By: Nick Gambino
Elon Musk sure seems obsessed with the concept of travel whether it be space travel between planets or quick transport between cities through a hyperloop.
The billionaire made headlines recently when he launched his personal Tesla into space headed towards Mars and now he’s back at it again with big news on the hyperloop front.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Musk’s Boring Company just received an official written permit to start digging in Washington, DC. This of course would be the start of building the “tunnel” that will allow you to zip in your car from DC to NY in 29 minutes.
Just last year Musk had tweeted out that he received verbal approval to start digging. For anyone who knows how the world works, that doesn’t mean much in the way of getting things done. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an exciting step in the right direction. Now with this basic permit the Boring Company can effectively break ground on this years-long dream.
Though The Post describes the limitations, “The Boring Company Team has received an early, and vague, building permit from the D.C. government that will allow some preparatory and excavation work at the fenced-off parking lot at 53 New York Avenue NE beside a McDonald’s and amid the construction cranes of Washington’s booming NoMa neighborhood.”
The idea would be to make this location a station for the superfast transportation system. That is if the mayor’s office doesn’t get cold feet and stop supporting the project. “We’re just beginning, in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop,” the mayor’s chief of staff told The Post.
Notwithstanding approval, there are plenty of other elements that need to come together before we’ll see such a transportation marvel. The tech itself, from all accounts, hasn’t been completely worked out – a key step, obviously, in realizing the vision.
If you’re going to be shooting cars at 700 MPH through a tube, it’d be nice to know that it’s completely safe and all kinks have been ironed out. With that in mind, we probably won’t see a DC-NY hyperloop for several years.
In the meantime we’ll have to rely on tried and true methods of speedy transport.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Gambino is a regular script writer and tech beat reporter for NewsWatch. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.
