Elon Musk is a billionaire known for his grand visionary projects, and one of his latest initiatives was the construction of underground tunnels. With this, he aims to relieve traffic in major cities such as Los Angeles, which started his project called The Boring Company.
Keep reading and understand more about Elon Musk's underground tunnels.
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See how the idea of building underground tunnels came about
This idea first came up in a tweet from the billionaire in late 2016. “The traffic is driving me crazy. I'm going to build a tunneling machine and start digging,” he said.
After that, The Boring Company was created, with the aim of building underground tunnels to end traffic jams cities. But six years later, the only tunnels open to the public are just 2.7 kilometers long, under the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The tunnels were built in about a year using drilling machines and cost about $47 million, according to The Boring Company. However, the LVCC Loop system is only operational when large conventions take place in the state of Nevada. Furthermore, the trips are still free, but officials do not rule out that in the future there may be a cost to use the tunnel.
In 2018, Elon Musk predicted that cars would zip through the tunnel at a speed of 150 miles per hour. However, in the tests carried out by EL PAÍS, the maximum speed was only 36 miles per hour.
Will there be tunnels in other cities?
At present, according to media reports, underground tunnel projects in Los Angeles, Chicago and Baltimore were abandoned, and the Las Vegas LVCC system is still quite different from the original idea. from Musk.
Moreover, when the billionaire presented a prototype of these tunnels, he assured the public that only autonomous electric vehicles would use them. However, in Las Vegas, every Tesla has a driver.
The LVCC Loop opened in 2021 and, according to The Boring Company, it operates when a major convention takes place in the city. At the SEMA 2021 auto show, for example, the system transported “between 24,000 and 26,000 passengers per day”.
EL PAÍS spoke with tunnel users and none of them found any disadvantages in the free system. Also, the newspaper attempted to contact The Boring Company about future projects and fees, but received no response.
