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@fcgunxueqiu · 2026-10-14 00:31

The Boring Company Founded in 2017: A Hilarious Yet Hardcore Startup to Beat Urban Congestion In 2017, stuck in a traffic jam, Elon Musk launched what seemed at the time like his most outlandish project — yet one he took utterly seriously: The Boring Company. Back then, he commuted between destinations in Los Angeles on a daily basis and grew exasperated by the city’s relentless gridlock. Most people trapped in traffic would merely grumble, bear it, and face the same jam again the next day. Musk thought differently: if surface roads are choked, stop fighting for space above ground. After much consideration, he saw little room left to expand surface transportation. Urban congestion was a structural dead end that could not be solved head-on. The only way out was to go underground, build layered tunnels and shift commuter traffic beneath the city. That was how The Boring Company came to life, focused on underground tunnel transit and high-speed commuting. When the project was first announced, the internet burst into laughter. People thought the billionaire had too much spare time, dabbling in something frivolous. Tunnelling was seen as a clunky, old-fashioned type of engineering — what innovation could digging possibly bring? Yet he stuck to his familiar approach: roll up his sleeves and redesign the hardware himself. He simplified tunnel-boring machinery, cut costs and boosted digging speed, breathing new efficiency into this traditional engineering field. Behind this seemingly joke-like venture lay his vision for future cities. It would not matter if streets above ground were packed; move commuting underground, and cities could operate in three dimensions. His logic is straightforward. There is no more space to expand roads on the surface. No matter how wide highways are built or how many overpasses are erected, they will inevitably clog up again. If no more progress can be made above ground, go beneath it. Wild as it sounds, the math checks out: this approach is far more practical than endlessly widening surface roads. A thought sparked in traffic eventually grew into a bona fide engineering firm. Everyone complains about congestion, yet few actually set out to fix it. Many projects now taken seriously started out as punchlines, and The Boring Company is one such example. To others, traffic jams were just part of daily life — complain, then head to work as usual. To him, traffic was an engineering problem that demanded a solution. While the whole internet mocked the idea, he had already hired staff, purchased equipment and started digging for real. Named The Boring Company, its work is anything but boring. Turning the frustration of traffic jams into startup inspiration is quite a feat.

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