Archinect - News

Elon Musk is planning a utopian Hoovertown outside of Austin

2023-03-10T11:36:00-05:00

In meetings with landowners and real-estate agents, Musk has reportedly described his idea for the estate — which he envisions building on thousands of acres of property he purchased on the Colorado River — as a utopia, so that his employees can live, work, and play without ever leaving.

The community, named “Snailbrook” after the Boring Company mascot, would be the first new town in Texas since Ellinger was incorporated in 2020. Pre-fab homes are the most likely housing option, with rents as low as $800 and a Montessori school campus to serve employees' children, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Musk, who owns some 3,500 acres in Bastrop County, reportedly gave disgraced antisemite Kanye West and his new architect beau a tour of the site last year as part of a ramp-up that included internal employee discussions as to who among them should be elected mayor. The entrepreneur had previously mentioned his desire to build a “starbase city” in the area.

If it ever gets up and running, it would join the new BIG-planned Telosa in an alarming trend of new billionaire-funded Utopian cities in the American west.

This is just the beginning. America's new oligarchs are focussing on "cities." And are actively seeking to create alternatives to cities which they provide ser...

Planning officials are getting fed up with Elon Musk's string of empty tunnel promises

2022-11-30T14:49:00-05:00

The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to “solve soul-destroying traffic,” only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure, according to former executives and local, state and federal government officials who have worked with Boring. Boring has yet to make good on its most ambitious pitch: that it can design tunnel-boring machines that are so fast to operate that they will drive down costs and shake up the industry.

The concerning string of incidents has led some to label Musk, now the world’s richest man, as a highly-compensated grifter. Chicago, Los Angeles, Maryland, and San Bernardino County are among the list of victims of Boring’s illusory promises, with even some of the company’s own demonstration sites becoming abandoned relics of a pursuit Musk began after losing patience with LA traffic in 2016.

Prominent financial interests keep pouring money into the entity in spite of its repeated ghosting. Several large-scale constructions are still tentatively planned. To date, its sole completed project is a 1.7-mile EV tunnel at Las Vegas Convention Center that was qualified under a local Amusement and Transportation Systems (ATS) provision, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Elon Musk's Boring Co. wins Clark County commission approval for 'Vegas Loop'

2021-10-21T11:24:00-04:00

Clark County lawmakers on Wednesday unanimously approved letting Musk’s Boring Co. submit plans for the project dubbed the Vegas Loop. It would connect with an existing short Convention Center Loop the company completed and began operating in June. An overall cost wasn’t disclosed.

Las Vegas has made very hefty public investments of late with a brand new football stadium (which makes up one prong of the loop), planned regional railway link with Los Angeles, and high-tech infrastructure upgrades both planned for the next the coming years.

Musk's company says it will look to complete the high-profile tunnel system with some haste, considering its seemingly stalled $1 billion high-speed rail project at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. His previous ambit for a hyperloop train from DC to Boston never took shape after years of hype and speculation. Others have been quick to question the billionaire's hand in public infrastructure schemes of similar scope and scale.

The Boring Company's underground tunnel in Vegas is almost underway

2020-10-21T11:40:00-04:00

The first steps toward expanding The Boring Co. underground tunnel system throughout Las Vegas may be underway, as the Elon Musk-owned company has submitted special use permit and land use applications, according to an announcement from the Las Vegas Convention Visitors Authority.

The underground tunnel, which will stretch the length of the Strip all the way to the recently completed Allegiant Stadium, is awaiting approval from the Stadium Authority, Construction Dive reports.

Elon Musk's The Boring Company achieves milestone in Las Vegas

2020-02-14T20:53:00-05:00

Friday, the boring machine broke through the last bit of a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center. This completes the first section of drilling for the project. It’s part of the master plan to move people quickly around the facility. The convention center is in the process of expanding by 1.4 million square feet. That will bring the total convention space to 4.6 million in exhibition space.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) announced today that excavation is complete for the first of The Boring Company's tunnels for the Vegas Loop that will be located beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. As previously reported on Archinect, The Boring Company projects that the tunnel loop will move 4,400 passengers per hour. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2021.

Boring Co. begins underground construction on Las Vegas peoplemover

2019-11-19T15:28:00-05:00

Elon Musk's tunneling company, The Boring Co. (TBC), will begin underground construction on a tunnel for a tram system at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Friday, Nov. 15. The people mover project is contracted at $52.5 million and scheduled to be completed in January 2021, in time for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.

The company projects that the tunnel loop will move 4,400 passengers per hour. According to Construction Dive, aboveground work on stations and stops began last month, after TBC's boring machine was assembled on site.

Elon Musk's Boring Company challenges the Las Vegas Monorail

2019-08-02T18:43:00-04:00

In May, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved a $48.7 million contract for The Boring Company (TBC) to design and build a short underground transit system at the city’s Convention Center, using Tesla electric vehicles running through narrow tunnels.

The Boring Company (TBC) has submitted construction drawings for their new tunnel system in Las Vegas. The plan is to "construct one pedestrian tunnel, two 0.8-mile vehicle tunnels and three underground stations, as well as modify and test seven-seater Tesla cars to carry up to 16 people," reports TechCrunch.

The Las Vegas Monorail has expressed concerns regarding the new project. According to Monorail CEO Curtis Myles, "the proposed underground people mover system intersects our existing system route, and it appears the presented tunnel alignment interferes with our existing columns for the Las Vegas Monorail system and creates significant concern regarding both vertical and lateral loads."

After some back and forth, TBC must now have "regular coordination" with the Monorail and the city's Public Works department. In the end, TBC will become a direct competitor to the Monorail.

Elon Musk takes first steps in opening store to sell his lego-like Boring bricks

2018-11-20T13:48:00-05:00

Elon Musk has filed permits with the city of Los Angeles to launch his Boring Company offshoot, The Brick Store LLC, which would produce interlocking bricks made from dirt collected by his tunnel-digging company's operations.

As the Boring Company's LA test tunnel nears completion—an opening date has been set for this coming December 10th—the company has selected a building near the exit tunnel to locate the physical outlet for his brick making startup. Plans filed with the city of Hawthorne show the Brick Store's first brick-and-mortar will take over a humble, one story stucco building and give the former cabinet shop a fresh coat of paint.

Brick pyramid and Hyperloop tube at sunset via twitter.com/boringcompany

“The proposed colors are white, gray, and black" the planning documents read. "The proposed colors avoid monotony throughout the project site and blend well together. The color scheme does not create an incompatible look to the surrounding neighborhood."

The idea for the Br...

Major flaws in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles

2018-08-31T15:23:00-04:00

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value.

Alon Levy pokes holes in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles. Musk's plan involves tunneling under Sunset Boulevard between the Dodger Stadium and one of three Red Line stops: Vermont/Sunset, Vermont/Santa Monica, or Vermont/Beverly. Levy cites major issues with construction, capacity, alignment with the city's existing transit, and overall regional impact.

How big tech companies are shaping US city development

2018-06-25T16:05:00-04:00

I’m not saying America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes in which corporations operate every essential service and pull every civic string. But let’s take a tour of recent news from the metropolises.

Farhad Manjoo unpacks the extreme impact big tech companies have on US city construction citing cases from Amazon, Elon Musk's Boring Company, and Bird's electric scooters. Are these innovations simply breaking through the red tape of local government or are they dominating with no input from the public?

Elon Musk’s Boring Company selected to build Chicago airport high-speed transit tunnel

2018-06-15T14:53:00-04:00

Autonomous 16-passenger vehicles would zip back and forth at speeds exceeding 100 mph in tunnels between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport under a high-speed transit proposal being negotiated between Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s The Boring Co., city and company officials have confirmed. Emanuel’s administration has selected Musk’s company from four competing bids to provide high-speed transportation between downtown and the airport.

Musk's Boring Co. beat out established engineering firms, including Mott MacDonald and JLC Infrastructure, even though it has famously been in business for less than two years and only has a test tunnel near the company's headquarters in the Los Angeles area to show for as construction experience.

Elon Musk plans on recycling excavated dirt into bricks for low-cost housing

2018-05-11T15:18:00-04:00

Back in March, Elon Musk announced that his Boring Company would be selling LEGO-like bricks made from leftover dirt, excavated to make way for his Boring tunnels. Land excavation is a costly endeavor and the question of "where will 550,000 cubic yards of dirt go?" poses many economic and environmental challenges. If the dirt is of good enough quality, it is often sent to other construction sites in need of filling, or to highways and other infrastructure projects. But, if it is deemed of poor quality, excavated land is sent off to landfills and quarries, or contamination facilities in a worst-case scenario. In the end, all options are expensive and time consuming.

Musk's brick approach is not an entirely bad way to address issues of leftover waste. How much of the land removed would be safe enough to use as material remains an obvious point of inquiry, but, recycling the earth that is decent enough into bricks could reduce costs as well as environmental impact. On Boring Company's ...

Boring Company to start selling LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from tunneling rock

2018-03-27T12:18:00-04:00

Elon Musk announced that the Boring Company will sell LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from rock that his tunneling machines excavate from the earth. Musk stated these bricks will be sold in "kits" and will be rated to withstand California's earthquakes.

The date of availability or cost of this latest product is unknown. While his company has only started digging shorter tunnels there is not enough upturned rock to begin making these bricks yet.

Elon Musk starts digging for the Hyperloop in D.C.; Richard Branson plans to bring it to India first

2018-02-22T15:47:00-05:00

Elon Musk’s tunnel-boring project has received more vague government approval for its equally vague plans to build an underground hyperloop between New York and Washington, DC. Last week, Washington, DC’s Department of Transportation issued a preliminary permit to Musk’s Boring Company to start digging at an abandoned lot in the northeast section of the city, according to The Washington Post.

The extend of the building permit for Musk's The Boring Company is still vague though and currently limited to an empty parking lot at 53 New York Avenue NE next to a Mc Donald's. As the Washington Post reports: "The District’s Department of Transportation is figuring out what other permits the Boring Company would need to cut under city roads and other public spaces."

Hold on to your pants.

Meanwhile in India, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and now also Chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, is spearheading efforts to connect Mumbai with Pune via magnetically levitated pod travel within the next five to seven years, cut down travel time from several hours to 25 minutes, and make the nation with its population of 1.3 billion people home of the first operating Hyperloop line.

Dear Elon Musk: keep your hands off our public infrastructure!

2017-12-28T16:18:00-05:00

Recently, Elon Musk shared his perceptions during a tech industry conference that public transit is both inconvenient and dangerous. “It’s a pain in the ass,” he said. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

Elon Musk has had his sights set on various ways of 'disrupting' America's public transportation system for some time now. Most notably, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been experimenting with the idea of creating underground tunnels for a Hyperloop system that he swears cities are giving the go ahead on despite some public skepticism.

However, after recent comments were made, many of those who have spent years working on public transport are criticizing Musk for stepping out of his lane. As an extremely wealthy person who keeps expressing a strong distaste for the public, Musk may not be the best person to tackle public infrastructure projects that millions of those less fortunate depend on.

Elon Musk tweets about receiving an approval for an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop

2017-07-20T13:24:00-04:00

Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.

NY-DC in 29 mins?...

Musk claims his plans to bore a tunnel under Los Angeles are moving forward

2017-01-27T12:30:00-05:00

Elon Musk has received the go-ahead for another wild transit idea: a tunnel beneath Los Angeles. Intended to ease the city’s notorious traffic, it’s not clear where Musk intends to dig, besides that it will start near his Hawthorne office, about 5 minutes from LAX.

Musk’s been railing against the city’s traffic for months, and it seems he’s actually taking action. Apparently, he’s considered the city’s seismic instability in the planning process. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he said on Twitter.

For the most part the news, which came from his Twitter, has been met with incredulity. The office of city planning said they were unaware of the plans, but the tech mogul said the boring would start in about a month.

The name for the new company that will be in charge of the project, should it actualize, is “the Boring Company.” “Boring, it’s what we do,” said Musk.

...

Boring: how serious is Elon Musk about his latest traffic-solving venture?

2016-12-23T14:20:00-05:00

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea. For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape. "Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk. But he didn't stop there. He also raised the idea of boring through obstacles to alleviate traffic woes.

"It would be easy to toss this off as random talk from an eccentric auto and space mogul, but Musk's last "random idea," the Hyperloop, has spawned a number of startups and millions in funding. So when Musk not only says that boring through things would be a good idea to ease traffic, but that he plans to do it himself, it's time to start paying attention."