Elon Musk talks plan for ‘100 layers’ of Boring Company tunnels in LA

Elon Musk with his boring
machine.
Elon
Musk/Instagram

• Elon Musk discussed his plan
  for hundreds of layers of tunnels in LA to ease traffic
  congestion on a Recode podcast published
  Friday. 
• Musk bemoaned the tremendous costs to bore tunnels
  currently. 
• If the construction can be made cheaper, Musk said, he could
  bore hundreds of layers of tunnels. 

Among Elon Musk’s sprawling business ventures, The Boring Company
might be the most secretive.

The tunneling company is currently working on a project to ease
traffic in Los Angeles, connecting — but Musk’s comments on a
Recode podcast published Friday seem to hint at ambitions well
beyond a simple tunnel.

“We do expect to, over time, create a network of tunnels under
greater L.A,” the SpaceX and Tesla CEO told journalist Kara
Swisher. “And I think this is really the key to getting around
the city very fast. You’ve got to go 3-D.”

By 3-D, Musk means making more tunnels — tunnels that go deeper
into the earth’s crust, where they can criss-cross, overlap, and
do things traditional tunnels haven’t done because of how
expensive they are to bore.

“The cost of tunneling, historically, has been prohibitive,” said
Musk. “And they’ve also been incredibly slow.”

His solution? A cheaper tunneling solution.

“You could certainly have a subway system which had many layers
of tunnels,” Musk said, “but the tunnels are so prohibitively
expensive that they don’t do it. But you can go down 100 levels
if you want to, you could have 100 layers of tunnels on top of
each other … the key is a massive improvement in tunneling
technology. That’s the linchpin, that’s fundamentally what it
amounts to.”

Read more: 

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The Boring Company says on its website that
it can increase the efficiency of traditional Tunnel Boring
Machines, or TBMs, which are incredibly large, slow, and
expensive, through reducing runnel diameter by 50% and running
the machine around the clock through automaton.

The company had previously posted photos of its progress on
Instagram — along with the flamethrowers (er,
*not* a flamethrower) it sold for fundraising — but as of
Friday, the account was blank save for a few logos. That follows
Musk deleting his personal Instagram account in
August.

Then there’s the question of capacity. Musk told Recode that he
has never met a single person who uses the subway, a statement
that echoes his previously-aired fears of public transport. This
is likely behind Musk’s vision for traveling “skates” or mini
pods that will transport far fewer people per vehicle than a
traditional subway train car. As
many transportation experts have pointed out, this greatly
reduces total capacity for the system.

Of course, hundreds of layers of tunnels could help with that
capacity issue.

“Tunnels are really so underappreciated,” Musk said.

Read Recode’s full interview here.

More from Elon Musk’s Recode appearance:

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