The Boring Company, one of the (many) companies owned by Elon Musk, is finding it difficult to meet the demand from local communities who want to dig tunnels to improve traffic flow.
Tired of road traffic, Elon Musk launched The Boring Company in 2016 with the idea of blowing traffic jams on the surface. The idea is simple, it’s about digging tunnels to drive cars through. Not really an innovation or even a novelty (road tunnels have been around since cities have been cities or almost), but as usual the boss of Tesla is thinking big and he is ambitious.
Tunnels that do not dig
The Boring Company had to create underground networks so that cars could circulate smoothly, there was also this Loop shuttle project that strongly resembles the principle of the subway. But since then the company has scaled back. The only project that has really come to fruition is a tunnel under Las Vegas. And during the inauguration at the beginning of the year, the promise of traffic jams was unfortunately not kept, as there were traffic jams in the tunnel…
that The Wall Street Journal recounts several disappointments for The Boring Company. In California, the city of Ontario was awaiting a bid for a tunnel connecting the airport to a train station. A project costing $45 million, according to an estimate by the company, which ultimately did not respond to the tender. A disappointment also a bit of the cities of Maryland, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Elon Musk’s company has serious problems with bureaucracy: Building permits and environmental audits scare The Boring Company. Another concern is internal culture: As we saw with Twitter recently, Elon Musk’s management style tends to burn out employees. However, they are essential in this phase of conquering the market.