Elon Musk is serious about his giant tunnel idea, and has a video to prove it

Why it matters to you

Elon Musk is known for his seemingly wacky ideas, but a tunnel to avoid traffic may be one of the strangest yet.

Elon Musk’s next project may be a bit more … boring than his previous endeavors.

The founder of SpaceX and Tesla is accustomed to flashy enterprises and larger-than-life dreams (that all seem to be coming to fruition), and now, he’s turning his attention to a simple problem that plagues all of us: Traffic.

Obviously, the man who conceptualized the Hyperloop has never had the patience for sitting in gridlock, and last December, the entrepreneur took to Twitter to express his frustration, and more important, his solution. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…” he wrote cryptically Saturday morning. And just for good measure, he added later, “I am actually going to do this.”

Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

To prove just how serious he really is about his new business venture, Musk even edited his Twitter bio, which now reads, “Tesla, SpaceX, Tunnels (yes, tunnels) & OpenAI.” And as we know, if it’s on Twitter, it must be true.

Tweeting that his yet-to-be-established company would be called the Boring Company, he quipped, “Boring, it’s what we do.” Because don’t you just want to bore a hole in all the cars stuck in front of you for hours on end? Fine, maybe not through the cars themselves, but perhaps underneath them.

Boring, it's what we do

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

Digging a bunch of tunnels does hold the prospect of adding additional lanes to urban areas that can’t easily accommodate more lanes above ground. And given Musk’s track record in other areas, we can at least hope his solution is feasible.

Exciting progress on the tunnel front. Plan to start digging in a month or so.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2017

A few months after making his initial proclamation on Twitter, the inventor is back at it with a few more details on his proposed giant tunnel. For starters, it’ll begin “across from my desk at SpaceX,” which is located near “Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway,” about five minutes from LAX. He also addressed concerns about earthquakes, noting that these natural phenomena “tend to have the biggest effect on the surface, like waves on water. That’s why LA can have a (lame, but getting better) subway.”

Ultimately, when asked if he was really serious, he responded simply, “Yup.”

In late April, he spoke at a TED conference where he outlined more concrete plans for his underground company. Per a concept video, Musk intends to drop cars (gently, of course), beneath Earth’s surface by way of a system of elevator platforms. Cars will drive onto designated areas, which will then be lowered beneath the ground. Once underground, however, the cars won’t be driving themselves. Rather, they will be controlled autonomously by the system at large and sent to their final destinations at speeds of up to 130 miles per hour.

According to Musk, the underground system could be truly expansive and, while it may not be quite as fast as say, the Hyperloop, it will still be far more efficient than sitting in traffic on our existing highways.

Article originally published in December 2016. Updated on 04-28-2017 by Lulu Chang: Added more details about what an underground transportation might look like via Musk’s latest video.