Elon Musk has a company that digs underground tunnels and it’s aptly called The Boring Company. Musk has now revealed that the company’s first tunnel is going to open under LA later this year, on December 10th to be precise. The Boring Company has been digging this rapid transit tunnel beneath Los Angeles for several months now.
Once the tunnel is opened, the company is going to offer free rides to the public on the following night, Musk confirmed through Twitter. It’s a two-mile test tunnel that’s located underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthrone, California.
It’s meant to serve as a proof of concept for an underground mass transit system which will transport not just people but vehicles below the congested roads on “skates,” which are electric platforms driven autonomously. The skates will be able to transport up to 16 passengers or one passenger vehicle. They will run on magnetic rails and hit speeds of nearly 155 miles per hour.
The company has also floated the possibility of having these high-speed tunnel systems connect cities but tunneling experts have raised concerns about the claims, particularly about what it’s going to cost to build these tunnels. That remains a debate for the future. The first tunnel’s opening will be closely viewed to ascertain whether or not there’s some truth to the claims that The Boring Company has made so far.