Elon Musk’s first tunnel under Los Angeles is almost complete
Elon Musk, the CEO of the tunneling company The Boring Company, which he founded, has announced that the first tunnel under the American city of Los Angeles is almost finished. Ultimately, electrically powered shuttles will have to carry passengers through it.
Musk says in a post on Instagram, which shows a short time-lapse video from the tunnel, that he is still waiting for permission from regulators to use the tunnel. Once approved, the public will be able to take free rides within a few months. It is not known whether this is already happening with the electrically powered platform trailers, as is ultimately intended. These cars must be able to transport eight to sixteen people at the same time and ultimately also carry cars. In any case, the tunnel goes to LAX, the international airport of Los Angeles.
It’s not yet clear when the tunnel will be fully operational, but Musk reiterated his earlier position that The Boring Company will prioritize tunnels in the tunnel. pedestrians and cyclists. Cars will also be allowed access, but according to Musk it is a matter of courtesy and fairness to give priority to people who cannot afford a car. He says the cost for these passengers will be lower than the price of a bus ticket.
Unlike the metro, travelers and motorists access the tunnels through a dense network of thousands of small stations the size of a parking lot. Pedestrians and cyclists can take a seat in electric shuttles that descend vertically via a kind of lift system and thus end up directly in the tunnel, where they reach a speed of more than 200 km/h. Cars enter the tunnels in the same way, where they move through the tunnels stationary on electric skates.
Elon Musk also said on Twitter that The Boring Company has already started digging a tunnel between Washington DC and New York. Last year he already announced that he wanted to build this hyperloop route, which will reduce the travel time between the two cities from 5 hours to 29 minutes. He expresses the hope of starting a tunnel between Los Angeles and San Francisco next year. These tunnels between cities are specifically for the hyperloop, where pods can reach higher speeds than a regular passenger plane through a near-vacuum tube.
The idea for the tunnel project arose when Musk was stuck in Los Angeles traffic in late 2016. This frustration led him to the idea of building a tunnel boring machine, under the name The Boring Company. Ultimately, there must be a 3D network of underground tunnels that not only reduces traffic, but also accommodates the hyperloop. The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company says he can cut costs because the tunnels are relatively narrow.
The company’s aim is also to improve the technology of the drilling machines. Those machines now often go much slower than a snail and TBC’s slogan is ‘Beat the snail’.