Elon Musk may be hinting at a new business opportunity in Austin
AUSTIN, Texas - Elon Musk may be hinting at a new business opportunity in Austin.
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The Boring Company, owned by Musk, says their mission is to solve the problem of "soul-destroying traffic," turning roads 3D with tunnels.
CEO and President of Capital Metro Randy Clarke says the City of Austin is like every other major city when it comes to traffic, it's congested. "Anyone who has ever sat in a car before has always thought, "Man, I wanna get out of here," Clarke said. "Well, the only way to get out is building up or down."
Just this month, voters approved Prop-A, which includes Project Connect.
"People are clearly excited," Clarke said. "With that said, we know we have of work ahead so we have to be focused so we can deliver to our community."
Clarke says Project Connect is a 'project of projects." "We have some projects like neighborhood circulators coming out in '21, starting some red-line improvements as early as '21 and some of our rapid metro bus lines will be working in '21," he said.
One of those projects: tunnels for downtown. "The best thing about operating down is we'll have the ability to monitor our own right of way," Clarke said. "And we have the ability to operate faster, safer and very, very reliable."
But, said the projected timeline for that is at least several years down the road.
"We're under the design process right now, the environmental process, and the preliminary engineering process," Clarke said. "So we're several years away from putting a shovel into the ground."
Now, why would musk bring a tunneling company to Austin? Well, earlier this year, he already announced Tesla's new headquarters would be here in Del Valle; adding an expected 5,000 jobs to come with that.
While there is no current project listed for Austin on The Boring Company website, there are 8 jobs listed here in Austin. Including electrical and mechanical engineers, a business development lead, and a lead technical recruiter. A request for comment from the company was not returned.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce said they are always happy to work with companies that are interested in bringing jobs to the Austin region.