Los Angeles is notorious for its clogged freeway system where rush hour traffic gives commuters a headache for most hours of the day. Enter Elon Musk, who seemed to have come up with the perfect solution.
Unfortunately, his revelation fell flat when he introduced his bold new concept for a subterranean transit system to alleviate above-ground traffic congestion.
Does the innovation sound familiar? Twitter thought so.
Musk's Boring Co. has been working on Loop transportation system project for months – which involved designing a spawling system of tunnels through which commuters would be shuttled efficiently in 16-passenger transport pods that would whisk them up to speeds of 150 miles an hour.
"So we think we can probably charge about a $1 a ticket or something like that," the Tesla CEO said during a meeting on Thursday . "I think the average price of a bus ticket is about $2, so less than a bus ticket."
These transport pods can whisk passengers efficiently for $1.(Mashable Daily/YouTube)
But don't call it a subway system. Those already exist all over the world.
The difference between subway tunnels and Musk's Loop system is that the Boring Co. tunnels would be half the size in diameter – 14 feet versus 28 feet – making construction significantly more cost-effective for drilling.
We're making bricks out of the dirt. These are bricks that are made by compressing the dirt at extremely high pressures, adding just a small amount of concrete. We have bricks that are rated for California seismic loads. These bricks we actually can sell for like 10 cents a brick or something like that. They are really great bricks.
Sounds great. But really, Musk is layering on a fancy veneer to what is still fundamentally a narrow subway system. And Twitter admonished him for reinventing the wheel.
Twitter continued criticizing him for his hubris.
Those who revere him backed him up.
Constantine Samaras, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is skeptical about the challenges in constructing the new twist on L.A.'s underground transit system and told Forbes about the logistics on the massive undertaking.
Cutting holes in the street and dropping down through utilities all over town is not a great idea. It's expensive, it's got maintenance problems, and you're better served with big hub stations on a cost-per-rider basis.
If the subway re-imagining comes to fruition and is a success, Angelinos will definitely embrace it. But until that happens, Twitter will always be there to keep the haughty South American business magnate grounded.
