Update: Council member speaks with Elon Musk representative on traffic tunneling

Bokhari working with Charlotte Department of Transportation and other stakeholders to explore 'outside the box' thinking on addressing congestion

This article originally appeared in the March 26, 2021, issue of The Charlotte Ledger, a e-newsletter with original local news. Sign up today:

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Can tunnels under Charlotte relieve the city’s traffic congestion? One City Council member wants to find out. (Photo courtesy of The Boring Co.)

by Tony Mecia

Following up on our article last week about the idea to burrow beneath intersections to solve traffic congestion — City Council member Tariq Bokhari told us this week he had a productive meeting with a representative of Elon Musk’s The Boring Co.

Bokhari says he didn’t talk to Musk, but to a company executive who was encouraging about prospects for Charlotte tunneling. But it might not be under intersections, as Bokhari originally envisioned.

“My ideas of an underpass, as you might imagine, have a lot of challenges,” Bokhari told The Ledger.

Instead, the executive told Bokhari that The Boring Co. is focused on test projects of between 1 and 5 miles. That could mean, say, a tunnel to uptown beneath the Independence Boulevard or Providence Road corridors. The company told Bokhari it could work quickly, cheaply and without disturbing any buildings or roads above ground: “If all these stars align, there’s no reason to think as a stretch goal that people couldn’t be traveling on this in 2021,” Bokhari said.

Tariq Scott Bokhari @FinTechInnov8r

Just had a great 1st meeting with @boringcompany. A lot of takeaways, but one punchline: if #CLT has an appetite to partner, we could be moving people in innovative ways as quickly as 2021. That's @elonmusk speeds right there.

Eventually, a bigger project could be a high-speed tunnel from, for instance, Wilmington to Raleigh to Charlotte to Asheville, Bokhari says:

Aside from people in Charlotte getting to go to Wilmington and the beaches quickly, you have a lot of stakeholders across the state — people who travel for work, people who bring tourism and unlock it, to all the statehouse representatives and senators who have to get to Raleigh. I think you have a lot of people who would be interested in that.

He says the executive told him The Boring Co. can dig a tunnel for $10M a mile.

Will it happen? As we wrote last week, the question remains whether these ideas have any basis in reality or not. Bokhari said he’s continuing to talk with city staff and others about investigating the possibilities.

He acknowledges he’s a City Council member, not an engineer or technical expert: “The whole premise of this is about thinking outside the box and thinking disruptively.” —TM

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Reporting intern: David Griffith