Elon Musk’s Boring Company has submitted a proposal for a new 6-mile long Loop tunnel project in Miami. If approved, it would be the second of such full-scale commercial deployment of transportation system.
A Boring Company Loop system consists of tunnels in which Tesla electric vehicles travel at high speeds between stations to transport people within a city. The first deployment has been the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, which consists a 1.5-mile long tunnel with three stops at the city’s large convention center.
Recently, Las Vegas approved an expansion of the Loop to connect the entire strip and the airport. The Boring Company already completed the first part of the expansion to the first casino.
Once completed, it will become the first Loop to cover an entire city center. Now, the Boring Company is already working on its next Loop project and it’s in Miami.
The city has revealed talks with the company last year, but they have moved forward with an official proposal.
Insider reported on the new proposal for a 6.2-mile long Loop:
The North Miami Beach Loop would ferry Tesla vehicles between seven stations along State Road 826, between the Golden Glades Transit Center and Sunny Isles Beach at Newport Pier, according to the proposal, seen by Insider.
Here’s a map of the proposal with several potential extensions:
The cost of the project is estimated to be between $185 million and $220 million, which is a fraction of the cost of any other similar transportation system, like a subway.
North Miami Beach commissioner Michael Joseph commented on the proposal:
We have a lot of traffic congestion and this would be a way of alleviating a great deal of that traffic.
The Boring Company says that it can complete the project in just three years, but that’s if the regulatory and permitting process is expedited. The city appears willing to move forward, but it is currently looking for funding from regional, state, and federal governments.
Electrek’s Take
I think tunnels are an interesting solution to traffic issues, but I am still not convinced that the Boring Company’s Loop is the best way to implement a tunnel-based solution. Musk has been promising a full-scale simulation of how it would alleviate traffic for a long time, but he has yet to deliver it.
As for the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, we recently tested it at CES, the first big use case for it, and it was underwhelming.
Obviously, a full city-wide implementation would be more useful, but I would have liked to have seen a simulation of one before a city moves forward with it.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
