- Elon Musk’s the Boring Company is in the process of expanding its tunnel system under Las Vegas.
- Fortune reported the company mistakenly exposed the base of pillars that support the Vegas monorail.
- The monorail was temporarily shut down and the company was issued violations, Fortune reported.
The Boring Company, the startup owned by Elon Musk that is expanding its network of tunnels under Las Vegas, was issued several violations from Clark County and accused of creating a “potential hazard” by exposing 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 beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center in Teslas. Now the company is expanding the tunnel system to create the Vegas Loop, which is set 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 been without hiccups. Fortune, in part through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained documents showing workers for the Boring Company mistakenly dug too close to pillars holding up the monorail, a 3.9-mile public transit system along the Vegas Strip.
Clark County issued three violations to the company related to two incidents in June and October of last year, in which the base of monorail pillars had been exposed, the outlet reported.
For the incident on June 15, the county ordered the monorail system to be temporarily suspended. Fortune reported that an engineering firm was brought in to assess the risk, and the following day, a construction company poured a cement mixture over the pillar base area. 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 requests for comment from Business Insider.
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 “fixing a broken irrigation line and inadvertently exposed a Monorail foundation, so we took the correct steps to repair that, including pausing operations for a day.”
Regarding the October incident, the spokesperson said concerns were raised but were “unfounded” and that the monorail was not shut down.
“We put the public at risk for anybody who was on that monorail at that time,” a former Boring Company employee working near the June incident told Fortune.
The incidents are not the first time safety concerns have been raised about the Boring Company. In February, Fortune also published an investigation in which former employees said they felt unsafe working there.
Bloomberg also reported in February that the Boring Company was being hit with safety violations, with workers experiencing chemical burns and potentially dangerous accidents.
Some employees were left with scars after they had to travel through two feet of chemical-laced mud that made their skin feel “on fire,” according to Bloomberg, citing an investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
