Elon Musk and the Boring Company are pretty well-known for their innovations like SpaceX that push us towards the future of technology. Their latest much-hyped idea, however, has been met with a collective eye roll from the Internet for it’s similarity to the run-of-the-mill bus stop.
According to Wired, “the Loop” is the title for this bus stop-like system of transportation. The Loop would include pods that take on 8 to 16 passengers at street level, but sinks to a tunnel underground to bring them to their destination.
However, Wired noted some of the key differences between the Loop and traditional mass transit. These differences included numerous parking lot sized stations that take pods full of passengers almost directly to their destinations instead of the large subway stations that usually require a bit of walking.
So, the Loop is essentially an underground bus system. The internet caught on to that pretty quickly and reminded Musk what a bus stop is and why this may not be the Boring Company’s most innovative plan.
elon musk: *sitting neck deep in a bath of homeless people’s spinal fluid* what if we made a bus poor people couldn’t use
— Goth Ms. Frizzle (@spookperson) March 12, 2018
Elon Musk demonstrates what philosophers will come to refer to as “the banality of god”—having vast wealth and the delusion that you’re here to save the world, and directing it to imaging shitty private transit system’s that’ll never actually get made.
— Avery Edison (@aedison) March 12, 2018
Gotta say – I’m really enjoying how much Elon Musk is getting mocked for this – he’s re-invented the bus-stop and suggests that rather than invest in small amounts of money for say, dedicated bus lanes, cities should invest $$$ in digging bus tunnels everywhere. https://t.co/weLZztwytT
— Eamon Waterford (@ewaterford) March 12, 2018
Bus stops that’ll cost a hundred times as much to build and maintain.
— Dylan (@dylanorchard) March 11, 2018
Musk was quick to defend the Loop.“You could say it’s a 150mph, underground, autonomous, electric bus that automatically switches between tunnels and lifts,” Musk said, according to The Register. Musk is known for his dislike of traditional systems for public transportation, so the Loop seems to try to correct some of his biggest issues with it.
The Register highlighted one of Musk’s biggest critics, Jarrett Walker, who has called the ideology behind the Boring Company “elite projection” because of Musk’s insistence on providing luxuries to cities that only the rich will be able to afford.
In cities, @elonmusk‘s hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford. Letting him design cities is the essence of elite projection. https://t.co/gtSVgPkfPo https://t.co/CmCpoIJ5NE
— Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) December 14, 2017
(Photo Credit: Cover)