Elon Musk: First tunnel under LA will welcome riders soon

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Elon Musk shares first pic of futuristic underground L.A. tunnel Elon Musk has shared a picture of his futuristic tunnel for high-speed travel and it looks awesome. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@FantasticMrNate) has the story.

Want to take a free trip into the future? Elon Musk is calling.

His Boring Company drilling enterprise has nearly completed a tunnel beneath Los Angeles meant to test his high-speed public transit system called Loop. And gratis rides for adventurous travelers may be coming soon.

"Pending final regulatory approvals, we will be offering free rides to the public in a few months," Musk said in an Instagram post late Thursday.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted out the update Thursday about the progress made by his Boring Company project, a variation on a hyperloop concept he sketched out in a 2013 white paper.

Musk included a link to an Instagram post with a time-lapse video of a ride inside the 2-mile tunnel beneath SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., south of Los Angeles. Musk launched the mission after complaining about traffic around his hometown, which is the worst in the world according to a range of surveys.

In previous posts, Musk showed a photo of a Tesla Model S inside the tunnel, which is just wide enough to accommodate the luxury electric vehicle. It is roughly 12-feet wide, and its mobile platforms, known as skates, can travel at up to 130 mph.

The concept behind Loop has changed over the months. Most recently, Musk said that it would no longer provide the high-speed electric-powered platforms, or "skates," for cars to race beneath the surface, but instead will focus on pedestrians and cyclists.

In an animation released by the Boring Company in March, pedestrians are shown at the street surface boarding buses and being lowered into the tunnel by an elevator system.

Musk has gotten approval from Maryland to dig tunnels for a Loop system that would provide a transportation alternative to commuters in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., corridor, but work has not yet started on that project.

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