Salesforce’s chief executive, Marc Benioff asked in a tweet Elon Musk to dig a tunnel under San Francisco, days after the Tesla CEO, who is also head of The Boring Company, tweeted the tunnel under Los Angeles had been completed and will launch officially next month.
Would this turn into another actual business deal that started on Twitter, like Tesla’s energy storage project in Australia, which became reality after a direct exchange between Musk and Australia’s Prime Minister last year, remains to be seen but Musk has been vocal about the benefits of tunnel transport as a way of alleviating traffic jams in some of the world’s business cities.
The pilot tunnel in L.A. is “disturbingly long”, according to another tweet by Musk, at 2 miles. Its construction started last year and now the tunnel extends from the headquarters of SpaceX in Hawthorne to a suburb of Los Angeles. It will, according to plans laid out in late 2017, be part of a network of tunnels, with one central “artery” and several branches into different parts of the city. The “artery” will be 40 miles long.
Cars will descend into the tunnel in elevators and will then be put on electric “sleds” and move at speeds of 150 mph. The tunnels will also feature mass transit pods. The pods, according to a simulation video on The Boring Company’s website, will move at speeds of 124 mph.
An interesting fact about the pilot tunnel is that it starts from a building rather than a specially designated location. The Boring Company’s website explains that “The purpose is to demonstrate that a lift can be built in very small footprints and within existing buildings, whether they are houses, office buildings, or retail parking lots. Looking forward, one could have a lift in the basement of every office building, allowing extremely convenient commutes.”
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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