Elon Musk has brought another innovative proposal. He submitted a proposition to build a 6-mile-long tunnel underneath part of Miami, Florida, according to an Insider report that was published this week.
Musk’s The Boring Company would complete the project, which would use only Tesla vehicles to ferry passengers between seven stations underground. The cars that are not Tesla will not be able to have access to the loop system. Also, the system will not be able to interact with other public transit Miami already has.
Nevertheless, the officials seem on board and that too, excitedly.
“We have a lot of traffic congestion, and this would be a way of alleviating a great deal of that traffic,” North Miami Beach commissioner Michael Joseph told Insider.
This wouldn’t be the Boring Company’s first project. In the past, The Boring Company had also opened a similar loop system in California and Las Vegas, Nevada. In March 2021, Joseph told Insider he’d already spoken to Musk’s company multiple times about an underground transit system and had submitted a paper to the tunneling firm for review.
the main takeaway of any public transit system is the convenience of access, and Joseph wasn’t wrong about how transit could affect Miami. According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, public transit creates less congestion, faster commutes, more convenience, higher productivity, and lower emissions. These are attractive goals for the city officials to achieve.
The transit apps like Moovit exhibit that there are already four bus routes that connect to Newport Pier, which Musk’s proposal includes a stop for. Furthermore, the city already has 25 miles of dual-track rail that services Miami International Airport and connects to other rail and bus routes.
Since there are already transit systems in place in Miami, there are a lot of questions springing up. Who is Musk’s new tunnel for? Should customers walk from their location to a loop station? And how will they get transit after they get off if there aren’t any bus or rail routes nearby? More importantly, why is the city trying to secure funding for a new and unconnected project, according to Insider, when it could invest in existing transit?
People are arguing that these systems will only benefit Tesla owners and add no further value besides the aesthetics and entertainment factors.
