HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Fed up with Southern California vehicle snarls, Elon Musk set out to solve the persistent urban irritant: the traffic. But rather than build atop the highway system, where his Tesla cars travel, or in the sky, home to his SpaceX rockets, he sought an answer under his feet: tunnels.
“I said, ‘What if we go down instead of up?’” Musk told Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles during a recent public discussion. “I’ve lived in L.A. now since 2002. Traffic has gone from bad to horrific back to bad.”
On Tuesday, Musk unveiled the first mile-long stretch of his underground vision of a transit system in this suburb of 90,000 people about 15 miles southwest of Los Angeles. It is the home of both SpaceX and his tunneling enterprise, called the Boring Co.
Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., arrives in a modified Tesla Model X electric vehicle during an unveiling event for the Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. The tunnel, meant to be a “proof of concept,” runs just over a mile under Musk’s SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. (Robyn Beck/Pool Photo via AP)
But the promotional event, which attracted hundreds of people who lined up to see the tunnel, fell short of earlier promises of a system that could transport up to 16 people at a time in electric-powered pods. Musk said he had abandoned that concept in favor of a system using more conventional passenger vehicles.
“So what we believe we have here is a real solution to the traffic problem we have on Earth,” Musk told reporters. “It’s much more like an underground highway.”
The entrance to the tunnel sits across the street from the SpaceX headquarters and the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, next to a single-family residence and behind some storefront-style buildings.
Test rides on Tuesday featured Tesla Model X cars that were lowered on a circular panel to a lighted pathway several stories underground that is wide enough for a single vehicle. The concrete walls are painted white, with a single fluorescent bar on the ceiling that lights up blue or green throughout the tunnel’s length.
A pair of clamps attached to the Tesla’s front wheels keeps the car on the track as the vehicle moves under its own power. The company says speeds of 150 mph will be possible, though the test run was far slower.
Until now, the company has used standard equipment, but it expects to roll out newly engineered tunneling technology as its efforts continue. Musk said about $10 million was spent on the first mile of the system, which took about a year to complete, largely because of hurdles with permits and licenses.
But costs are likely to rise.Subway tunneling elsewhere in the world can cost $1 billion a mile or more; Musk has said that figure must be reduced by a factor of 10 to make his system viable on a larger scale.
Even then, the Hawthorne tunnel is at best a proof of concept. To make such a system extensive enough to serve one of the world’s biggest metropolitan areas, with private funding, seems a herculean proposition.
The first hurdle may be to convince urban planners that it is a practical way of easing the traffic crush.
“I like technology,” James E. Moore, director of the transportation engineering program at the University of Southern California, said this week. “I admire Elon Musk. So I want to say, ‘Yes, this is a good idea,’ but I really can’t.”
Moore said solving traffic problems did not require building anything new. He said the more important consideration was how to better manage what we already have, “before we look up or down, before I look at either one.”
“We’ve never built our way out of congestion,” Moore said. “I think there are cheaper ways to provide better transportation for large numbers of people.” For example, Moore said managing highway traffic with tolls or other economic policies could help reduce congestion.
During his public conversation with Musk last month, Garcetti noted that many of “the folks who make tunnels” were skeptical of Musk’s plans, but he added: “This is much larger than a tunnel. You’re talking about a transportation system.”
The tunnel was first expected to be more of a mass-transit system, but that prospect seems gone with the decision not to use the 16-passenger pods.
The system that Musk proposes for Los Angeles, called a loop, is distinct from the transportation mode known as a hyperloop — something he and others are also developing. The hyperloop uses a vacuum to reduce friction to achieve speeds up to 600 mph, while the loop does not require that technology because it is designed for slower speeds and shorter distances.
“The loop is a step toward hyperloop,” Musk said.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is also developing a hyperloop, called Virgin Hyperloop One. The venture has built a test track in the Nevada desert and is in talks to build a line connecting Kansas City and St. Louis.
Musk said his concepts had attracted significant attention from cities across the country, and he defended tunneling against criticism that it might be disruptive to neighborhoods — a concern already raised in the Los Angeles region.
A modified Tesla Model X rests on an elevator, right, above the pit and tunnel entrance before an unveiling event for the Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube — the tech entrepreneur’s answer to what he calls “soul-destroying traffic.” (Robyn Beck/Pool Photo via AP)
“You cannot see, hear or feel tunnel construction,” Musk said.
In addition to its efforts in the Los Angeles area, the Boring Co. is proposing lines in Chicago and the Washington-Baltimore corridor. The company raised $112.5 million in capital earlier this year, with more than 90 percent coming from Musk, whose net worth has been estimated at more than $20 billion.
The Boring Co. is still determining what its fares will be but says they will be comparable to those in other mass transit systems, or cheaper. Musk said passengers not riding in their own cars might be transported in vehicles owned by the Boring Co. for about $1 per ride.
“If it’s our capital, if it’s public capital, I wouldn’t do it,” Moore said of Musk’s loop project. “But he should feel free to risk all of the capital he can assemble.”
