> in service of the development of modern subterranean transportation
It's not really that, it's a weird parody of "modern subterranean transportation". They could do interesting things with it, but right now it's just private roads. It isn't more efficient than a subway, it isn't more flexible, but it's likely more dangerous.
Cant wait for one of those cars to cook off it's battery pack possibly leading to the car behind it cooking off it's battery pack. And where do the humans in those cars go? Last time I looked at the press around this thing the tunnel is barely wider than the cars. Add fire and smoke and it's just a lot of dead people.
From what I've seen, there are cars (telsa's) driving in a circle and you grab the next one available. Right now someone is driving it but at some point it's supposed to be autonomous. I think when the tunnel was first built you could drive your own car through it but as far as I'm aware they're not doing that anymore (I think it was just a publicity thing before the tunnels were close enough to completion to use).
Looks at Hyperloop. Looks at London subway. Looks at NYC subway. Looks at literally any other subway Yeah, a poorly-made tunnel with cars that fit 2-3 people at a time while requiring each car to have their own driver is very modern and definitely worth environmental violations.
Poorly made two way tunnel... Not even two tunnels so you could send traffic to both direction at same time and have actual potential for reasonable capacity.
Not to defend them, but here in Germany you are not allowed to build a single two way tunnel. You always need to build two tunnels being single direction only. This is so that in case of a fire not both directions are unusable. This does not free you from the obligation to also build emergency tunnels.
