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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.
— Chicago Tribune
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. View full entry
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and Aedas today unveiled their involvement in a boundary crossing which will provide a new entry point into Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong Boundary Crossing Facilities (HKBCF) is a joint project between the two architects, working with AECOM, which will provide new connections between Hong Kong, mainland China, and Macao, and which will bring wider benefits across the Pearl River Delta.
— Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
After years of delay and enormous cost overruns, work seems to be picking up again on the ambitious Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge project; connecting Hong Kong International Airport with Macau across the Lingdingyang channel and Zhuhai in mainland China via a series of bridges and one... View full entry
I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined. — Bloomberg Businessweek
"As the gateway to America’s largest city," Devin Leonard writes in his piece for Bloomberg Businessweek, "Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— mashable.com
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status... View full entry
As Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct sat free of cars overhead and drivers attempted to move around the city during the roadway’s planned 2-week closure, a new drone video Tuesday showcased again what all the fuss is about. A view inside the SR 99 tunnel won’t get much better than this until you’re actually able to drive through it. [...]
The 4-minute video captures what has been built behind nearly 1,600 feet of mining along Seattle’s waterfront.
— geekwire.com
Bertha previously in the Archinect news: Seattle's massive Bertha tunnel drill is up for repair, but still faces a shaky outlook View full entry
If there’s anything positive to emerge from the current mess, it’s that local advocates like Cary Moon, who warned against building the tunnel in the first place, are commanding attention again. Moon recently took to the pages of the local alt-weekly, the Stranger, to argue that in light of the tunnel project’s spectacular, slow-motion meltdown, the city should explore other options. — streetsblog.org
Previously: In Seattle, a Sinking Feeling About a Troubled Tunnel View full entry
There's an interesting construction/excavation project going on over in Iceland right now: an artificial tunnel and cave complex being dug into the Langjökull Glacier.
When complete, the publicly accessible infra-glacial facility "will consist of numerous nooks and dens which will house exhibitions, information, restaurants and even a small chapel for those who would like to marry deep within an ice cap."
— bldgblog.blogspot.com
Ancient Egypt endured plagues of locusts. Seattle has its tunnel, which over the last year has featured a series of setbacks and fiascos that, depending on one’s outlook, can be the setup for a punch line, or an eye-rolling narrative of put-upon endurance.
In the latest blow, project engineers said this week that 30 or more buildings in the historic Pioneer Square area [...] had unexpectedly settled, possibly because of water pumping related to the project.
— nytimes.com
