Almost got it right. Elon's not building public transit. Has no intention to. He's building private transit, for people who have the money to bypass traffic.

He's doing the tunnels because he hates sitting in traffic. His original scheme, which seems now to be on a back burner, was to tunnel from SpaceX to the LAX executive (posh, private) terminal. Seems like other things (the Dodger Stadium Scam) look better for PR, but nobody who rides the Red/Purple lines (which the Dodger Stadium Scam connects to) is likely to be able to afford to ride the little Elon cars. Hope the Hollywood stations have pullouts for limos...

I'm just waiting for him to want more money for the Chicago tunnel. His present businesses are doing well, but were just as dependent on government money as everybody else at the beginning. Tesla would not have been even remotely viable without tax credits of several types, and emission credits for sale to others, until (perhaps) the Model 3 started "volume" (even 5K a month is pretty low volume in the car biz) production.