Is Elon Musk's plan for a road network beneath LA more than a pipe dream?

Cities attract wild ideas, from Qinhuangdao's straddling bus to London's bike lanes in the sky. As Musk's Boring Company starts tunnelling, could his plans for underground roads and Hyperloop trains prove the doubters wrong?

In early August, the city council of Hawthorne, California, held a special meeting. It had set aside this time to discuss a major construction project proposed by a high profile company based there in the sprawling Los Angeles basin.

The company was Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, the rocket-building offshoot of the electric car company Tesla, run by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. SpaceX had recently spun off another entity, this one aimed at disrupting the tunnel boring business, cheekily named the Boring Company - and it needed the City of Hawthorne's cooperation.