Elon Musk is considering a big dig in the Big Easy.
Musk’s Boring Company is eying low-lying New Orleans as a potential location for its next tunnel loop project — despite obvious concerns about its feasibility in such a notoriously flood-prone city.
The Mardi Gras city’s proposed “NOLA Loop” is one of three winners, along with tunnels in Baltimore and Dallas, of Boring Company’s Tunnel Vision Challenge contest, which invited cities to pitch proposals for a tunnel project.
If New Orleans — where the dead have famously been buried above ground for hundreds of years because it sits below sea level — is deemed a practical location, Boring Company officials have promised to foot the bill and construct the new tunnel, Nola.com reported.
Mayor Helen Moreno said that the city is still “in the early stages of exploring this project” and it’s still not clear exactly where the tunnel would be located.
“Any time major corporations or players are interested in New Orleans, it’s a positive,” she told the outlet in a statement.
Other cities where Boring Company has broken ground, such as Las Vegas and Nashville, did not face major geographic hurdles inherent to New Orleans, which is known for its susceptibility to flooding and silty Mississippi River Delta soil.
Many expressed their doubts that New Orleans, the scene of catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina, is an ideal location.
“Uhh, the water table is, like, above sea level there,” one user remarked.
“Has Elon ever been to New Orleans and understood why even dead people are not underground?” wondered Jim Collins.
“Unless Elon is developing electric submarines, this is not going to work,” he added.
“Underground tunnel? In New Orleans? What could go wrong?” questioned another.
Others were more optimistic.
“This will be a big challenge, but if anyone can do it, it would be Elon. I’ll be interested to see how it goes,” posted Jarrod Shooley.
No details about the New Orleans proposal have been released by city or Boring Company officials, but according to the Tunnel Vision Challenge, which received more than 500 entries, the tunnel can be up to 1 mile in length with a 12-foot inner diameter.
In Las Vegas, Boring Company has completed 10 miles of its tunnels, four of which are operational. The company plans to expand the network to 68 miles, capable of moving 98,000 people by Tesla every hour.
