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Elon Musk is boasting of his intention to offer free walks in a tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has canceled the construction of a high-speed passenger tunnel under the west of Los Angeles, but is proposing a similar proposal throughout the city, designed to allow baseball fans to go to Dodger Stadium.
Mr. Musk's well-appointed underground transport company, Boring, has given up trying to develop a 4.4-kilometer tunnel at West LA to settle disputes brought by community groups opposed to the project, said Wednesday. both parties in a joint statement.
The decision came six months after Musk, the baron of high technology best known as the founder of electric car company Tesla Inc and CEO of rocket builder SpaceX, made a rare personal appearance at an event. public in Los Angeles to promote its controversial tunnel project.
At the time, Mr. Musk boasted of his intention to offer free walks in the tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard in order to gather public feedback before continuing with a much larger network than he could. had envisioned for the metropolitan area of Los Angeles.
Opponents, however, accused Musk of trying to evade a lengthy environmental investigation required for such projects by seeking a waiver on the basis of what his company had claimed to be a small-scale demonstration of the fact that the company was not involved in the project. a broader concept.
The precise terms of the court settlement were confidential, according to company spokeswoman Jehn Balajadia and plaintiff attorney John Given.
"The parties (…) have settled the case amicably," the statement said. "The Boring Company is no longer trying to develop the Sepulveda test tunnel, but is looking to build an operational tunnel at the Dodger stadium."
Plans for Boring's so-called "Dugout Loop", an underground high-speed transit corridor between Dodger Stadium and one of three existing subway stations along the city's red metro line , were unveiled several months ago on the company's website.
A first public hearing on the project, the first major step in a large-scale regulatory review of the Dugout Loop, was organized by the city's public works department at the end of August.
The company has instead announced that a shorter and separate tunnel, dug beneath the tiny neighboring municipality of Hawthorne, where Boring and SpaceX headquarters, would be completed by December 10.
"Based on what we learned from the Hawthorne Test Tunnel, we are moving forward with a much larger network of tunnels under Los Angeles," Musk tweeted on Wednesday, adding, "We are not going anywhere. 39 will not need a second test tunnel under Sepulveda. "
According to Boring, the Hawthorne Tunnel and its canoe loop would serve as proof-of-concept sites for an underground tube circulation easing system, allowing pedestrian vehicles called "skids" to be moved from one place to a speed 240 km per hour.
The Dodger Stadium tunnel will initially be limited to about 1,400 passengers per event, or about 2.5% of the baseball stadium capacity, but traffic could possibly be doubled, the Boring website said. He said the rates would only cost $ 1 per trip.
In June, Boring was chosen by the city of Chicago for the construction of a 17-kilometer underground transportation system linking the city's downtown to the international airport O. Hare. The company also proposed an east coast loop that would connect downtown Washington, D.C., to the suburbs of Maryland.
Musk, known for aggressively meeting large-scale technical challenges with which he had little experience, launched his foray into public transit after complaining of LA traffic on Twitter at the end of 2016, then promising to "build a boring machine and start digging."
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