The Boring Company’s two-mile-long proof of concept tunnel has reportedly been completed. It starts at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California and runs west under 120th Street until it reaches the current endpoint at 120th Street near Prairie Avenue. And while an opening party is scheduled for Dec. 10, you can now tour it courtesy of an Elon Musk tweet.
Musk called the two-mile tunnel ‘disturbingly long,’ however, the tunnel is much shorter than current subway tunnels operated by the Los Angeles Metro Rail System. It’s been implied that this tunnel is simply a test tunnel for The Boring Company which hopes to have a string of tunnels beneath several cities across the world for various purposes.
The tunnels will have different types of sleds that will allow cars or people to be transported at speeds up to 150 miles per hour. The company claims that its sleds will take up less space than traditional subway trains and an innovative track design could allow for more stations. Instead of traditional underground stations, the Boring Company will use elevators to lower the sleds into the tunnel system. It claims that there could be elevators located in office or apartment buildings, making the system even more convenient than a traditional subway.
The Boring Company plans to partner with city and country governments to decrease the cost tunnel boring, which can cost up to $1 billion per mile. There are currently talks with the City of Chicago to create a loop between O’Hare International Airport and downtown.
As previously reported, a test of the system will be open to the public on Dec. 10, but further details have not been confirmed. The Drive reached out to a spokesperson for comment and will update when we hear back.
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