FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis has some big expectations for improving traffic, and the idea is to go underground — with the help of billionaire Elon Musk’s Boring Company.
“This is the future of Fort Lauderdale, this is the future of transportation, and this is the future that we can all come to expect here in South Florida,” Trantalis said Friday.
Initially, Trantalis and the city had reached out to the Boring Company in January about finding a better way to move train traffic north and south. Since there are plans in the works to add a commuter line from Miami to West Palm Beach that could put 40 more trains on tracks every day.
“Imagine what that’s going to do to vehicular traffic. People will be pulling their hair out of their head trying to get across town,” the mayor said.
The disruption to water traffic would be a nightmare as well.
So, they thought about building a tunnel to bypass most of the major throughways.
And on Friday, their tour around Broward was the next step toward that — and possibly even underground shuttles from downtown to the beach.
“The folks at the Boring Company have traveled around our city, they’ve seen the opportunities we have, they’ve seen the pathways that we could create to try to make this city more efficient and more enjoyable,” Trantalis said.
All of this is still very much a work in progress pointing toward the future, with no groundbreaking in sight.
On Thursday, the Boring Company was in Miami speaking with Mayor Francis Suarez about that city’s traffic issues.