Sitting in traffic has a simple cure in the Musk family, and it runs underground.
"Avoiding traffic by using a tunnel, makes your life happier," Maye Musk, the mother of The Boring Company founder and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, said in a recent post on X.
She was reacting to The Boring Company’s announcement that its first tunnel project in San Antonio is moving ahead. The company’s 900,000-pound Prufrock-5 tunnel-boring machine arrived at Morgan’s Inclusion Campus on Oct. 14, marking a new milestone for the project. Excavation is expected to begin after the remaining permits are approved.
A Theme Park Gets Its Own Underground Shortcut
The project, called the Morgan’s Inclusion Tunnel, will stretch roughly 0.8 mile beneath the nonprofit’s Inclusion Campus in northeast San Antonio.
The route is designed to connect Morgan’s Wonderland, billed as the world’s first theme park built around accessibility and inclusion, with Morgan’s Hotel, a new 93-room property under construction about a mile away. It will also serve the Morgan’s Multi-Assistance Center, which helps families access services, and Morgan’s Wonder Care, a facility for children and young adults with complex medical needs.
The goal is to make it easier for visitors to move between facilities without having to navigate the campus outdoors. For people with mobility challenges or medical needs, avoiding long outdoor trips in extreme heat, rain or other difficult weather could make a practical difference.
The Boring Company says the tunnel will provide safe, weatherproof and convenient transportation for people of all abilities. Tesla vehicles are expected to carry passengers through the underground route, following the approach used in the company’s Las Vegas Loop.
The Dark Horse of the Tunnel Vision Challenge
Morgan’s project wasn’t one of the three original winners of The Boring Company’s Tunnel Vision Challenge, which invited proposals for short underground transportation routes. Dallas, New Orleans and Baltimore were initially selected as winners.
But Morgan’s Wonderland made the cut for further consideration. The company said the proposal, along with another in Hendersonville, Tennessee, was compelling enough to pursue despite not winning the contest. The project was selected from nearly 500 entries, according to Morgan’s founder Gordon Hartman.
Rather than easing congestion across the city, the tunnel is designed to improve access across a campus serving visitors with a wide range of abilities.
For Maye Musk, the appeal is simple. A tunnel can mean less time dealing with traffic and weather. At Morgan’s, the bigger goal is helping people get where they need to go more easily.
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