinforcing operations, and by digging smaller tunnels that don’t need to accommodate internal combustion engines.