Elon Musk once again wants to redefine the direction of transportation, this time by burrowing a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean.
The billionaire entrepreneur explains that his tunnel-building company, The Boring Company, could dig a tunnel between New York and London that would ferry commuters between the two cities in an astonishing 54 minutes.
As it turns out, you’ve just read right: in fewer hours you’d have to watch a film if Elon Musk’s newest concept ever comes out of the drawing board.
Engineers and dreamers have fantasized a transatlantic tunnel, a 3,400-mile tunnel beneath the sea linking the United States and Britain. Most experts concur that, as intriguing as it is, it would cost prohibitively; estimates have ranged as high as $25 trillion.
But Musk, never averse to making sweeping statements, believes it could be done for a fraction of that.
Responding to a post on X (the old Twitter), which read that a tunnel costing $20 trillion can bring New York and London closer to each other in a span of an hour, Musk tweeted, “The @boringcompany could do it for 1000X less money”.
That would value Musk’s project at about $20 billion, plus or minus a few billion dollars, a small change in the context of transcontinental infrastructure.
Grandiose Plans
A tunnel from the Atlantic to the other side of it would make the Channel Tunnel between France and England, and currently, the world’s longest tunnel beneath water seems a weekend’s worth of DIY.
While the Channel Tunnel stretches a mere 23.5 miles and took six years to build, a transatlantic version, constructed at the same rate, has been calculated to take a staggering 782 years to complete. And that’s assuming it could be done.
There does not yet exist an approved scheme, design, or engineering proposal for a project like this. Over the decades, there have been proposals ranging from a closed, watertight tunnel under the sea floor to a vandraught, or floating, variant that is tethered to the seafloor by cables.
Either scenario presents gigantic technical, logistical, and cost challenges and, naturally, safety and international cooperation issues. Even so, his confidence never falters.
Tunnel building isn’t new to him either; it’s just part of his larger picture of super-fast intercontinental travel. His SpaceX has long kicked around the idea of “Earth-to-Earth” transit, the idea of sending passengers between continents in less than an hour via rocket.
If successful, SpaceX says that the Starship rocket may bring a person from London to New York in just 30 minutes, New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes, and Zurich to Sydney in 50 minutes.
When an X user speculated that SpaceX may just have such “Earth-to-Earth” missions cleared in a few years, Musk just replied that this is now possible.
That level of confidence is familiar to anyone who’s followed Musk’s career. From electric cars to Mars colonies, his track record is filled with both stunning achievements and unrealized promises.
In 2016, Tesla predicted that its cars would become fully autonomous in 2017, a promise yet to be honored in 2025. He also promised to have fleets of driverless “robotaxi” cars in 2020, and they are nothing more than paper visions.
And then there’s Mars. In 2014, Musk informed CNBC he was “hopeful” that man could make it to the Red Planet in 10 to 12 years. While advances mount, even the most rosy projections indicate that mankind still has years to go until it gets to take that one-way ride to Mars.
So, an Atlantic tunnel isn’t likely to arrive in the near future, but that has perhaps never stopped Musk from whetting enthusiasm a little too early. Just as the concept may seem futuristic, tunnel projects are very real but scaled less grandly and more realistically.
Similar Projects
One of the best-known projects currently underway is the Fehmarnbelt tunnel, being built between southern Denmark and northern Germany. It’s a staggering 11.1 miles long and will drop over 130 feet beneath the Baltic Sea.
When it’s due to open in 2029, it will become the deepest and longest underwater rail and road tunnel in the world.
The project, led by Danish company Femern A/S, is among the largest infrastructure ventures in Europe. Once completed, it will significantly cut travel time between central Europe and Scandinavia.
“For commuters, it means a faster and more reliable connection between Denmark and Germany, significantly reducing travel time and making daily commutes much more convenient,” stated Denise Juchem, a Femern A/S spokesperson, in an interview with Euronews.
Aside from being convenient, the project will also benefit the environment as it will spur a switch from road to rail transportation. “This shift is expected to reduce CO2 emissions substantially, as rail transport is more efficient and less polluting compared to road transport,” Juchem stated.
It’s a reminder that while Musk’s transatlantic fantasy captures headlines, much of the world’s tunneling innovation remains focused on practical, achievable goals.
Projects On a Smaller Scale
As for The Boring Company, it was started by Musk in 2016 to “solve traffic” by installing underground networks to carry cars.
It has finished a handful of small projects, most notably, the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, a 1.7-mile system in which Teslas carry riders underground between meeting halls.
Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami tunnel projects have been on the books for the company as well, but many are still behind schedule or just beginning to form.
That makes his claim of a 3,400-mile ocean tunnel that much more surprising. Even his fans are ambivalent; some interpret it as another glimpse into a brash, if improbable, future, while others see it as yet another case of Musk overpromising.
But the ideas of Musk tend to push the discussion a step further.
The idea of reducing a trans-Atlantic flight to under an hour speaks to the same restless optimism that’s powered much of recent technological advancement, that nothing’s out of the question, just unwritten.
Whether it’s rockets crossing the globe or tunnels beneath oceans, Musk continues to position himself as the man trying to bend physics to his will.
And while a transatlantic tunnel that could cost up to £20 billion will never happen, as long as Elon Musk dreams big, the world will keep listening and guessing whether he’s a visionary or a past-master of keeping you guessing.
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