They?re called highways, and they didn?t fix traffic at all I don?t know for sure, but I?m fairly certain that I was the only person who traveled via public transit to the opening of Elon Musk?s tunnel.
Using LA?s extant tunnels and trains to get to the Boring Company event seemed like the only appropriate way to compare what exists today to an idea being touted to end ?soul-crushing traffic? sometime in the near future.
The main entrance to the 1.14-mile test tunnel is located at SpaceX?s headquarters, a mere third of a mile from Metro?s Green Line.
Google Maps says it?s a six-minute walk to the tunnel from the Crenshaw Station; it took me closer to ten. Crenshaw Boulevard is up to seven lanes across in some places?as wide as some highways?and you have to wait a very long time for all vehicular traffic to stop to use the crosswalk. Gauging by the extra-long pedestrian countdown clock, it takes nearly 30 seconds just to walk across the street. Boring Company employees, who work out of the Space X facility, know how awful these intersections are. Right around the time Musk tweeted his first pledge to combat traffic with tunnels, several SpaceX employees were injured in two separate crashes?one of which was a harrowing high-speed hit-and-run.
As a result, SpaceX built a pedestrian bridge last year that travels over Crenshaw from the company?s parking garage to its headquarters. Now employees can drive their vehicles right into the structure and don?t have to take an el...