The UAE government Thursday announced that it has entered into a deal with Elon Musk's Boring Company to develop the 'Dubai Loop,' an underground transportation system designed to connect the city's most densely populated areas.
Under the partnership, a network of underground tunnels, similar to that in Las Vegas, will be constructed by Boring Company in Dubai. The tunnels will carry vehicles underneath the city, similar to the Las Vegas Loop, which uses all Tesla vehicles. That system carries convention centre visitors in high-speed tunnels to avoid surface traffic.
UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, Omar Sultan Al Olama made the announcement during a plenary session with Musk at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
"Dubai Loop will be like a wormhole. I think most people will try it out and be like, wow, this is really cool. It's going to seem so obvious in retrospect, but, until you actually do it, you don't know. So it's gonna be great — you just wormhole from one part of the city, boom, and you're out in another part of the city," Musk said as he virtually addressed the World Governments Summit.
Al Olama, who is also the vice-chair of the summit, said the project would cover "Dubai's most densely populated areas for people to go from point to point, in a seamless manner". "We're going to join the first trip, in the first pod, when it's completed," he added.
The UAE government said it is looking at a 17km system with 11 stations that could carry 20,000 passengers per hour. Once in place, the road system of Dubai Loop is intended to alleviate burgeoning traffic issues.
However, no timelines were given for the Dubai Loop. The potential costs or exact locations for the proposed tunnel network are also yet to be revealed. It is also not clear if the Dubai Loop will be identical to the Las Vegas model.
Further elaborating about the underground project, Musk said, " Earthquakes are mostly a surface phenomenon, they're like the waves on the surface, so being in a tunnel is like being in a submarine. Even if there's a storm above you, you're still in waters that are calm. Decades ago, when there was a massive earthquake in Mexico City, the safest place to go was the subway."
“If you have bad weather, like, let's say there's a blizzard or a sandstorm or something. Well, now nobody can fly. So then transport shuts down. On the other hand, none of these problems exist with underground travel. So the tunnels are immune to weather…The worst weather doesn't matter,” he said.