Hawthorne City approves two mile long Boring Company Test Tunnel

The Hawthorne City Council has given approval for Elon Musk’s Boring Company to construct a 2 mile long test tunnel below the South Bay city.

In a 4-1 decision Tuesday, the council voted to allow the two-mile tunneling project to go forward.

Musk’s new company has already begun a smaller tunneling project below the SpaceX headquarters (also in Hawthorne), but the new tunnel will be longer and will allow for testing of the zero-emission transportation system that Musk has outlined in public presentations and cryptic tweets.

The tunnel will be constructed at a depth of between 22 and 44 feet below ground and will be about 12.5 feet wide on the inside. It will start beneath a parking lot owned by Space X and extend north before turning west around Crenshaw Boulevard and continuing below 120th Street to Hawthorne Boulevard.

Construction of the project is expected to take about five months, with the tunnel boring machine advancing about 60 feet per day—about the same speed as the tunneling machines used for Metro projects.