Miami wants Elon Musk to bore a tunnel under the city

Francis Suarez says he is ‘very serious’ about doing deal with entrepreneur’s Boring Company

The mayor of Miami wants Elon Musk to bore a tunnel beneath the Florida city.

Francis Suarez says he is “very serious” about contracting the tech billionaire’s Boring Company to try and alleviate traffic gridlock there.

The tunnel would take six months to dig and would cost around $30m, the mayor said after a phone call with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO earlier this year.

Now Mr Suarez says he is in the process of creating a procurement document necessary to start the project and hopes to be ready to push forward within three months.

“We’re socialising it with our council members and once that’s done, we’ll put it out and we’ll see what happens with it,” Mr Suarez told Insider.

The politician said that the city would then have to work with Mr Musk’s Boring Company to design, permit and build the tunnel.

And the earliest it could be ready to go into operation would be February 2022..

“It takes them so much time to do a given mile. They’re getting better and they’re getting faster... but it still takes time,” he added.

Mr Musk has suggested building the tunnel for electric vehicles that would connect under the Brickell Avenue drawbridge, that often holds up traffic heading into downtown Miami.

Mr Suarez has not said exactly how he proposes to fund the ambitious project, but previously told Bloomberg he hoped to secure federal money.

And he denied he was promoting the project for social media attention.

“I don’t have the luxury of joking,” he added.

Last month the Boring Company previewed its Las Vegas tunnel at city’s convention centre, which critics say is a loop with Tesla Model 3 cars driving passengers at 35mph instead of a revolutionary public transportation system.

The $52.5m loop will open in June and is designed to move 4,400 people per hour in a fleet of 62 Teslas.

The Boring Company was granted permission by Hawthorne City Council to extend a tunnel in Los Angeles, and plans also included projects at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, and a tunnel connecting Baltimore and Washington DC.

But the company removed any mention of Los Angeles and Washington DC projects from its own website in April, according to Bloomberg News.