Staff of Reuters 2 min readFILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, visits the gigafactory building site in Gruenheide, Germany, on May 17, 2021. REUTERS/File Photo/Michele Tantussi (Reuters) – BERKELEY, Calif. (Reuters) – The city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s mayor said that Elon Musk’s tunneling company, Boring Company, has made a bid to develop an underground transit system between downtown and the beach. On Tuesday, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean J. Trantalis tweeted, “This could be a genuinely unique solution to relieve traffic congestion,” adding that other companies had 45 days to submit competing bids. The bid’s terms were not disclosed, and Boring Company did not respond immediately. The mayor’s message was retweeted by the company. Boring Company inaugurated its first commercial tunnel project in Las Vegas in June, employing human-driven Tesla vehicles to transport guests through the city’s Convention Center. The 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) tunnel decreases “a 45-minute cross-campus walk time to around 2 minutes” at the facility, according to the Boring Company. Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc and SpaceX, founded the Boring Company after complaining on Twitter in December 2016 that traffic in Los Angeles was “driving me crazy,” promising to “build a boring machine and simply start digging.” In February, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez claimed that Musk told him that a local tunnel project, previously estimated to cost $1 billion, could be completed in six months for less than $30 million. Hyunjoo Jin contributed reporting, and Cynthia Osterman edited the piece./n
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