Do you remember Rahm Emanuel’s Failed Loop project with Elon Musk?

Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is rumored to be President-elect Joe Biden’s pick as transportation secretary, according to a new report from Axios. But Emanuel would be a very strange choice for the job, not only because the longtime political agent has a long list of political scandals

. One of the rare “achievements” of Emanuel in the field of transport was the organization of a press conference with billionaire Elon Musk to announce a futuristic-sounding underground tunnel project that never took place.

“It will take longer to go through security at O’Hare than to get to O’Hare,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said proudly in June 14, 2018 during a press conference with Elon Musk by his side.

This promise was based on Musk’s plan to install a Chicago “Loop” subway system between O’Hare Airport and downtown, supposed to use 16-passenger vehicles traveling more than 100 miles per hour in underground tunnels. .

The press conference was quite a spectacle, with Emanuel introducing Musk and proudly announcing that the billionaire founder of SpaceX would bring futuristic transportation options to Windy City through Musk’s tunneling company. boring business. And Musk even promised to get to work quickly.

“We hope to start drilling later this year, maybe in three or four months”, Musk said. “And we’re going to start drilling from both the station and the airport side.”

Again, that was in June 2018. Musk planned to make the project a reality through private investment, insisting behind the scenes that it could all cost just $ 1 billion.. The Boring Company said passengers would pay between $ 20 and $ 25 each way, about half the cost of an Uber for the roughly 18 miles from the airport, and taxpayers wouldn’t have to contribute a dime.

Granted, it looked pretty impressive on paper, including a render of what a Loop station in downtown Chicago looked like. it’s supposed to look likeas well as an animation concept video vehicles in action.

These 16-passenger vehicles were supposed to be completely autonomous, electric, and would use inexplicable new technology to “skate” along an underground track. The Boring Company even boasted on its website that vehicles would “leave each station as often as 30 seconds” and claimed the system would run “20 hours a day, every day of the week.” The Boring Company has since removed Project Chicago from its website.

The animated video Musk vehicles It looked like something Tron with neon blue light and a comfortable descent into an underground world of futuristic bliss. Storytellers from the 50s, the same people who promised flying cars

Yes jetpacks, I would have been very proud, If just because Musk didn’t keep his techno-utopian promise either.

NAILAs you may recall, Musk’s promises of cutting edge technology quickly disintegrated at the end of 2018. The Boring Company built a short tunnel in Los Angeles for a public demonstration. it was embarrassing and pathetic. Musk rallied the press in December to showcase his latest technological feat, but reporters on the ground were not impressed.

Vehicles with a futuristic look were gone, replaced by simple Tesla cars. And autonomous abilities have also disappeared, replaced by human drivers. Musk invented … a car drive in a tunnel.

“The Model X rolled on two poured concrete shelves along the wall, which were so uneven in places that I felt like I was rolling on a dirt road, ”a reporter from the Los Angeles Times written at the time.

There were many excuses from Musk and promises that something much more impressive was just around the corner. But that never happened. At least not in Chicago.

O’Hare’s line simply faded into memory and Rahm Emanuel never had to answer for his strange vaporware show. Musk, for his part, is still building a tunnel for him Las Vegas Convention Center, but it is not known when this project will be completed. And even if it’s over, the outcome will almost certainly be disappointing. The so-called “convention center loop” is just a Tesla in a tunnel that could ultimately carry just 800 people per hour, according to tthe Should, even if things are working perfectly.

Will Rahm Emanuel be the worst in the White House? cabinet member in history if nominated by Biden Yes confirmed by the Senate? Of course not. After the Donald Trump disasteranimated presidency, Biden might come up with a moldy bread from bread and I still look like half competent. But we should probably aim for a higher standard than Trump’s four years of blatant embezzlement, blatant self-treatment, and criminal incompetence.

White House Biden can do better than Rahm, a man who, among other things, try blanket until murder of teenager Laquan McDonald in the police hands. Broken promises and embarrassing vaporware are certainly less blatant than murder. cloaking, but if the failed loop is one Of his only qualifications for transportation secretary, Biden might have to look elsewhere.