The Boring Company's free tunnels: what happened to the New Orleans, Baltimore and Dallas winners

In January 2026, The Boring Company tried something new: instead of selling tunnels to cities, it offered to give one away. Its "Tunnel Vision Challenge" invited anyone to pitch a tunnel, with a free one-mile Loop as the prize. Seven months after the winners were named, the results are a useful look at how hard it is to turn a free tunnel into a real one.

The contest in numbers

• Entries: 487 submissions from around the world, according to Secret Dallas.
• The prize: a tunnel up to one mile (1.6 km) long with a 12-foot (about 3.7 m) inner diameter, the standard size for a Loop.
• The winners: on March 24, 2026, the company picked three instead of one: the NOLA Loop in New Orleans, the Ravens Loop in Baltimore and the University Hills Loop in Dallas.
• The catch: each project first has to pass a due diligence phase paid for by The Boring Company, including talks with officials, geotechnical borings and a survey of utilities and other underground infrastructure. Only projects that pass go ahead. If all three pass, the company said it would build all three.

Baltimore: out after one day

The Ravens Loop was proposed by the Baltimore Ravens football team. On March 25, a day after being named a winner, the team said the idea was "only in the exploratory phase" and that after talks with public partners it would not continue "at this time". The mayor's office said it supported the decision. The Baltimore Sun's report also said The Boring Company had backed out; the Ravens' own statement did not say who ended the process.

New Orleans: a route along Poydras Street

Mayor Helena Moreno filed the New Orleans application on February 20. According to Hoodline, which cited the filing as reported by NOLA.com, the preferred route starts near City Hall and the Hyatt Regency on Loyola Avenue, runs under Poydras Street to Convention Center Boulevard and ends at Julia Street. The goal is to link hotels, the convention center and the riverfront, and to ease traffic during big events.

The filing projected about 75,000 to 125,000 riders a year, and a trip of around three minutes between the convention center and the Hyatt during large events. The big question is the ground: New Orleans sits largely below sea level, with a shallow water table and soft river sediments, far harder conditions than the dry soil under Las Vegas. Permits, safety reviews and public input are all still to come.

Dallas: a tunnel to a rail station

In Dallas, developer Hoque Global entered University Hills, a $1 billion, 270-acre mixed-use development near the University of North Texas at Dallas. The tunnel would connect the development to the UNT Dallas station of DART, the regional rail network. The plans include around 2,000 homes and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space. No timeline for the diligence phase or construction has been published.

The Tesla link

Loop systems run on Tesla cars: in Las Vegas, Tesla cars carry the passengers, and Tesla's self-driving software is being tested in the tunnels. Every new Loop is therefore a potential new fleet of Teslas, and a possible place for driverless operation. The contest also produced two side projects The Boring Company said it would explore: a utility tunnel in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and a tunnel for the Morgan's Wonderland campus in San Antonio, where a Prufrock machine is now waiting for final approval.

Why it matters

A free tunnel sounds like an easy yes, but the Baltimore exit shows that public partners, permits and local politics still decide what gets built. For The Boring Company, completed projects in very different ground, from New Orleans' wet soil to Texas clay, would be strong proof that its cheap-tunnel approach works outside Las Vegas.

What to watch next

Results from the geotechnical borings in New Orleans, any construction date for University Hills, and whether The Boring Company runs another round of the challenge.