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Elon Musk's Boring Company set to unveil its first Los Angeles-area tunnel


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Elon Musk's Boring Company set to unveil its first Los Angeles-area tunnel

By Steve Gorman

 

2018-12-19T045457Z_3_LYNXMPEEBI01S_RTROPTP_4_MUSK-TUNNEL.JPG

FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk arrives to speak at Boring Company community meeting in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, U.S. May 17, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Boring Company, Elon Musk's underground transit venture, planned an unveiling of its first tunnel on Tuesday, two years after the billionaire entrepreneur complained about Los Angeles traffic and vowed to "just start digging" as a remedy.

 

Musk has advertised his 2-mile (3.2 km) tunnel as the first step towards developing a high-speed subterranean network for whisking vehicles and pedestrians below the congested streets of the second-largest city in the United States.

 

The tunnel, an initial proof-of-concept, has been excavated along a path that runs not through Los Angeles but beneath the tiny adjacent municipality of Hawthorne, where Musk's Boring Company and his SpaceX rocket firm are both headquartered.

 

The Boring Company announced plans for a live webcast on Tuesday at 8 p.m. local time (0400 GMT) of what it called a "product launch" for the tunnel, but gave scant details.

 

In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said the big reveal would include "autonomous transport cars & ground to tunnel elevator cars."

 

Boring's website describes a system of passenger- and automobile-carrying "skates" that can zip through the tunnels by way of electric power once they are lowered underground from street level.

 

Musk, best known as head of the Tesla Inc <TSLA.O> electric car manufacturer and energy company, launched his foray into public transit after complaining in December 2016 that L.A.'s traffic was "driving me nuts," promising then to "build a boring machine and just start digging."

 

In May, the company gave the world a preview of the first tunnel, posting a fast-forward video of the interior shot by a camera travelling the length of the cylindrical passageway, which measures about 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter.

 

Musk also created a stir by promising free trips through the tunnel once it opened - "like a weird little Disney ride in L.A." - to get public feedback before proceeding with a larger system.

 

It remained doubtful, however, whether permits Musk received to dig what was then billed as an experimental tunnel would allow the public inside.

 

"There will be no cars or people in the research tunnel," according to the minutes of a special Hawthorne City Council meeting in August 2017 to review an easement for the project.

 

On its website, the Boring company said that "due to unbelievably high demand, tours through the Hawthorne test tunnel are by invitation only."

 

If successful, the Hawthorne tunnel is envisioned as eventually connecting to a network of other tunnels, yet to be approved or built.

 

Last month, the Boring Company scrapped plans for a slightly longer 2.7-mile segment under a West Los Angeles neighbourhood, settling litigation brought by community groups opposed to that project.

 

But Musk's company announced it was moving ahead with a proposed tunnel across town to connect Dodger Stadium, home of the city's Major League Baseball team, to the existing subway line.

 

In June, Boring was selected by the city of Chicago to build a 17-mile underground transit system linking that city's downtown to O'Hare International Airport. The company also has proposed an East Coast Loop that would run from Washington, D.C., out to the Maryland suburbs.

 

(Reporting by Steve Gorman, Editing by Bill Tarrant and Rosalba O'Brien)

 
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-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-12-19
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6 hours ago, connda said:

Personally, I find just about everything about Elon Musk to be boring.  Can't understand why main-stream media are so stuck on such a boring character. 

I think the topic is about a rather innovative transport system.   

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13 hours ago, connda said:

Personally, I find just about everything about Elon Musk to be boring.  Can't understand why main-stream media are so stuck on such a boring character. 

 

He has adult of personality the last time I saw anything like it was with Steve Jobs. This is why I think Tesla will be wildly successful. He has fans as loyal if not more loyal than Apple. Customers like that are great to have. 

 

No idea if the boring company will ever pay off. I know he wants a hyper loop of some kind. However for this short of a section it seems like all it needed was a traditional subway system.

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15 hours ago, connda said:

Personally, I find just about everything about Elon Musk to be boring.  Can't understand why main-stream media are so stuck on such a boring character. 

 

Of the people alive today, Musk will make a bigger impact on the way we live our lives going forward than anyone else I can name.  And, I'd bet, anyone you can name.

 

Let's see...  With Paypal, the guy was involved in revolutionizing the way goods are purchased and $ billions a year of payments are made, followed by dozens of copycats like AliPay, Samsung Pay, Rabbit Card, et. al.  In the future, the PayPal model will enable transactions into the $ trillions a year.

 

In space, the guys is instrumental in developing re-usable rocket technology where NASA was never successful with each shuttle mission costing in the $$ Billions.   I am fundamentally against missions to Mars for the simple reason that I don't want anyone to believe there's a backup plan to keeping the Earth viable, but there is so much more we can do in space if only the cost came down.  Not to mention space tourism...

 

With TESLA, he shamed big auto by making a car that real people actually wanted to buy (not just tree huggers), and sprearheading the battery and recharging infrastructure that will open the doors for dozens of copycats- while open-sourcing the technology they're developing to benefit mankind (when did Jobs ever open source anything?).  TESLA tech may not be the ultimate, but it blazed a trail and proved what's possible.  Same with Boring Company and his approach to mass transit.

 

You may think the guy is boring, but I sure don't.

 

 

 

Edited by impulse
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23 minutes ago, impulse said:

You may think the guy is boring, but I sure don't

I dont think hes boring either. And I admire what hes created (although I am skeptical how created it, but hey, thats business).

 

I do think he is an egotistical, erratic, thin skinned, impulsive, paranoid, shoot from the hip self promoting  dude with anger management problems. Sort of like Donald Trump in his younger days, except Elon smokes weed.

 

There is always a spark of genius in the successful folks.

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17 hours ago, connda said:

Personally, I find just about everything about Elon Musk to be boring.  Can't understand why main-stream media are so stuck on such a boring character. 

 

I understand. When an "App" can become a multi-billion dollar company that provides no tangible benefit to society and only serves to enrich, even employ, a handful of people it is extremely intersting to look at those who are seeking new, real solutions to major, long standing problems, while at the same time taking on huge risk and coming up against entrenched interests. Like him or not, he is doing that, and I personally commend him for it.

Edited by lannarebirth
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 I'm just skeptical that he can develop some new boring machine as if the mining engineers and companies are not motivated or haven't tried.   Rock mechanics is a highly researched topic.  Rock in Earth's crust is full of surprises.   I do have to say seeing those booster rocked land ass end on a barge at sea brings chills to my spine and pride to be human. 

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10 minutes ago, Elkski said:

 I'm just skeptical that he can develop some new boring machine as if the mining engineers and companies are not motivated or haven't tried.   Rock mechanics is a highly researched topic.  Rock in Earth's crust is full of surprises.   I do have to say seeing those booster rocked land ass end on a barge at sea brings chills to my spine and pride to be human. 

 

From what I have been reading it seems like the main accomplishment of The Boring Company as been they're able to get the price of tunneling down substantially. If so the company is a gold mine or very valuable to those wanting to drill one.

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