Emperor of Boring

Badgers, moles, water voles and foxes burrow. Elon Musk, of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity and PayPal fame, would have us humans in Los Angeles (and elsewhere) do the same. Musk actually gets lauded for wanting to turn us into burrowing animals. Go figure.

That was the takeaway from the May 17 information session at the Leo Baeck Temple in West Los Angeles by The Boring Company, Musk’s infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded in late 2016. Musk and his sidekick Steve (there were no formal introductions) took an audience of more than 500, including lots of fanboys, through a fantastic vision of “personalized mass transit” that would be all-electric, as well as “fast, clean, safe and affordable.”

To Musk’s mind, L.A. could be widely populated with pads the size of parking spaces onto which a car could park and then be lowered to a tunnel – “a very safe tunnel” – and whisked on a loop system to a destination somewhere else in the city at speeds of 125 to 150 mph. In fact, according to Musk, “People could be dropped off within a few blocks of where they need to go.”

L.A. to San Francisco at 700 mph, underground

Musk also envisions an ultra-high speed hyperloop system with pressurized pods that would transport people between, for example, San Francisco and L.A. in 30 minutes at, say, 700 mph. “The tech is very doable,” says Steve.

The first iteration, though, would be for pedestrians and cyclists, who could ride a tunnel car or transportation tube (module) that would seat up to 16. Again, it’s important to note, this is one man’s vision unfettered by reality.

We’re not just talking one tunnel either. Oh, no! “In theory, you could have like hundreds of levels of tunnel and arbitrarily solve any level of traffic,” Musk stated. I think of a 100-story building, inverted, to try to conceptualize how far underground Musk is imagining the burrow.

If this whole sci-fi scheme actually could come to fruition, I’d guess Musk’s next plan would be teleportation. “Beam me up, Scotty!”

The many challenges even the average man on the street could imagine are, at best, facile problems to solve in building the vast warren, per Musk, who says, “This is not like brain surgery.” Among them: the average boring machine is ten times slower than a snail. Musk says his dream is of a day where a mile of tunnel could be dug out in 3.3 hours. Sidekick Steve says, “L.A. to San Fran in a few weeks!”

Voilà!

Going Down Under – Easy-Peasy

Earthquakes are not an issue in Musk World, who claims it would be even safer in an earthquake to be underground. What about the pressure and gases, such as methane, underground? No worries there either.

Okay. Sure. Let’s just take those on faith in Musk and his physics genius.

Through continuous mining with reinforcing segments built in simultaneously, automating segment erection and meeting the challenge of getting all the dirt out – generally, just going faster with every process – Musk makes tunnel transportation sound easy-peasy.

Why didn’t someone think of this before?!!!

California hasn’t been able to build its high-speed train in how many years? The project costs have consistently escalated, with the latest numbers showing a total cost to completion of $77 billion, up 20 percent from just two years ago, and likely to hit $98 billion. The most current estimated operating date is 2033.

And that’s above ground. Yet, Musk is telling us to believe he can do it all better, faster and cheaper underground. Among his “innovations” are: Using the dirt dug out to make the reinforcing concrete onsite for the tunnel as well as to make superior bricks to sell that are rated for California seismic loads. Musk boasted: “They’re really great bricks” – one of several comments during the evening which drew huge cheers from the crowd.

As to that physics thing, “Reinforcements equal what you’ve removed,” Musk says, “so no difference in volume.” Again, easy! As was pointed out, Musk and his team “knew nothing about digging tunnels when they started,” and look at ‘em now! So how hard could it be?

Well, let’s live in reality for just a moment. What are we really talking about here? Mining. And mining is one of the most dangerous activities in the world.

Home to 4 million people, Los Angeles is a vast, complex network of infrastructure above and below ground. Musk imagines his contribution will be a brand new fast and efficient mode of transportation wherein it will only take eight minutes to travel from Downtown L.A. to LAX, and will only cost a buck to ride! Today that trip by car is anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 ½ hours, depending on what’s happening with traffic.

Alrighty then! Bring on the Skittle-shitting unicorns too!

When Musk dreams (sleeping, not waking), perhaps it’s a variation of electric sheep, and ones that travel really fast underground carrying humans. Musk does seem to have a way of making his dreams come true. For some reason, government loves to give him money, which, it should be remembered, is taxpayer money. A few examples: Musk’s SpaceX received a $3.1 billion contract with NASA in 2014, followed by more NASA dollars. And for a six-year period through 2016, the state of California gave SpaceX and Tesla more than $158 million in sales tax incentives. Speculation is he’s about ready for another big “ask.”

All of this has made Musk extremely wealthy. His net worth is estimated to be $20 billion, and he owns five houses within walking distance of each other in L.A. worth $72 million. (I know it’s the American Way to applaud people who have accumulated vast sums of money and not criticize how they choose to spend it, but, really, five houses in one city?)

The Only Way

Even though he’s talked of flying cars (another bad idea) before, it’s definitely tunnels now: “This is the only way we can think of to address chronic traffic issues in major cities,” Musk said. He confirmed in the West L.A. presentation that “flying cars are not the answer.” What a relief for taxpayers that Musk has eliminated the flying cars idea from his mischief list. I’m assuming he’s not seen “The Fifth Element,” or else he might have been onboard with flying cars. From the presentation, Musk likes to have fun, and what’s more fun than Bruce Willis driving an air taxi? C’mon!

Let’s consider a few other options to address chronic traffic issues before the Musk Solution. But first, we must recognize there are limits to growth and that California will never achieve a sustainable state – truly be the environmental refuge it alleges it is – if it keeps adding millions of people, consumers all, and all making more and more infrastructure and services demands. That would mean truly addressing the driver of California’s population growth – immigration – by reducing legal immigration and shutting down illegal immigration, both of which most of California’s elected officials love. Musk’s surprise that the traffic situation has not improved since he moved here in 2002 should hardly be a surprise. The state’s population has grown from 34.7 million then to nearly 40 million today, with projections of 51 million by 2060.

Come to America! Increase your carbon footprint!

As with the relatively new widening of the 405 freeway, which has had little impact on alleviating traffic, expansions made – be them ground level, overhead or underground – are absorbed by increasing numbers of people. That’s the impact of unfettered growth, and more technology isn’t going to mitigate that.

Musk has already made progress on this madcap Journey to the Center of the Earth idea with an east-west test tunnel by the 105 freeway. He now has his sights on the busiest freeway in the country, the 405, for a north-south test tunnel of nearly three miles.

He promises no impact, claiming The Boring Company’s operation will be neither seen, heard nor felt, with no street closures and no tunneling under houses or businesses. The claim of: “Literally, there’s no environmental impact,” strains credibility, but perhaps no more so than the entire scheme? Because he builds solar panels and EVs, Musk has been bestowed an environmental mantle.

But it may be a net zero on the enviro front when considering the vast resources (energy) he would need to move millions of pounds of dirt and get Man to Mars, let alone the amount of energy he’s used just for shit he blows up. But in the cult of Musk, even failures are applauded (see comments section on rocket failures in link in prior sentence). And even when the rockets work, what’s really happening? Tremendous energy is directed to sending more crap into space to circle Earth – the creation of more space junk. But, of course, it makes our lives vastly better, because we’re all so connected now. Right.

Dual Billionaires Carving Up L.A.’s Westside

As if we don’t have enough to contend with on the Westside of Los Angeles, we now have the dual billionaires – Musk on one side of the 405 freeway trying to dig beneath, and Nicolas Berggruen on the other trying to build above for his vanity project on some of the last open space in the city that has been, in fact, previously litigated and designated official open space. Oh my word! We’ll see how much power billionaires wield.

Unfortunately, probably too much.

How the timeline for completion of a multi-leveled burrow, uh, I mean “transportation network,” going hundreds of feet underground in Southern California would compare to Musk’s plan to colonize Mars, or his plan to develop commercial rocket travel (NYC to Shanghai in 39 minutes at 16,000 mph), is anyone’s guess. But he seems committed to extracting as much wealth and resources from Planet Earth as people will pony up for, all in order to turn us into mole people and/or Martians?

With great fortunes comes great responsibility, but some of the uber wealthy, including Musk and Jeff Bezos, don’t seem to grasp what that means, as they live techno fantasies writ large. And pledging to give their fortunes to charity ultimately may not be enough if they’ve been responsible for a tremendous amount of resource misallocation in their lifetimes.

Steven Brill writes of “only a few winners” in today’s world. They have benefited from “ingenious financial and legal engineering” which has “turned our economy from an engine of long-term growth and shared prosperity into a casino.” Musk and his Tesla seem to perfectly embody Brill’s description of today’s winner. A true money-sucking machine, Tesla reportedly needs $10.5 billion in new funding over the next few years just to keep operating. That Tesla remains a going concern is a mystery. It often fails to deliver on its promises, and, with so many automakers now offering competitive EVs, what really makes such a cash-needy enterprise viable still? The Musk Mystique?

The day after the Boring West L.A. presentation, more than 85,000 had viewed it online. They will, no doubt, be looking forward to attending the “pre post-apocalyptic party” Musk promised to hold when his new transit system launches. Me thinks too many folks believe sci-fi is real. That, or in a world of 7.5 billion people, way too many are looking for gods and magic, and Musk conveniently fills the role, our very own 21st century showman à la P.T. Barnum.

Maybe it’s time for the Emperor to be called out for no clothes.

Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and on occasion gets off topic to opine about what else riles her. She lives in Los Angeles. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals and Twitter@TurboDog50.