Posted on 04/29/2017 10:12:04 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- He's conquered the streets with electric cars, and he's leading the commercial race to space, but that's not enough for Elon Musk.
Billionaire Musk spoke at a TED Talks conference and gave the first glimpse of the traffic-beating underground tunnels he hopes to create.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO plans to build the network of tunnels with his latest venture, The Boring Company.
Construction was well underway at the Hawthorne-based business on Friday.
AIR7 HD was overhead as crews worked on the early designs of a tunnel-digging machine with The Boring Company logo.
Here's how it would work: A computer-generated mockup shows a sprawling network of underground tunnels that vehicles can access on elevators positioned near roadsides. Once underground, the silver platforms whisk the cars to their destinations at great speeds.
Musk said a trip from Westwood to Los Angeles International Airport would take about five to six minutes.
The futuristic idea came to Musk back in December, when he got stuck in L.A.'s notorious traffic. He said the tunnel would start across from his desk at SpaceX and stretch to Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway.
While the underground highway is no doubt a distant dream, Musk has a way of pulling off ideas that seem impossible.
Cover all existing streets and freeways in LA with half pipes, cover with dirt and plant grass and Eucalyptus trees on top. Why Eucalyptus trees? Because Koalas eat Eucalyptus leaves... and this is California we’re talking about.
Not just taxpayer money, which I agree is huge, but Musk continuously goes into the public market to sell new shares in his enterprises. As far as I can tell, none of them are profitable, but that doesn’t matter to someone used to living off other peoples’ money.
But being in California they would be eliminating their own kind ie. liberals. They’re ok with that too?
That Musk continually gets cartoon fantasies like this published shows how gullible and stupid most Americans are. It is hard to fathom that this guy runs a company that is trying to put people into space.
Another “vehicle” by the fraud, the miner known as Musk; another vehicle with which to mine the public treasuries with which to line his own pockets.
His vehicles have not “conquered” the highways, nor will they. They are cars only the 1% can afford, and they only buy them due to their climate change religion, it makes them feel less sinful.
Isn’t he worried about things like, flowing water, LaBrae tar pit stuff, oil lakes, and rats?
After the first terrorist attack, the TSA inspection
will slow boarding times to a crawl...
Very easily Japan is 10 times more seismically active than California yet where does the bullet train and related mesh spider work of trains and Subways thrive..?
why, in Japan of course.
it is very common for the bullet train and local trains to slow down for until the earthquake is over:
very very common, so profoundly common that even Nervous Nellies barely notice.
it it goes completely unremarked upon.
My sainted mother would say “Elon, your getting too big for your britches!!!”
True in regards to earthquakes, the SF Bay Area has miles of tunnels for the BART system, some of which goes under the SF Bay. I do see it as vulnerable but it has stood up since the 1970s so tunnels may work. At what cost is more the question in my mind.
A real-life Orren Boyle?
Ever been in one of those cars washes, where you are pulled through on a track, .... and the car in front of you comes dislodged from the track,for whatever reason ....but your little Porsche is being automatically pushed into the rear bumper of a beasty Cadillac?
Meh. Something, I’d rather forget.
I applaud his creativity.
Yes, that sounds bad too.
You see, at the end of the day, these are just more lanes to do the same thing you do on the surface.
I’d rather see double decking of the freeways.
You need no new right of way. it immediately doubles the capacity.
Those going long distance stay on the top. When they get ready to leave the freeway, they exit to the bottom and exit.
They did that in San Fran and it took just one earthquake to pancake the upper and lower lanes.
I’ve often thought decks were a good idea too.
My leaky brained, alt-left radical socialist senator, chris murphy wants to tunnel under Hartford to by-pass a particularly congested highway intersection. To the tune of billions.
The poor addled boy has never heard of the *Big Dig* B4. or, more to the point, maybe he has.
Yes NathanR, but if you look at the way they constructed them, it’s no wonder.
There were cement risers every so often that resembled large posts. The whole freeway shifted the length of the stretch of freeway.
If you put cross bracing in, that stops.
I don’t know how they ever got a permit to do what they did. I’m not in the industry, and it looked very flimsy to me.
Yes, I see that as very problematic myself.
Going for us is avoiding uncountable deaths.
Going for him, the fact he can say, “Nobody foresaw a problem with this. Now we know.”
In all fairness, the joint connections of the ‘Cypress Structure’ column-to-deck needed more joint reinforcement to insure stability; but, the placement of the elevated freeway on landfill was the first error. The second contributing factor was that the Cypress was at the convergence zone for two propagation paths of seismic waves, originating from the Loma Prieta quake.
Before the quake, if caught in rush hour stoppages on the lower deck, thumps and vibration could be felt every time truck traffic passed on the roadway above. On first acquaintance with this quirk, one might easily have believed another vehicle was providing the jostle.
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