Elon Musk is defining the future of transportation with Tesla, SpaceX…and now The Boring Company?! No, not boring as in twiddling your thumbs all day. Rather, boring as in digging holes. Further, Elon believes that tunnel transportation will save us from time-consuming travel congestion and unnecessary carbon emissions.
After doing a bit of digging myself (pun intended), I realized that there is a lot of merit to his idea.
Tunnel transportation…it’s groundbreaking!
For the past few decades, cities have been growing vertically. Buildings got taller. More people got jobs in cities. Thus, more people now commute into cities every day.
But, while cities have grown vertically, transportation has stayed horizontal – confined to surface-level, traffic-jammed roads. By building tunnels underground, you break this singular horizontal path into cities and release the congestion of the highways.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Doesn’t this already exist with subways?
Yes, but Elon wants to dig deeper, literally and metaphorically, and build tunnels on top of tunnels. Layered tunnels. He says as many as 10, 20 or 30 on top of each other.
The Boring Company isn’t first
For example, Seattle is building a tunnel of their own, replacing 9,000 feet of the coastal Alaskan Highway in the heart of downtown Seattle. Unfortunately, after just 1,000 feet of digging, Big Bertha was halted by an 8-inch-diameter steel pipe used to study groundwater movement under downtown Seattle.
Which reminds me, there are a lot of things underground to avoid. Between old building foundations, gas lines, water pipes, and boulders, digging isn’t simple. However, Elon feels pretty confident in his abilities. Plus, he’s Elon Musk…he landed a frickin’ rocket!
Currently, Elon is testing out his abilities on SpaceX property, building a 50-foot long tunnel. Eventually, he plans to make state of the art tunneling machines that could speed up the process by 500-1000 times.
Whether it’s The Boring Company, The Interesting Company, or Holes R’ Us, tunnel transportation has the potential to liberate us from the confines of archaic city grids.
While it’s not as cool as the flying cars we were promised, giant robotic earthworms digging holes underground is still pretty impressive.
Innovation isn’t always flashy
One of the biggest creative blocks is thinking that every innovation has to completely redefine an industry.
We aim to reinvent the wheel every time we solve a problem. But, this sets our standards too high and foreshadows repetitive disappointment.
The basic premise of digging holes is nothing new. When I was little I used to try and dig to China in my sandbox. But, proper execution will make it revolutionary.
Think about pet rock. It took a problem: Kids want pets and parents don’t want to clean up after them. And solved it: Kids have phenomenal imaginations already, so let them play with a rock.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t shoot for the stars with your creations. But, remember that the most important part of innovation is bridging the gap between your dreams and the customer’s reality. That’s why a series of simple innovations may be easier for your customers to swallow bit by bit.
Technology as a whole can be very daunting to digest. That’s why I created Quick Theories – to explain modern technology ideas to you little by little, making sure you understand them.
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I believe Elon Musk is on to something here (as he always is). I just hope that if and when it happens, execution of layered tunnels (“tunnels on top of tunnels”) doesn’t make our planet look like Swiss cheese. You know that type of cheese with holes? That’s Swiss cheese.
By the way, I tried digging to China, too, from our front yard when I was little. Just didn’t have enough stamina to see it through. Or was it my short attention span that time? 🙂
The problem here is the American model – which has failed to grasp two concepts: public transport and hypermobility. Public transport in the US is a joke, and most European cities have no real problem in coping with their current transport needs. But the real problem is the tendency for all of us to want more mobility, more often.
See http://www.john-adams.co.uk/about/
Just walk!