Elon Musk recently traveled to Miami in order to speak to Mayor Francis Suarez about a possible underground tunnel for transportation. Musk’s plan states that the tunnel would be ready for use within the next six months. 

Musk was born in Canada and grew up in South Africa. He has excelled in entrepreneurship with endeavours through Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal and a recent $1.5 Billion investment in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. 

In Jan. 2021, Musk became the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $185 billion, surpassing Miami Palmetto Senior High alumnus Jeff Bezos.

Musk founded “The Boring Company,” which creates underground tunnels to solve the problem of greatly congested traffic within big cities. 

The idea behind the tunnels creates the possibility for faster transportation throughout big cities such as Miami. The Boring Company has already built tunnels for electric cars in metro areas of Las Vegas and Los Angeles, both showing great improvement in the flow of traffic within the usual congestion of the cities. 

Musk pitched the idea of a tunnel previously to Florida Governor Ron Desantis, but the two did not come to an agreement. They have not shared any specifics regarding their earlier talks, but the new agreement contains a $30 million plan they plan to carry out within six months of the start of construction. 

In Dec. 2020, The Boring Co. got a deal approved which created a series of tunnels connecting the Las Vegas Strip, downtown, the stadium, the airport and other popular locations in Vegas. 

Musk remains hopeful to create something similar in Miami as the tunnels could connect the busy Miami Port to nearby expressways. 

Musk’s $30 million plan costs significantly less than the original $1 billion plan set by the City of Miami. This brought speculation to the effectiveness of the investment as even $30 million was thought as not enough money because of the high water levels and limestone under the South Florida ground. 

Musk has not yet addressed this concern publicly, though he has talked in the past of “digging tunnels as deep underground as skyscrapers are tall.” 

Miami has been known for its jam- packed traffic and Musk’s pitch to create these tunnels may greatly benefit the city for transportation but they pose problems for the water supply of South Florida.

Speculation has occurred regarding this and it seems as though Musk has convinced Desantis that he has a plan that would handle these problems.