Faster trains to O’Hare could depend on a boring plan

Written by Mischa Wanek-Libman, editor
image description
The Boring Company

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has long sought a way to get trains between downtown and O'Hare airport more quickly and he may have found a new option: Elon Musk's tunneling concept.

Musk, the idea man behind Tesla, SpaceX and Hyperloop technologies, says he has developed a way to bore a tunnel faster and cheaper. The new company with a cheeky title, The Boring Company, aims to “solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic.” The company says in order to do this tunneling speed would need to be increased while to typical tunneling costs would need to be reduced by a factor of 10 or more. The company plans to do this by ramping up the power of the boring machines and reducing the diameter of the tunnel.

Mayor Emmanuel confirmed that representatives from his office have been out to California to begin a conversation with The Boring Company and the next step is to have the tunnel experts out to Chicago to see if the concept is feasible.

The Chicago Transit Authority does connect O’Hare to downtown via the Blue Line. The city said the new tunneling concept is one option it is looking at to speed transfers.

Tags: