Tesla CEO Elon Musk has received a permit to begin digging a tunnel underneath a Washington, D.C., parking lot that could connect the nation’s capital to various cities across the East Coast.
The permit is part of a push to determine the feasibility of digging a Hyperloop network under the city, according to an official for the city’s Department of Transportation. The project is expected to use underground tubes and magnet-levitated pods to transport passengers at neck-snapping speeds.
D.C.’s Hyperloop will begin at a vacant parking lot near New York Avenue, which, “if constructed, could become a station” across the underground network, an official with Musk’s Boring Company told The Washington Post. The permit was officially approved last November.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, is trying to figure out what other permits the Boring Company needs hollow out larges sections of city roads, the mayor’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio, told reporters.
“We’re just beginning, in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop,” Falcicchio said, adding that the Democratic mayor is “open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently.”
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D.C. is the most recent city to sign aboard Musk’s Hyperloop.
Maryland’s Department of Transportation gave Musk permission in 2017 to dig miles of tunnel under state roads for the privately funded project, Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer told reporters. He did not elaborate on what the conditions Musk must meet.
Maryland is proud “to support The Boring Company to bring rapid electric transportation to MD – connecting Baltimore City to D.C.,” the state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan wrote in a tweet following the move. “So, get ready,” Hogan said in a follow-up video.
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