Elon Musk’s Boring Company won’t build a West LA test tunnel anymore

Elon Musk has now witnessed the might of the Not In My Backyard empire firsthand.

Musk’s Boring Company and West Los Angeles neighborhood associations have settled a lawsuit, brought by the groups, to prevent the Boring Company from digging a test tunnel for high speed transport without an environmental impact report, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. 

The terms of the settlement are reportedly confidential, but Musk’s company won’t be pursuing the West LA tunnel that would have run beneath Sepulveda Boulevard anymore. 

Instead, the Boring Company will continue work on its Dodger Stadium tunnel. It also recently completed its Hawthorne tunnel, which is set to open with tests for the public on December 10. Musk recently tweeted images of his drillers “breaking through” to the far end of the tunnel, and congratulated the team on the tunnel’s compleiton.

But not everything has been going as swimmingly for Musk and the Boring Company to the upper middle-class North of the working-class neighborhood Hawthorne site.

In April, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Boring Company’s plans to build a West LA test tunnel, without the usually required environmental impact studies. The tunnel would have run 2.7 miles along Sepulveda Boulevard, which runs adjacent to the 405 freeway, between Pico and Washington Blvds. The tunnel was part of Musk’s ultimate goal to “defeat traffic” and apparently personally save him the headache of sitting bumper-to-bumper on the 405.

But neighborhood groups weren’t too thrilled with Musk’s campaign. In May, the Sunset Coalition and Brentwood Residents Coalition sued to stop the fast-tracking of the project. 

Here’s the thing: these neighborhood groups don’t actually represent the residents who lived adjacent to the tunnel. Instead, they represent homeowners in Brentwood and Bel-Air — neighborhoods to the north-west of the planned tunnel — who also happen to be Elon Musk’s neighbors (Musk owns a home in Bel-Air). 

The Sunset Coalition was specifically formed to scrutinize development in the maddeningly traffic-clogged part of Brentwood near the 405 freeway. It has a history of scuttling development projects that would impact the Westside.

So, why should these LA residents, who live miles from the proposed test tunnel, care if Musk’s company is building a tunnel a few miles from their hillside homes?

The groups pointed to a map Musk reportedly shared that showed his high speed tunnels reaching further up Sepulveda Blvd., into the heart of Brentwood, and through the Bel-Air adjacent Sepulveda pass. The groups said that this map indicated that the test tunnel was part of a larger project; they argued that a piecemeal approach to development should not exempt the Boring Co. from acquiring the necessary permits.

The Westside was also the first battleground for another tech transportation disruption: Bird scooters. The dockless e-scooter company debuted their product, without permits or neighborhood approval, in September 2017. That has led to an ongoing neighborhood and municipal struggle. The Bird battles, plus the influx of the tech industry residents into Westside neighborhoods, has led to a lot of ill-will towards tech companies seeking to disrupt life on the placid Westside.

The groups’ arguments were apparently enough of a headache for the Boring Company to stop plans for a tunnel that *could*, eventually, reach the neighbors who were opposed to the plans. 

So residents have successfully put the kibosh on plans for a future Brentwood tunnel, where the median household income is $114,557. Meanwhile, Musk’s tunneling in Hawthorne — median household income $48,354 — continues.