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Elon Musk's Boring Machine Completes the First Section of An LA Tunnel (theverge.com)
New submitter simkel shares a report from The Verge: Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says his ambitious tunnel-boring endeavor, aptly named The Boring Company, has officially started digging underneath Los Angeles. Musk announced the news on Twitter, where he said "Godot," the Samuel Beckett-inspired name of the company's tunnel boring machine, had completed the the first segment of a tunnel in the Southern California metropolis. Prior to today, it was unclear how long it would take Musk to convince the city to allow him to move the experimental effort beyond the SpaceX parking lot in Hawthorne. We don't have details on what Musk hammered out with the city of LA. But he did tweet earlier this month about a meeting with L.A Mayor Eric Garcetti to lay the groundwork for the necessary permits and regulatory approvals he'd need to start digging with Godot, which weighs about 1,200 tons and runs about 400 feet long. Musk said last month that the first tunnel would run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood, and Sherman Oaks, with later tunnels covering more of the greater LA area. Now, it looks like the LAX to Culver City route appears underway.
In the play, the eponymous character "Godot" never arrives.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If this was purely motivated by serving his butt from home to office I'm pretty sure a helicopter would be more economical than boring tunnels up and down Californian metros.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
You can engineer against anything. At least up to a 50 years lifespan. It's only after 50 years when the rebar is rusting that you have to worry. In other words only old structures are potentially dangerous but then that's why such things are rebuilt.
There is nothing stronger than a tube in the ground. Far more secure during a 12.0 earthquake than any overpass. Your far more likely to die from being trampled in an earthquake than from a tunnel collapse. We are not talking about mine shafts but rather oversized concrete tubes. A tube could split in half and move 3 inches and still be perfectly fine and usable.
The bigger issue is structures on the surface and ground stability during and after the evacuation. If they are drilling in rock or underneath rock then it should be much of an effect. But I can see Musk digging tunnels underneath other tunnels.