Elon Musk just fired another shot at Los Angeles.
The tech billionaire amplified a viral X post claiming his tunneling startup could dig underground tunnels for far less than Metro is paying for rail projects in L.A. — taking a swipe at traditional transit planning and arguing that tunnels themselves are “underrated” as a faster, cheaper solution.
Los Angeles is nearing completion of a roughly 9-mile subway from Koreatown to Westwood — the D Line (Purple Line) Extension — with a total cost of about $9.5 billion, or roughly $1 billion per mile depending on the segment.
And that’s not even the most ambitious project on the books. The proposed Sepulveda Transit Corridor, a fully underground line beneath the Santa Monica Mountains, is estimated to cost roughly $20 billion to $25 billion for about 12 to 14 miles, with service projected for the late 2030s or early 2040s.
By contrast, Musk’s Boring Company has promoted plans to dig highway tunnels in Nashville for roughly $240 million to $300 million for about 10 to 13 miles — a tiny fraction of typical subway costs, though the project has not yet been completed and final figures remain uncertain.
The systems, however, are fundamentally different. Boring Company tunnels are much narrower and designed for electric vehicles rather than high-capacity trains, with smaller stations and fewer safety systems. That keeps costs down but also sharply limits how many passengers can be moved compared with heavy rail.
Musk founded The Boring Company after publicly venting about Los Angeles traffic and what he viewed as painfully slow, expensive infrastructure.
Early L.A. proposals — including a test tunnel in Hawthorne and a privately funded link to Dodger Stadium — stalled amid environmental review requirements, permitting hurdles, and community opposition. Similar plans in Chicago and elsewhere were later abandoned.
The company’s largest operating system is in Las Vegas, where the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority funded an initial underground loop beneath the convention center that opened in 2021.
The system — now known as the Vegas Loop — uses Tesla vehicles to shuttle passengers through short tunnels and has carried millions of riders, with stations at the convention center, Resorts World, and Westgate, and plans for future expansion to the airport, stadium, and downtown.
Because the network is largely privately financed, it has been able to move forward faster than traditional public transit projects, avoiding many federal funding requirements and lengthy approval processes.
