Traffic is soul destroying.
It's like acid on the soul.
It's horrible.
This is, I think, finally, finally, finally, there's something something that I
think could solve the goddamn traffic problem.
Elon Musk is famous for electric vehicles, reusable rockets and satellites that can
beam down high speed internet to the most remote regions of the planet.
But in 2016, Musk set his sights lower.
Much, much lower.
Elon Musk taking to Twitter this weekend with a new plan to disrupt traffic, digging
tunnels to get around congestion.
In a series of four tweets.
Musk says he wants to open The Boring Company, which he says will actually
happen.
Seemingly conceived a bit haphazardly as Elon Musk presumably stewed in L.A.
traffic, The Boring Company did actually happen and was officially launched in 2017.
As with all of Musk's endeavors, it set out with a lofty goal: to solve traffic by
building a system of underground tunnels where cars would zoom around at speeds of
over 100 miles per hour.
Traffic in the U.S. is a serious problem.
A report published by research firm, INRIX, showed that Americans lost 99 hours
and $80 billion in 2019 due to congestion.
Not surprisingly, Los Angeles ranked in the top ten most congested urban areas in
the U.S., behind Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington,
D.C.. But the vision is a long way from reality.
After several scrapped plans for projects in different cities, some are beginning to
question if The Boring Company can deliver.
Back in May, even Musk poked fun at The Boring Company on SNL.
We could tunnel down into the earth and come up underneath them.
What? They're expecting a direct attack.
But if we tunnel into the earth, we could come up underneath them and surprise them.
Oh, my God.
There goes the genius talking about tunnels.
So what's the problem with tunnels?
They usually take a very long time to build and they're very expensive.
In fact, the L.A.
subway extension that just got completed cost $2 billion for two and a half miles.
There was a subway extension in New York that I think cost $2 billion for a mile.
So clearly, something needs to be done to revolutionize tunneling technology.
We need to be able to build tunnels way faster and for a hell of a lot less money.
Most tunnels today are excavated by tunnel boring machines or TBMs.
Although there are various TBMs for different ground conditions and tunnel
sizes, they all use the same basic mechanisms.
A TBM could look something like this.
A cutting wheel pushed by hydraulic cylinders breaks apart the soil and rock as
it rotates and transfers the excavated muck to the back of the machine through a
series of conveyor belts.
After some progress, the machine is stopped and the tunnel is reinforced with
concrete lining segments, before excavation can resume.
The majority of the machine is made up of what are called the 'backup systems.' These
include the conveyor belts and muck removal systems, control rooms, electrical
systems and the rail tracks for the transportation of the precast lining
segments.
The fastest tunneling machine in the world right now is 14 times slower than a snail.
Just automating the segment placement and solving the logistics issues will actually
give you about a five-fold increase in tunneling speed.
The other thing that needs to happen is simultaneous drilling and tunnel
reinforcing. The combination of automated segment placement and being able to drill
while tunneling is about a five-fold increase in speed.
Then, with our design, we've also tripled the power of the drill, so it can drill
three times faster.
That results in a theoretical net speed increase of about 15 compared to the next
best tunneling machine.
On its website, the company says that its latest generation boring machine has made
progress, and is now only four to five times slower than a snail.
Werner Burger is a chief engineer at Herrenknecht, one of the largest TBM
manufacturers in the world.
Increasing the speed 10 or 15 times, with this experience I have, I
would have my doubts if that's an easy undertaking.
They're using tunnel boring machine technology, which is very similar to what I
see used throughout the industry.
The unique thing about The Boring Company in that regard is they are manufacturing
their own tunnel boring machine and they're performing the tunnel construction.
TBMs are also usually made-to-order for each project and can take about a year to
construct. The Boring Company, on the other hand, offers only one diameter
tunnel, meaning it does not have to alter its machine for every project.
Experts also add that ensuring that all operations inside the TBM run smoothly is
just as important as the speed of the boring itself.
A TBM, in the end, needs lots of other secondary supply, like backfill concrete or
backfill grout, materials like grease, maybe sometimes oil, spare parts,
replacement tools.
If one section of this supply chain breaks, the TBM is in standstill and has to
wait till the replacements come.
Musk says he's got that covered, too.
We've modified the cutter design.
The the dirt removal is continuous.
Building the tunnel reinforcing segments on site instead of having them be built far
away and trucking them in.
Using the dirt that we dig out of the tunnel to form the concrete for the
reinforcing segments. In other tunneling situations, they actually truck the dirt
from the tunnel out and truck new dirt in, which makes no sense.
Over the years, the concept of how the system would work has undergone a few
different iterations.
In a 2017 video, The Boring Company teased a system where cars and public
transportation pods are lowered underground by metal platforms, and proceed
to zoom through tunnels at 124 miles per hour, unimpeded by pesky traffic.
The following year, Musk showed off the company's first demo tunnel in Hawthorne,
California. The 1.14 mile, $10 million tunnel was a lot less futuristic than the
vision presented in 2017.
This is the entrance to Elon Musk's high-speed loop tunnel.
Now this is a modified Model X.
They were giving demonstration rides today.
Look at these alignment wheels down here on the front.
They're attached to the two front wheels on the Model X.
They run along track walls inside the tunnel.
That keeps the Model X on course.
During the demos, reporters were driven through the tunnels at speeds of up to 50
miles per hour, much slower than the 150 miles per hour that Musk had envisioned.
The ride was also pretty bumpy as the alignment wheels attached to the Tesla
bounced off the side track walls.
Though still rudimentary, the demo tunnel inspired confidence in investors and
customers alike. Early on, The Boring Company was largely floated by Musk, but $1
million also came in from the sale of 50,000 hats and another $10 million from
the sale of 20,000 company-branded flamethrowers.
Musk even tried to sell dirt excavated from the tunnel as 'Lego-like' bricks.
In 2017, The Boring Company brought its first outside investment.
The $120 million funding round came shortly after the company landed its first
paying customer, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened to the public in June.
The 1.7 mile stretch of underground road cost the convention authority $52 million
and took The Boring Company about 18 months to complete.
The eventual goal is for a fleet of 62 Teslas to be able to autonomously shuttle
up to 4,400 passengers/hour from across the convention center's three stations.
Currently, the cars are still driven by humans.
The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop marked the first completed public project for The
Boring Company. But many of its other proposed projects have hit dead ends.
NBC investigative reporter, Cyrus Farivar, researched some of those projects for his
piece on The Boring Company.
There were two proposals in Los Angeles.
One was to build a 2.5 mile tunnel alongside the 405 freeway.
There was a lawsuit over questions of environmental review that basically brought
that project to a halt.
There was another tunnel that was proposed that would bring fans of the Los Angeles
Dodgers baseball team from an existing L.A.
metro station to Dodger Stadium.
But that also has not happened yet.
In 2018 in Chicago, The Boring Company imagined a high-speed service between
downtown Chicago and O'Hare International Airport.
But three years after that, the new mayor is not really interested in this project
and that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
And then finally, the really ambitious project that that the company proposed,
they published a 500 page environmental assessment in 2019, that would have
connected downtown Washington, D.C.
to downtown Baltimore, a distance of 35 miles.
But again, that project doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
The Boring Company didn't respond to multiple requests for comment by CNBC.
If there is one thing that all these abandoned projects have proved, it's that
working in the transportation sector is a tough business.
Many construction professionals will tell you that, you know, it's not the speed of
the tunnel boring that you need to worry about.
It's the environmental review.
It's the bureaucratic procedure.
It's the permits.
A 2020 analysis found that the cost of transit tunnel projects in Europe are about
50 percent less than those in the U.S., and significantly less than costs in New
York. Costs in China, India and Southeast Asia are even cheaper, about one sixth of
the cost of U.S. projects.
The researchers attributed the large difference to higher labor costs in the
U.S. and a more convoluted environmental approval process.
Not so much the cost of the tunnel excavation itself.
Aside from the permitting and bureaucratic challenges, there's the question of
utility. Transit advocates argue that tunnels that transport one car at a time
won't solve our traffic problems.
There is currently a project in Los Angeles to expand the Los Angeles metro by 9 miles,
and it's costing over $9 billion.
It's important to remember that a full-capacity metro train can carry
hundreds of people at a time rather than just four adults in a single Tesla.
Despite the challenges, cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale seem eager to partner
with The Boring Company.
We have now spoken with The Boring Company about building a 2.2 mile tunnel from our
railroad station called the Bright Line Station, which is in the middle of the
city, all the way to the beach.
And it would be two tunnels, one going east, one going west.
And the business model is that you have Tesla vehicles with drivers that
ferry you under the streets through to the beach, completely eliminating all the
traffic.
Trantalis says that rough estimates from The Boring Company put construction costs
between $10-$15 million/per mile, not including the cost of the stations.
Details are still being worked out, but users of the tunnel would likely pay a fee
for the service. The city is taking other bids for the project, but Trantalis says
Fort Lauderdale already worked out a lot of the bureaucratic hang ups that caused
the proposed Boring Company projects to falter in other cities.
I don't think that was because of The Boring Company's lack of expertise.
A lot of it has to do with the the local politics, property rights, environmental
concerns. Those are the same things we have addressed here in Fort Lauderdale, but
have resolved. And so we are better prepared to partner with The Boring
Company.
Currently, there are only two tunnels in the whole state of Florida.
But Mooney says that's not because of a lack of technology.
You have a high groundwater table in Florida, but tunnels routinely are
constructed underneath the groundwater table.
So that's not in and of itself a challenge that would prevent tunnels from being
built. I think it's highly feasible to build tunnels in the South Florida area.
In Las Vegas, plans are in the works to expand the Boring Company's tunnels
citywide.
In addition to its vehicular tunnels, on its website, The Boring Company also
advertises tunnels that can be used for utilities like pipes and lighting, freight
and even pedestrian walkways.
It's still too early to tell whether The Boring Company can realize the grand vision
that it set out with in 2017.
But one thing is for certain.
If the company wants to work on game-changing public projects, it needs to
get used to all the red tape.
I spoke with the former secretary of transportation for the state of Maryland, a
guy named Pete Rahn, and one of the things that he told me that was pretty interesting
was that there was an expectation from The Boring Company that, "we will start digging
a hole and when something gets in our way, we'll deal with it." And he said that
that's just not how the system works in the public environment.
But, you know, he was excited for the potential that this company may have.
It has a very charismatic CEO, Elon Musk, who has shown to revolutionize both
electric cars and space travel.
So it's not impossible that The Boring Company or some version of The Boring
Company can work to to innovate transportation.
But that just has not happened quite yet.