If you ever want to take on a crazy project and see results in under a year, call Elon Musk. He’s already making progress on his pipe dream of creating a network of traffic tunnels beneath Los Angeles. This week Musk tweeted that The Boring Company’s tunnel boring machine, cheekily named Godot, completed its first tunnel segment. According to Musk, we’re “no longer waiting for Godot.”
Musk seems to be having a lot of fun with his side project he somehow fits into his free time. And he’s making strides towards the dream of clearing out Los Angeles’ notorious congestion by moving vehicles underground. The Boring Company’s new machine has started operating and already finished the first segment of a tunnel.
Related: Elon Musk says LA mayor is open to The Boring Company’s traffic tunnels
No longer waiting for Godot. It has begun boring and just completed the first segment of tunnel in LA.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2017
Godot is around 400 feet long, with a diameter of 26 feet, and weighs 1,200 tons. Musk hinted on Twitter they still hope the machine will bore faster in the future. He said they have a long way to go before they beat Gary, a snail from SpongeBob SquarePants whom Musk referenced in April in a TED talk, saying “Victory is beating the snail.”
The project started near the SpaceX parking lot in Hawthorne. And according to Electrek, it appears this first segment simply connects the parking lot to the company’s buildings. But Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has indicated his interest in Musk’s venture – he name-dropped the tech entrepreneur in an ABC7 interview and Musk said they’d had promising conversations.
Electrek also quoted Musk as saying the full length of the first tunnel “will run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood, and Sherman Oaks. Future tunnels will cover all of greater LA.”
It seems this pipe dream might become reality after all.
Images via The Boring Company
