LOS ANGELES, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. technology pioneer Elon Musk posted the very first glimpse of his Boring Company tunnel on Instagram this weekend, captioned "The Boring Company tunnel under LA."
The photo shows that the tunnel features paneled walls, cables, a large upper conduit and lighting. It is a clear demonstration of how Musk's tunnel-digging venture has evolved from the initial idea first floated on Twitter to reality.
In a post to his personal Instagram containing the same photo, Musk described this section of the LA (Los Angeles) tunnel as running parallel to Interstate 405 all the way to Interstate 101, with exit ramps "every mile or so."
Musk wrote that "it will work like a fast freeway, where electric skates carrying vehicles and people pods on the main artery travel up to 150 mph (about 241.5 km per hour), and the skates switch to side tunnels to exit and enter."
So far, the company has completed about 152 meters of its tunnel project under Hawthorne near the SpaceX headquarters in the city of Los Angeles, California.
The tunnel "should be 2 miles (about 3.22 km) long in three or four months and hopefully stretch the whole 405 N-S corridor from LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) to the 101 in a year or so," Musk tweeted. ( The Boring Company started as a joke, but has became increasingly serious as Musk began tunneling in Los Angeles. In April, while he was giving a TED Talk about the project, he released a video demonstration of the concept of Hyperloop.
He had also revealed the planned route of the first tunnel: "Full length of first tunnel will run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks. Future tunnels will cover all of greater LA."
In June, Musk announced that The Boring Company completed the first segment of its tunnel under Los Angeles.
"It has begun boring and just completed the first segment of tunnel in LA," Musk announced on June 28.
In July, Musk tweeted that his Boring Company tunnel project has received "verbal government approval" to build a New York - Washington D.C. Hyperloop, which would drastically cut the travel time between the two cities.
For the Boring Company there is still a long way to go, although the company has finally finished a portion of the tunnel they're digging under Los Angeles.
Currently, tunnels are really expensive to dig, with some projects costing as much as 1 billion U.S. dollars per mile (about 1.61 km).
The Boring Company said on its website that in order to make a tunnel network feasible, tunneling costs must be reduced.
Apparently, the company still has a long way to go.
