The Craziest Thing About Elon Musk's 'Express Loop' Is the Price

The Boring Company, the tunneling venture Tesla CEO Elon Musk started in 2016 out of his personal frustration with surface-level gridlock, has made a significant step towards evolving beyond billionaire-passion project: The company has been selected to build and operate an 18-mile, 12-minute rapid transit connection between Chicago’s downtown Loop and O’Hare International Airport, according to news reports.

The project would be the first demonstration of Musk’s futuristic quasi-transit technology: autonomous 16-passenger vehicles that transport passengers on what the company calls “skates”—moving, multi-directional platforms that lower passengers from the surface underground and to their destinations at speeds of up to 150 mph. Most transit moves horizontally, some moves vertically; the concept for the “Chicago Express Loop” is to do both.