Mobility in L.A.
I’m going to build a tunneling machine and start to burrow,” he posted on Twitter – and founded The Boring Company. December 2018 saw the first cars humming through the 1.8-kilometer pilot tunnel near Musk’s SpaceX company south of Los Angeles. However, given the speed limit of 65 kilometers per hour, the experiment fell far short of its 1,000 kilometers per hour goal. The mayor was nonetheless impressed. “Elon Musk is always somebody who pushes boundaries, literally in space, underground and on land – all three dimensions, as well as the virtual one,” said Eric Garcetti. He admitted, though, that no one was certain that the tunnel would help solve the traffic problems. “Will it work? We don’t know, but I want L.A. to be the place where people test it.” Relief through electrification Another concept combines the underground technology with electrification. The idea of a magnetically driven transport system conveying people, cars and goods in narrow tubes is being evolved worldwide under the name Hyperloop. Elon Musk was also instrumental in reviving this notion, which was first publicly proposed at the end of the 18th century. That said, Musk’s vision of tunneling his way to work in Los Angeles has not gathered much steam. He is currently in talks with several Texan cities on the development of subterranean transport networks. “Heavens, no!” is Professor Giuliano’s response to the idea. “Cars would have to line up to enter the tunnel capsule. The next traffic jam would be at the end of the tunnel. Not to mention the billions it would cost to make the whole thing quakeproof.” The transport expert sees an expansion of the streetcar line as a more realistic alternative. A six-billion-dollar research program is currently testing whether a streamlined electric and fully-automated train would make sense on the segment of I-405 that drives Elon Musk crazy. The train is due to take 24 minutes for a stretch of road where some 380,000 cars and trucks sit snarled in jams nearly every day. “Here, too, we need to decide how much energy and money we want to spend on this project and what we want out of it,” Genevieve Giuliano warns, noting that even above ground, the geological parameters in California will pose further obstacles. “Building quakeproof overpasses to the planned stops is expensive and complicated.”
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Promising, unconventional ideas for San Francisco Currently, the most expensive and complex transport project in California entails neither streetcars nor tunnels. It’s an express train between Los Angeles and San Francisco. During his tenure as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger had already promoted the high-speed link that is designed to cover the 600 kilometers in two hours and forty minutes. Runaway costs, delays and protests have diminished the project to a 275-kilometer stretch in the middle of the state. So cars and trucks continue to thunder along Interstate 5 between the two Californian cities, past strawberry fields, cowsheds and orange groves. That said, San Francisco is already home to one of the impressive transport projects in the U.S.: at peak periods, the Transbay Tube carries more than 28,000 passengers per hour from San Francisco across the Bay to Oakland. Traveling 40 meters below sea level, the trains can reach 130 kilometers per hour – and they’re notoriously overcrowded. The only alternative is to brave the tailback on the bridge. Three years ago the urban planning commission announced a competition, asking for unconventional solutions to this problem, and it sparked the imaginations of the city’s congestion-weary inhabitants. They proposed gondolas, ferries, conveyor systems above and below ground, and flying cars. “We have seen enough promising and original concepts to keep coming generations of urban planners busy,” noted Commission Chairman Jake Mackenzie at the close of the competition. That said, not a single one of these suggestions is currently being put to practice. The city is still evaluating the feasibility of the various ideas, Mackenzie says. San Francisco is concentrating instead on studies for another underwater tunnel and an expansion of the existing bridge. Meanwhile, Lara is on her way home. Again, stuck in traffic. She arranges to meet a friend to spend a weekend cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway. “On Sunday, at 8:00 a.m.,” she says and explains: “I’m usually in a bad mood in the mornings, but that’s the only time the roads are empty in this city and you can enjoy your drive.” Kerstin Zilm is a freelance correspondent based in Los Angeles who reports for radio, print and television. She provides the latest news on issues as wide-ranging as immigration policy,
