Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com)

Elon Musk's Boring Company has settled a lawsuit preventing the company from building a tunnel beneath the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. "[T]he cancellation of the Westside tunnel project is a major blow to Musk's grand plan in the City of Angels," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Los Angeles Times reports that the project's demise began shortly after the Boring Company obtained a preliminary exemption to skip California's environmental review process and start digging. The city's authorities have been friendly to Musk's plans, but a group of residents in the Westside area filed an environmental suit in May alleging that the tunnel violates state law. The crux of the group's argument was that the Westside tunnel is part of a larger project that the company outlined with a map late last year. According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project, stating that a full environmental review can't "be evaded by chopping large projects into smaller pieces that taken individually appear to have no significant environmental impacts."

The Westside group did not get a ruling on its lawsuit; instead, it seems the two parties settled. The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, but it sent a statement to NBC News that reads: "The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter of Brentwood Residents Coalition et al. v. City of Los Angeles (TBC -- The Boring Company). The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium."

Comments

Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF?

[Gavagai80]

It's probably not an issue with wildlife, but an issue with digging under people's property.

If you read the first sentence of the summary, it says the tunnel in question was planned to run under the 405 freeway. There are no houses on the freeway.

It was likely either a cynical attempt to slow the project down and get bribes for stepping aside, or some uneducated people imagining that their houses will be shaking constantly from nearby tunneling. The EIR wouldn't turn up anything, but it'd still require time and lawyers to write the nothing.

Rich asshole screw things up as usual

[ToasterTester]

The subway in L.A. was held up for decades because the rich Beverly Hills residents didn't want to be disturbed by the building of it. So the intelligent route couldn't be used, the one the old L.A. Red Line had, so the L.A. subway skirts Beverly Hills. Now Elton want to build his tunnel and the bozos in the rich areas of the Westside get it stopped. Plutarchy in action just like the whole Trump administration is all about.

Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF?

[sexconker]

As opposed to commuting to the Hyperloop station with SUVs on the freeway, then getting in the Hyperloop which, despite common misconceptions, still requires dirty power to run, then get out of the Hyperloop and renting a car or calling an Uber/Lyft/etc.?

The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.

Don't build in the People's Republic!

[Applehu Akbar]

According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project...

If this is how the law actually reads, that is California's way of assuring BANANA (Build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anyone). Segmenting a potential big project into individually testable smaller sections is a perfectly natural way of trying out something new. Small wonder that it can't even install a TGV that can be ordered right out of the Alstom catalog.

Come to Arizona, where experimentation is encouraged, and bore a tunnel here. The automated car companies are testing on the streets above you.