Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Elon Musk to unveil underground tunnel
LOS ANGELES — Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk was set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel Tuesday that could move people faster than subways.
Musk also plans to show off the autonomous cars that will carry people through the test tunnel, which runs about 2 miles under the streets of Hawthorne, Calif., Musk’s SpaceX headquarters.
The reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that “traffic is driving me nuts” and he was “going to build a tunnel-boring machine and just start digging.”
So began The Boring Co., tongue-in-cheek intentional.
Since the announcement, Musk has revealed a handful of photos and videos of the tunnel’s progress.
The tunnel, meant to be a “proof of concept,” is being used to help Musk and The Boring Co. conduct research and development for a broader system in trafficplagued Los Angeles and beyond.
One, known as the Dugout Loop , would take Los Angeles baseball fans to Dodger Stadium from one of three subway stations. Another would take travelers from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. Both projects are in the environmental review phase.
The Boring Co. canceled its plans for another test tunnel on Los Angeles’ west side last month after a neighborhood coalition filed a lawsuit expressing concerns about traffic and disruptions from trucks hauling out dirt during the boring process.
Musk has described a system in which vehicles would descend via elevators into tunnels and move on electrically powered platforms called skates. Up to 16 pedestrians and bicyclists could board autonomous vehicles also traveling on the skates as fast as 150 mph.
“Once fully operational (demo system rides will be free), the system will always give priority to pods for pedestrians & cyclists for less than the cost of a bus ticket,” Musk tweeted in May.
For the privately funded test tunnel, Musk acquired a tunnel-boring machine that had been used in a San Francisco Bay Area project and put it down a shaft in a parking lot at the SpaceX headquarters.
Musk’s vision for the underground tunnels, known as loop, is not the same as another of his transportation concepts known as hyperloop.
That would involve a network of nearly airless tubes that would speed special capsules over long distances at up to 750 mph, using a thin cushion of air, magnetism and solar power.