Elon Musk tunnels through traffic chaos with $1 ride promise

Continues growing traffic congestion is an inescapable condition in most parts of the world, be it Los Angelos or Tokyo or Delhi. With every passing day, it keeps getting worse.

Commuters are often left frustrated as policymakers inability to cure the chaos seems more obvious.

But hang on, SpaceX and The Boring Company CEO Elon Musk has a plan, that policymakers can pay heed to, to cure traffic congestion with hundreds of tunnels.

"Most cities in the world have severe traffic issues. To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won't fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew," said Elon Musk while revealing his concept for a personalised mass transit system or "Loop" that will carry 16 people and travel at 240 km per hour for a fare of just $1.

Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates travelling at 125-150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers.

"It's one (solution) we think could work and is worth trying," Musk added in techcrunch video report.

Why he prefers tunnelling?

Because it's less nerve-wracking than flying cars. There are unlimited layers of tunnels. It's weatherproof. There are no divided communities with lanes, he said in an hour-long presentation.

However, experts have raised a question that it might lead to traffic congestion at entry and end points.

Unlike a subway, there is no practical upper limit to the number of stations that can be built along the tunnel route, as stations can be as small as a single parking space. Each station will consist of a bank of elevators and the number of elevators is only limited to the available land area.

The high density of stations will help reduce congestion by distributing traffic across many access points and by providing more convenient entrance and exit locations, the Boring Company CEO noted on criticism.

One of the reasons why it has not been done before is, tunnels are really expensive to dig, with some projects costing as much as $1 billion per mile.

The proposed project would be a 2.7 mile proof-of-process tunnel which would run within the City of Los Angeles and Culver City. In this regard, an excavation permit application has been submitted to the City of Los Angeles. Hawthorne, an initial test tunnel, has been permitted and is under construction.

It can be applied in any city in the world given there are two great endpoints and an alignment between them.

Musk founded the Boring Company, which is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company, in 2016.