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The Boring Company won’t pursue LA tunnel under 405 freeway anymore
Back in August, The Boring Company was already distancing itself from a plan it pitched earlier in the year to build a test tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405 freeway in Los Angeles.
On Tuesday, The Boring Company and a group of Westside residents issued a joint statement that they had "amicably settled" a lawsuit brought by the residents against The Boring Company in May of this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The company, founded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, said it would drop plans to build the 405 test tunnel and focus instead on building the so-called "Dugout Loop" that will run between a downtown LA Metro station and Dodger Stadium, if all goes as planned.
Elon Musk talks proof-of-concept tunnel parallel to the 405 in Los Angeles Musk announced the 405-parallel tunnel in an evening talk back in May, describing it as a 2.7 mile north-south test tunnel that wouldn't carry the general public—at first. Musk added at the time that The Boring Company would eventually do test rides to get user feedback. The City of Los Angeles appeared poised to fast-track Musk's idea, with LA Metro announcing: "We'll be partners moving forward."
[...] Now, The Boring Company intends to focus on the Dugout Loop, for which it has begun the CEQA permitting process (although it's unclear if a full permit will be acquired before construction starts). Critics have charged that The Boring Company has taken advantage of poorer neighborhoods, like the Hawthorne neighborhood under which Musk's first tunnel is being completed. Meanwhile, richer neighborhoods represented by the coalition of Westside neighborhoods have the resources to fight back. Others might see the opposition from wealthy LA neighborhoods as a form of NIMBYism that stops innovation from coming to impacted LA transit.
For now, Musk's first Hawthorne tunnel is almost complete. The Boring company intends to open the tunnel to the public in December.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:36AM (1 child)
Actually if it's only for his Hyperloop project, why did he have to start a tunnel boring company of his own? It's not as if such a thing didn't exist before, or that such a company would be unwilling to be a subcontractor if Musk ever got a viable contract to build a Hyperloop (they don't even have to care whether the Hyperloop itself will work; they build the tunnel they get paid for, and if Musk then fails to build a viable Hyperloop in that tunnel, it's not their problem).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:43PM
Because that's how he rolls. He got burned in SpaceX from subcontracting stuff out to sloppy businesses. I guess he doesn't want to go that route.