Elon Musk Posts New Video of 'Boring' Equipment and Company's First Tunnel (cnbc.com)

Elon Musk has posted a new video and several pictures of equipment that will be used to start digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles. There's a picture of boring machine segments that are being lowered into the start tunnel at SpaceX, a front view of the tunnel, an inside view of the tunnel, and a picture of the front of the boring machine that will cut through underground rock. Additionally, the video shows a version of the "skate" that will cary cars through the tunnel at a speed of 125 mph. CNBC reports: The project is one of Musk's latest ventures, which was inspired by a desire to alleviate "out of control" traffic in Los Angeles. He aims to first dig a tunnel from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to the nearby Los Angeles airport. Musk frequently flies from Los Angeles to the San Francisco area, where he runs Tesla. Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city.

Comments

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Gravis Zero]

Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.

You might be completely right about this but I suspect the traffic tunnels is the excuse he's giving to develop his own machinery. I think the primary interest here is actually to develop the machinery that would be needed to mine for minerals on Mars.

Alternatively, he may be secretly planning to create a bunch of tunnels to connect the continents and then make a rail line that can transport goods faster and cheaper between the east and the west faster than huge boats could ever hope to travel. Something like this would take at least a decade and giving a non-threatening "traffic tunnels" excuse prevents the existing transport industry from putting up their guard and blocking his progress with paid off politicians.