Musk reveals a 'Boring' vision

Elon Musk revealed his new Boring Company at the TED conference in Vancouver yesterday, which envisages a vast underground transportation network beneath crowded cities to complement his electric Tesla vehicles and SpaceX rockets.

Musk shared highlights of the company at the future-oriented tech conference, Musk presented a short video from the TED stage.

The concept includes  street-level platforms that functioned as elevators to lower cars down to an underground series of tunnels crisscrossing Los Angeles.

Those platforms then functioned as automated sled-like carriers that transported the vehicles, at speeds over 120 miles per hour, through the network to the desired exit shaft, according to the video.

''We're trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will be a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion,'' Musk told the  audience. "You should be able to go from say Westwood to LAX in 5-6 minutes."

The system is the brain child of Steve Davis, a senior engineer at SpaceX in Los Angeles, which was already creating a test tunnel below and adjacent to the factory that made the company's rockets.

According to commentators, the system was a fascinating idea, but whether Musk would be able to build a large-scale version in the forseeable future remained a big question.

He thought about the system when caught in a traffic jam early on a Saturday morning in December.

''Traffic is driving me nuts,'' he tweeted. ''Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.''

The project got a name and a marketing platform in one hour. ''It shall be called 'The Boring Company,'?'' he wrote. ''Boring, it's what we do.'' Two hours passed, and Musk tweeted again: ''I am actually going to do this.''