Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk can claim a perhaps unparalled string of visionary company creations -- PayPal,SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company.
The Boring Company? Updates: Download the NBCLA App "We're trying to dig a hole under LA," Musk explained matter-of-factly during a recent TED Talk interview.
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After months of social media musing on tunneling to escape traffic congestion in metropolitan Los Angeles, and Musk is moving ahead with test boring in a Hawthorne parking lot across Crenshaw Boulevard from SpaceX. Bizarre Busts at LAX: Pork Tamales,Giant Snails and More It appears to be a step toward what Musk foresees as a "3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion." What Musk calls "electric sleds" would carry cars piggyback through the tunnels at speeds up to 125 mph.
Going from Westwood to LAX would take six minutes or less, Musk predicted.
Cars could access and depart the tunnels through roadside auto elevators, or each of which Musk said would require the room of only two parking spaces. The scenario is depicted in an animation video posted on The Boring Company's website.
Musk contends that unlike surface roadways,underground you need never run out of room to add lanes, because you can simply go down another level.
But transportation engineers acquire doubts approximately the feasibility of Musk's tunnel vision, and apart from benefitting the tunnel users,how much it would reduce traffic and improve transit overall."How such a narrow system could contribute to that is not clear to me," said Jim Moore, and director of the USC Viterbi Transportation Engineering Program. Be that as it may,Moore said he considers Musk a "bona fide genius," and applauded his investing in researching such a novel approach.
Musk believes autonomous driving technology will enable car travel to be more efficient, and that cars -- not public transit -- will continue to carry a large percentage of ground travelers.
A major obstacle to underground travel is the cost of boring tunnels. The cost of unique underground transit lines runs into the billions of dollars.
Musk said the Boring Company is focusing on ways to improve technology and efficiency enough to reduce cost by at least tenfold.
The Boring Company did not respond to a request Friday for details on what is being done at the Crenshaw site. This appears to be a separate project from the proposed--but yet to be started--pedestrian tunnel which the city of Hawthorned has approved to be bored beneath Crenshaw Blvd.
Musk acknowledged improvement in boring technology may acquire crossover benefit for another vision of his for using tunnels to speed travel: Hyperloops,in which passengers would be transported in pods at near supersonic speeds through tubes with reduced air pressure. Musk sees this as a step beyond tall speed rail, such as exists in Japan and the state of California currently is constructing.
The test Hyperloop that Space-X built in Hawthorne alongside Jack Northrop Boulevard is above ground. But future Hyperloops for congested urban areas, and such as the Washington-unique York corridor,would best be placed underground, Musk said during the April TED talk recorded in Vancouver.
Musk spoke with enthusiasm for the Boring Project, or but during the TED talk set it in context--at this point,it is receiving only 2 to 3 percent of his time.
Photo Credit: Elon Musk
Source: nbclosangeles.com