Mayor Francis Suarez thinks the tunnel could alleviate congestion, but critics argue the city's rising water table makes tunneling too expensive and impractical.
Despite the city's reputation as a "sinkhole capital," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez plans to "seek federal funding for an Elon Musk-built underground car tunnel to curb traffic," reports Denise Pellegrini in Bloomberg Quint. Ignoring longstanding concerns about the high water table in the area, "Suarez has become the chief local advocate" for the tunnel and hopes that the federal government will "involve itself" in the project. Although the roads are controlled by the county rather than the city, the mayor hopes his enthusiasm will lead to more momentum for the tunnel.
"After meeting with executives from Boring, who are already building a tunnel for self-driving Teslas in Las Vegas, Suarez said he is thinking about a similar transportation system that could potentially connect Brickell to downtown, Grand Central Station, Miami World Center, the Omni area, Wynwood, and Little Haiti." Anticipating a funding shortfall, "Suarez is also already pursuing a company-funded model for the project," writes Pellegrini. "Suarez thinks Musk may agree to build a user-fee based tunnel system in Miami, and says such systems could become widely popular across the country." While the mayor points to a "Boring project in Chicago [that] is set up under a similar concept," that project has been almost certainly scrapped.
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