Future of mobility — Underground transportation and cargo delivery
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How are these two projects relevant to all North American cities?
- Helps reduce surface traffic
- Friendly to the environment using electric vehicles
- Faster journeys across key venues like the downtown core, airports, events, conferences, hotels, tourist attractions
- Surface areas can be redeveloped for other community-driven initiatives like walk/bicycles only areas, parks, etc.
- Faster access to parcels, and mail without increasing the road traffic with delivery vans
- Easier buy-ins from citizens to support funding for sustainable, faster mobility.
Project 1 — LOOP — Last Vegas, U.S.
Loop is an all-electric, zero-emissions, underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported directly to their final destination with no stops along the way.
Located at the Las Vegas Convention Center, LVCC Loop is the first commercially operating Loop system.
Opened in April 2021, The LVCC Loop system — a three-station transportation system consisting of 1.7 miles of the tunnel — was built in approximately one year (using the now-legacy Godot Tunnel Boring Machine). LVCC Loop’s cost was approximately $47M (firm fixed pricing) for the two tunnels and three stations (two surface and one subsurface). Tunneling occurred during large conventions (>100,000 attendees pre-COVID) with zero road closures and zero attendee disturbances.
LVCC Loop connects the LVCC New Exhibit Hall with the existing campus (North/Central/South Halls) and reduces a 45 minute cross-campus walk time to approximately 2 minutes.
Built by — Elon Musk’s The Boring Company — https://www.boringcompany.com/
Learn more about LVCC Loop and other projects here — https://www.boringcompany.com/projects
Project 2 — Cargo Sous Terrain, Underground logistics system, Switzerland
In December 2021, the Swiss parliament passed the necessary legal framework to enable underground freight transportation (link), meaning that the Cargo Sous Terrain (CST) project can commence in 2022. CST will provide long-term, sustainable freight transport without relying on expansion of road and rail networks.
You can learn more about CST here — https://www.cst.ch/en/what-is-cst/
Video — The future of freight transport, Cargo Sous Terrain (CST)
Illustration —
Where can the City of Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) authorities apply these solutions as a priority to accelerate economic growth?
- Underground transport with minimal stops from downtown Toronto core or Metro Toronto Convention Centre to Toronto Pearson Airport.
- Underground transport from Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) to Toronto Pearson Airport
- Underground transport from downtown Toronto core to downtown Waterloo
- 401 Highway corridor from Toronto Pearson Airport to Scarborough
