Traveling to New York City can be a real pain. Going through security protocols at the airport. Trying to connect to Amtrak's wifi systems. Dealing with crowds on Megabus. Not to mention, the traffic you'll most likely hit if you're driving the 4-to-5 hours to the Big Apple.
Elon Musk's The Boring Company could change that commute to a simple 30-minute trip, Musk announced in a tweet today. To put that in perspective, it takes about 50 minutes just to get from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, only 40 miles apart, on a good day.
Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017
Today, the famously aspirational entrepreneur tweeted that he has received "verbal government approval" for a New York City-Philadelphia-Baltimore-D.C. Hyperloop project. It's not clear where that approval came from or what the context is for this verbal consent.
Musk's The Boring Company proposes building tunnels underneath some of the largest metropolitan areas as a way of alleviating congestion. "A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels)," the company's site says.
However, Hyperloop is just a general idea for a high-speed "tube" transportation system, crafted by Musk. The entrepreneur doesn't run a company that is developing the Hyperloop system — just the company that would build the tunnels for one — making his two-sentence announcement even more ambiguous. It's unclear who would develop the high-speed cart system for the tunnels Musk would build between New York City and Washington, D.C.
Back in February, Musk tweeted a series of photos of him touring D.C. area water sewer tunnels. He toured the 2 1/2-mile-long Anacostia River Tunnel. The German company that made the machine that created the tunnel,, Herrenknecht AG, led the tour and notified water utility of it, a DC Water spokesperson told NBC 4 News in February.
26 ft diameter tunnel running 2 miles under D.C. pic.twitter.com/XFQkioEsg8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2017
This isn't the first traction we've seen on a Hyperloop project as of late. In April, Hyperloop One unveiled 11 U.S. teams as a part of its Global Challenge, an initiative to develop the high-speed "tube" systems across the world. Of the ones chosen, one route would cut down your commute from Chicago to Pittsburgh to only 47 minutes.
Image used via CC BY-SA 4.0 — credit Mrdeluna
