Elon Musk to compete for high-speed rail loop in Chicago

Elon Musk wants to take his train to Chicago.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur tweeted Wednesday that his Boring Company will compete to design, fund, build and operate a high-speed loop connecting O'Hare Airport with downtown Chicago.

Musk's statement came after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that will whisk passengers from the airport to downtown in 20 minutes or less, cutting travel times in half. Contractors will also have to figure out how to finance it without taxpayer dollars, Emanuel said.

Musk, the brains behind SpaceX and Tesla, created Boring Company to build transport tunnels that provide an alternative means of transportation and alleviate traffic congestion. But Musk's plan for Chicago is a little different than his Hyperloop, a futuristic form of transportation that, if it ever moves past the drawing board, would use electromagnetic pulses to shotgun passengers through low-pressure tubes at near-supersonic speeds.

"A Loop is like a Hyperloop, but without drawing a vacuum inside the tube," Musk tweeted. "Don't need to get rid of air friction for short routes."

So how will passengers travel, you might ask?

"Electric pods for sure. Rails maybe, maybe not," Musk said in a reply in the thread.

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