Elon Musk Wants to Dig Another Tunnel Under LA
0Elon Musk Wants to Dig Another Tunnel Under LA.
The Boring Company sure sounds sexy. It’s founded and funded by Elon Musk, the guy who makes electric cars (Tesla) and sends rockets into space (SpaceX). It has come up with a new—albeit unproven—concept for dismantling traffic. It wants to build underground creations that you, mere human, can ride at speeds up to to 150 mph, without ever encountering a speck of traffic. But before it sinks its machines into the ground and tunnels to victory, the Boring Company has to do something truly monumental: get past local government.
On Monday evening, Boring Company operations chief Jehn Balajadia stood before the city council of LA County's Culver City, and spent 45 minutes explaining why Musk wants and deserves the right to dig a tunnel under their homes. The sometimes chippy meeting was packed with members of the public, and highlighted both the exciting and not quite consistent elements of the transportation company's plans.
Balajadia said the Boring Company is done with its tech development phase, and is ready to carve out a "proof of process" tunnel that would run 6.5 miles between the city of Los Angeles and Culver City, its neighbor to the west. Part of the goal here is to test the company's ability to build across jurisdictions and handle all the hurdles that entails. She said the company has already asked LA for an excavation permit, and is working with Caltrans, the state transportation agency, to secure the right of way beneath public roads. But the local leadership isn't entirely convinced.
Musk came up with the Boring Company in late 2016 while stuck in LA traffic. He could destroy the scourge of congestion, he figured, by building layers upon layers of underground tunnels, each just wide enough for a personal car or a multi-passenger pod. Those vehicles would ride on electric skates that would zoom everyone along at triple-digit speeds. And, he insisted, he could do it far more cheaply and at least four times faster than typical tunneling tech—a claim he hasn't proven, and which tunneling engineers doubt. Longer tunnels between cities, Musk added, could contain the hyperloop, his idea for a levitating train that works in a near-vacuum tube.