Miami’s Suarez visiting Musk’s tunnels this month. Here’s what Lauderdale’s mayor thought

Following a February gabfest with the then-world’s richest man, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez will visit Elon Musk’s Boring Co. tunnels in Las Vegas Thursday, March 18, to explore the viability of building one under the Brickell Avenue bridge.

Suarez confirmed the Las Vegas trip dates for the Miami Herald on Monday. At an unrelated event Monday morning, Suarez told reporters that Miami-Dade County Commissioner Keon Hardemon, one of Suarez’s former colleagues in Miami City Hall, plans to travel with him. Suarez said he’s also invited Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz, chairman of the county commission, to join.

“I’ve been in constant communication with Steve Davis, the CEO of The Boring Company, with the hope and expectation we can go up there and see if there’s a solution for our community,” Suarez said.

A representative for Boring Co. did not respond to a request for comment. (Musk recently fell back to second place on Bloomberg’s billionaire list behind former Pinecrest resident Jeff Bezos.)

Suarez is hoping to revive a long-theorized but never-realized tunnel under the Miami River. The concept has lingered for decades, after former Mayor Maurice Ferré first backed it more than 40 years ago. Suarez and Commissioner Ken Russell, who represented downtown, have said a Brickell tunnel would relieve gridlock in Miami’s fast-growing urban core.

In 2018, Miami-Dade County transit officials estimated a $900 million price tag for a roughly 2-mile tunnel under the river that would take about four years to build. Such a project would require layers of government approvals, and any kind of formal proposal from Musk’s Boring Company would have to filter in through local agencies and would trigger bidding requirements.

Musk told Suarez on their February phone call he envisioned his tunnel could be built for $30 million and in as little as six months.

Meanwhile, Boring Co. officials are expected to visit Fort Lauderdale this week. There, they will explore the feasibility of building a train tunnel beneath the New River. Their visit follows on the heels of one out West last month by Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, Broward County Vice Mayor Michael Udine and officials with the Brightline express train.

In an interview Monday, Trantalis said he came away impressed with Boring Co.’s technology

“Everyone walked away feeling this was very doable and excited about the opportunity to bring that technology here to South Florida,” he said.

Udine compared Boring Co.’s giant reusable drill technology to the reusable rockets employed by Musk’s SpaceX.

“It seemed like their process is much more streamlined,” he said. “There are just a lot of synergies.”

As with most of Musk’s ventures, Boring Co. continues to attract critics. In an interview with a German magazine last month, Martin Herrenknecht, the founder of Herrenknecht AG, the firm responsible for the world’s longest railway- and deepest traffic-tunnel, in Switzerland, called Musk a “foam whipper.”

“On his reference project in Las Vegas, Musk drilled 20 meters in one week. We can do the same route in one day,” Herrenknecht said, according to Tesla blog Teslarati.

Musk has been working on the underground transportation system beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center since late 2019; it has remained closed during the pandemic. In December the Las Vegas City Council approved Boring’s plans to expand the convention center loop citywide to include hotels, though city officials described that vote as a first step. Boring Co. President Steve Davis said in December that the Vegas expansion would be entirely privately funded.

Further west, officials in San Bernardino County, Calif., unanimously voted last month to move forward on a tunnel connecting a train station in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., to Ontario International Airport four miles away. The Indian Valley Daily Bulletin reported the initial cost estimate for that four-mile project started at $45 million; Boring Co.’s final proposal to the Authority came in at $85 million.