Elon Musk’s Boring Company has taken the first steps in creating an underground tunnel system. The tunnels are exclusive to auto piloted cars, used to evade and relieve urban traffic congestion, as seen in Los Angeles. Cars will be able to enter lifts on the street that will lower them into underground tunnels. Once in these tunnels, the cars will be auto piloted to avoid other cars at extremely high speeds.
These innovations have the capability to revolutionize city transportation in the future. The tunnel networks may expand throughout cities and suburbs. This may make commute between different counties and cities extremely efficient, which could lead more people to rely less on urban housing and move to nearby suburban areas. Cities would then be much less densely populated. However, since these tunnels are restricted to autopilot cars only, poorer demographics who cannot afford these cars would be excluded from this system. Thus, the people moving to the suburbs would be a wealthier demographic, leaving poorer people in the cities. This would create a divide in the city and suburb demographics, with the tunnels acting as a symbol of elite exclusivity. Conflicts between the wealthy and the poor would thus ensue.
A solution to this would be to make the tunnels accessible to all types of cars. Shown in the CBS feature video are platforms that send the cars throughout the tunnels, which makes cars’ autopilot function unnecessary. Thus, the tunnels would not be exclusive to only those who can afford autopiloted cars, and would make these new innovations openly accessible to anyone who needs to use them. This would foster more inclusivity and reduce the exclusivity of these powerful new systems.
In another scenario, autopilot cars become the norm in the future, and are cheaper and more accessible to most drivers. With everyone owning these kinds of cars, everyone would want to take an advantage of the fast tunnels. High popularity of the tunnels would cause traffic jams and delays within the tunnels, creating just what it sought to avoid on the surface of the ground.
This could be solved be implementing a system in which these tunnels can only be used in times of desperate need. All cars are allowed to use the tunnels for a limited amount of times per week, and it is the driver’s decision of when to use them. A set limit would prevent drivers from always using the tunnels whenever they please, and would instead encourage them to think carefully of why they need to use the tunnels. The cars’ autopilot system would keep track of how many times the tunnels have been used and prevent drivers from abusing the tunnels, leaving them more open to drivers who actually need to make immediate use of the system.