WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday showed off his concept for the Loop, a high-speed underground public transportation system that will carry up to 16 people and travel at 150 miles per hour.
At the Boring Company Information Session, Musk and project leader Steve Davis provided details of the vast, underground mass transit tunnels that the Boring Co. plans to build beneath Los Angeles. The underground network is expected to help alleviate traffic problems in large cities.
Boring Co. is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded in 2016 by Musk, who is also the chief executive officer of SpaceX and Telsa Inc. (TSLA).
According to Musk, the Loop will carry people from downtown Los Angeles to the city's international airport, a distance of eleven miles, in just eight minutes. His projected fare for the Loop system is only $1 per person.
In the Loop transportation system, passengers will be transported on autonomous electric skates traveling at 125 to 150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers in mass transit, or a single passenger vehicle.
Musk also revealed that the Loop will require 2.7 miles of tunnel running north to south parallel to the Interstate 405 freeway. It will be privately funded.
An hour before the event began, Musk retweeted a tweet from Metro Los Angeles that said it is coordinating with Boring Co. on its test.
'They will coordinate with us as they move ahead with their proof of concept tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard to ensure it doesn't interfere with our Sepulveda Transit Corridor rail project. We'll be partners moving forward,' Metro Los Angeles said in its tweet.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX