South African entrepreneur Elon Musk has confirmed that Chicago looks set to become the first city in the United States to adopt his futuristic concept for mass transit. Tesla CEO Musk is the head of the futuristic transportation company entitled The Boring Company
So far uptake on the revolutionary urban mobility solution has been cool, but Musk has officially confirmed that the Windy City of Chicago has agreed to allow Musk's firm to construct a high-speed underground transportation system.
Primary details of the innovative project were disclosed on Thursday, and it revealed that The Boring Company aims to employ underground tunnels and autonomous electric vehicles called skates, which it claims would alleviate the urban congestion issues currently plaguing the city.
The skates would reach speeds as high as 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour), zipping passengers between the Midwestern city's downtown core and its O'Hare airport, one of the country's busiest.
The more refined details of the project have yet to be determined, but the dynamic entrepreneur has insisted that the project could break ground in less than four months, although he did concede that the timeframe was subject to pending regulatory reviews. Musk projected that the new transportation system would be completed in three years.
In an official statement issued to the press, Musk said, "Chicago is giving us the opportunity to show that it can be useful and economically viable on a large scale. One of the hardest things to do with any new technology is to show people that it can indeed be useful."
The company's proposal - one of two finalist bids to create high-speed transport from the airport to Chicago's business district - promised to reduce the duration of the 20-mile journey to just 12 minutes. A taxi ride currently can take as much as an hour or more with traffic.
The privately-funded project, which will reportedly cost $1 billion, will require an injection of capital into the company. It has raised only a fraction of that amount to date.