In a shift of The Boring Company's original concept of helping private car owners' transportation, Elon Musk is now refocusing Hyperloop's mission to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists over cars, suggesting that the high-speed tunnels could serve as a form of mass transit.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Musk said that he is "Adjusting The Boring Company plan: all tunnels & Hyperloop will prioritize pedestrians & cyclists over cars."
The Boring Company's loops "will still transport cars, but only after all personalized mass transit needs are met. It's a matter of courtesy & fairness. If someone can't afford a car, they should go first," Musk tweeted.
"Boring Co urban loop system would have 1000's of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway," the billionaire entrepreneur added.
Details are scarce on how the new concept would work, and whether it is even plausible at all, considering the costs for digging and permitting, not to mention the sloth-like nature of city planning.
The initial concept of The Boring Company's tunnels was to send cars underground at a speed of 124 mph.
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Now the priority is transporting people and comes a few months after reports that Musk had mocked public transport, which sparked a widely followed debate on Twitter and on the Internet.
The Boring Company now says that loop will be a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates traveling at 125-150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers (mass transit), or a single passenger vehicle. Hyperloop is an ultra high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric pods traveling at 600+ miles per hour in a pressurized cabin. The Loop and hyperloop will transport both cars and pedestrians, but pedestrians and cyclists are now being prioritized over cars.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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