It’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these---we never did get an infrastructure bill, so there really hasn’t been anything to write about.
It’s no secret I’m not a fan of Elon Musk and his many ventures other than SpaceX, and I really don’t like the deeply toxic people who are his “stans” and I especially don’t like that many of them have adopted fairly vile Gamergate/Trumpian style manners of dealing with women critics--especially those women of colour, but even Elon can, on paper at least, get one right and right now I’d say he's gone one right with Chicago.
Today, Chicago announced they are choosing Boring to build high-speed (that’s 100-150mph) tunnels between downtown and O’Hare, for a public cost of---get this---nothing. Boring will finance the entire thing out of their own pocket. Good!
Autonomous 16-passenger vehicles would zip back and forth at speeds exceeding 100 mph in tunnels between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport under a high-speed transit proposal being negotiated between Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s The Boring Co., city and company officials have confirmed.
Emanuel’s administration has selected Musk’s company from four competing bids to provide high-speed transportation between downtown and the airport. Negotiations between the two parties will ensue in hopes of reaching a final deal to provide a long-sought-after alternative to Chicago’s traffic gridlock and slower “L” trains.
In choosing Boring, Emanuel and senior City Hall officials are counting on Musk’s highly touted but still unproven tunneling technology over the more traditional high-speed rail option that until recently had been envisioned as the answer to speeding up the commute between the city’s central business district and one of the world’s busiest airports.
It remains to be seen how the city has protected itself if Boring goes belly up from being stuck with the bill. Other than a beginning point (a mothballed station for the same kind of project---dead now---built in 2008 at considerable taxpayer expense—presumably Boring would purchase this or be given it for free, we all know how this works) and an end point (the airport, near a new terminal) no final right-of-way has been identified, presumably Boring will either have to purchase it from the landowners or the city/state, or Chicago will have to take advantage of what the 2005 Kelo ruling permits (Boring states they won’t need to take any property. We'll see). Neither Boring or Chicago has released any cost estimates, and who owns the tunnel when it’s done has not been finalized. Chicago? Or Boring? We’ll see. No real details are going to be released for a bit.
I would click through and read the Chicago Tribune article. It’s pretty good.
Anyway, good luck Chicago, and if this project is successful, you’re going to see a lot more of these private ventures, so better get used to it.