When it comes to Elon Musk’s plan to dig an 18-mile high-speed transit tunnel under Chicago, it seems they’re not “digging” it.
“They” being former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who will be considered by voters in a mayoral runoff election on April 2. Neither candidate has endorsed Musk’s plan and the current administration has yet to get a contract in place.
The Boring Company, Musk’s startup that aims to dig tunnels to speed traffic, won last year a bid for a new transit system to connect the city center and Chicago-O’Hare airport. A pair of tunnels would be excavated under the city to make room for electrified glass pods that would carry passengers at speeds of up to 150 mph. Musk estimated that the tunnel would cost $1 billion and would be completed without taxpayer money. Musk planned to tap private investors for the project.
In June, Musk said he hoped for boring machines to begin digging from both ends of the tunnel in as soon as four months. When finished, the tunnel would serve pods carrying 2,000 passengers per direction every hour, with pods arriving within two minutes. At speeds of more than 100 mph, the pods would run end-to-end in 12 minutes, besting the 40 minute car ride required today. “Loop” service to the airport would cost around $25 per person, significantly less than what a car service currently costs travelers. Musk said the system could be ready in as soon as 18 months or three years max.
“We’re taking a bet on a guy who doesn’t like to fail, and his resources,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said of Musk. “There are a bunch of Teslas on the road. He put SpaceX together. He’s proven something. The risk, with no financial risk, is I’m betting on a guy who has proven in space, auto and now, a tunnel, that he can innovate and create something of the future.”
While Emanuel has supported Musk’s plan, it has certainly attracted doubters.
Chicago Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa told The Verge he would be shocked if the Boring Company was successful in Chicago.
“To me, it was always a pipe dream, a flight of fancy,” he reportedly said. “But my opinion of it has gotten even worse since I’ve been reading all of these details in the media, a lot of stories that paint a lot of doubt on [Musk’s] ability to deliver this thing. If you look at Elon Musk’s career—he comes off as a grifter.”
Chicago Alderman Gilbert Villegas had an opportunity to ride in a mile-long test tunnel in Southern California and was not impressed. “It wasn’t as smooth as I thought it would be,” Villegas told The Verge. “It certainly felt too experimental for someone to invest a billion dollars in.”
The Chicago Infrastructure Trust, responsible for negotiating the contract on behalf of the city, has yet to announce an agreement with the Boring Company.
And the remaining candidates for mayor are not coming across as gung-ho about hurrying the high-speed tunnel into existence.
Lightfoot excluded the tunnel from her transportation plan for the city and has called the notion of securing private funding “a fiction.”
Preckwinkle has said the tunnel is “definitely something I would put on pause.”
Musk’s grand plan is to build a network of connected tunnels for high-speed transportation to “solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic.”
In addition to the project in Chicago, the Boring Company is also digging a tunnel connecting downtown L.A. to Los Angeles International Airport in eight minutes. Another tunnel under the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is expected to be the first leg of an East Coast route connecting Washington and New York.
The Los Angeles tunnel seems to have the most progress. A test tunnel being used for the research and development of the Boring Company’s tunneling and public transportation systems was unveiled in December. The company also released footage of a Tesla Model X being lowered into the tunnel on an elevator, fixed on rails to speed through the neon-lit tunnel, then being lifted by an elevator on the other side.
Musk said at the tunnel opening that the company has traveled as fast as 110 mph, but admitted it’s still “a little scary.”
He still seems bullish on the tunnel concept. In fact, he said the company’s second-generation tunnel boring machine might be operational “in a month or so.” The machine dubbed Line-Storm would be able cut through the earth at a faster clip and enable the company to pursue its most ambitious projects.
In the meantime, it doesn’t seem Line-Storm will visit the Windy City any time soon. The company’s Chicago project seems doomed. But, naysayers have been a constant in Musk’s career. It will be interesting to see if the Boring Company can dig itself out of this hole.