The CFO of the Los Angeles Dodgers is claiming Elon Musk’s underground highspeed tunnel connecting the team’s stadium to the surrounding areas will be completed by 2020.
The Boring Company, a tunnel assembly company launched by Musk in 2016, announced this month it aims to construct a “zero-emissions, high-speed, underground public transportation system,” connecting the Los Feliz, East Hollywood, or Rampart Village neighborhoods to Dodger Stadium. “Dugout Loop will begin at the Dodger Stadium property and will proceed under Vin Scully Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. The western terminus will be located on private property owned by The Boring Company and will be located within the vicinity of a Metro Red Line station,” the company statement reads.
“The expectation right now is that we’ll have approvals early next year and get started building the tunnel, and hopefully have it opened by the end of 2019, in time for 2020 season, which is when the Dodgers are hosting the MLB All-Star Game,” CFO Tucker Kain told CNBC’s Squawk Alley on Friday.
The Boring Company claims trips will take approximately four minutes, at a cost of $1. In a departure from previous Musk-lead projects, the construction firm claims the tunnel is “100% privately funded and will require zero taxpayer dollars.”
“The tunnel at the moment is going to be fully financed by the Boring Company — something we are really excited about and appreciative of the work and innovation being done by the Boring Company on projects like this to really help LA, help traffic, help Dodger fans in particular,” added the team executive.
Klain is optimistic the tunnel will alleviate traffic issues plaguing areas surrounding the 56,000 capacity stadium while also giving game attendance a meaningful boost.
“We are already the highest-attended sports venue in the world at the moment, so we are really trying to capitalize on that, give people more options … to really come and experience Dodger baseball, which they may be less prone to do to the extent traffic is a major issue as they try to get to the stadium on a nightly basis,” he added.
However, not everyone residing in Los Angeles is excited about Musk injecting himself into the city’s traffic woes.
As Breitbart News’ Chriss W. Street reported in May, neighborhood groups sued to prevent the city from fast-tracking an “environmental exemption,” for The Boring Company’s proposed hyperloop tunnel linking West Los Angeles and Culver City. “The lawsuit is in response to the L.A. City Council’s Public Works Committee unanimously approving an April 18 motion to exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act review of the first “proof of concept” section of a private 2.7-mile tunnel to speed cars and people under Sepulveda Boulevard between West L.A. and Culver City,” reported Street.
In June, The Boring Company was awarded a contract to build a high-speed tunnel linking downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. The proposal claims the transit link will transport passengers from the second busiest airport in the U.S. to the downtown Chicago’s Block 37 in just 12 minutes.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Tribune that the decision to build the tunnel marks another milestone in the city’s history of being an “innovator in transportation.” “If you look at the history of Chicago … every time we’ve been an innovator in transportation, we have seized the future. I think figuring out — when time is money — how to shrink the distance between the economic and job engines of O’Hare and downtown positions Chicago as the global leader and global city in the United States,” Emanuel said.
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