Elon Musk's Boring Company tunnel plans put buses in fast lane
The Boring Company founder says his plans for digging under traffic will be centered around a futuristic new electric bus.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
A rendering of the Boring Company's underground high-speed electric bus concept.
Elon Musk is now interested in making the public bus of the future.
First he gave us hyperloop. Then the serial CEO and iconoclast created the Boring Company to dig networks of urban tunnels that bypass traffic using high-speed electric "skates" shooting cars around the underground. Now he says both new forms of transportation will prioritize mass transit, specifically pedestrians and cyclists, over cars.
Previously, the Boring Company showed off renderings of a system that lowers individual cars from the street level down into an underground high-speed network, but now Musk, who's also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, says the carless will get first priority.
"Will still transport cars, but only after all personalized mass transit needs are met," Musk tweeted Friday. "It's a matter of courtesy & fairness. If someone can't afford a car, they should go first."
In December, Musk got into a war of words on Twitter with public transit policy expert Jarrett Walker. Walker accused Musk of harboring a "hatred of sharing space with strangers" and Musk responded, calling Walker a "sanctimonious idiot."
Musk now wants to reiterate that he's a fan of public transit by basically reinventing the city bus to go faster than ever before.
"I guess you could say it's a 150 mph, underground, autonomous, electric bus that automatically switches between tunnels and lifts. So, yes, a bus," he wrote on Twitter.
Better video coming soon, but it would look a bit like this: pic.twitter.com/C0iJPi8b4U
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2018
Musk went on to describe the Boring Company's urban loop system as having "1000's of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway."
So yet another audacious vision from the guy who wants to move us to Mars and merge our brains with computers. That's not to say this plan should be written off, however. Musk and SpaceX did just launch the world's largest rocket and build one of America's most valuable automakers.
He's also already started digging underground tunnels in Los Angeles and has plans in place to do the same on the East Coast of the US.
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