Boring Company reportedly nixes development of traffic tunnels in several cities

Yahoo Finance Live anchor Dave Briggs breaks down the latest news surrounding the Boring Company's fading interest in constructing traffic tunnels in various U.S. cities.

Video transcript

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DAVE BRIGGS: You know I love me some Elon. Now, we're talking about his infamous Boring Company, though. And like most Musk moments, this one started with a tweet. December 2016, Elon opining, "Traffic is driving me nuts. I'm going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging." He did it. But six years later, cities all over North America are still waiting on their traffic-changing tunnel with some who actually got a tunnel wondering, why'd we do that? The Boring Company is a reality, but the concept of solving traffic remains a pipe dream at best, further off than even the Cybertruck.

The Wall Street Journal today highlighting the shortfall, writing, "Elon's Boring Company ghosts cities across America," pulling out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure. Maryland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Ontario, all left at the Boring alter. Las Vegas, however, walked down the aisle in a customary shotgun wedding. And as I can attest, just back from Sin City, the project is underwhelming to say the least.

I rode on it. It's 112-foot wide tunnel that shuttles three passengers, three at a time in a Tesla, between the strip and the convention center 1.7 miles away. That's a $10 Uber. Still, with eyes on the roughly $1 trillion in federal infrastructure money available, cities, including Fort Lauderdale, continue to clamor for tunnels despite scant evidence it will ever materialize.

Now, Mr. Musk is a genius whose brilliant ideas have forever changed life as we know it. But unless he gets actual tunnel vision and focuses on one idea or maybe even two at a time, he's just going to continue digging and digging, not a tunnel, just digging a deeper hole for himself, Jared. I can relate, not to being a genius because I am certainly not that, but having too many ideas. Fortunately, I have a producer who filters them and says, yeah, yeah, 1 in 20 are worth doing. And my wife at home says, yeah, yeah, maybe not. Elon doesn't have that. He needs a consigliere. He needs a lieutenant. He needs someone to keep him focused. Clearly, that is not present in his life.

- Still waiting on that flamethrower, Dave, really am.

DAVE BRIGGS: [LAUGHING]