Elon Musk’s Boring Company gets preliminary permit for NYC-DC Hyperloop

A 29-minute trip from D.C. to New York may seem too good to be true. And it very well may be. But that isn’t stopping Elon Musk from pushing forward with plans to build a Hyperloop along the eastern corridor.

And while it’s a very small, very vague step forward, Musk’s Boring Company has received a permit for preparation and preliminary excavation of a site in the nation’s capital. The exact location is 53 New York Avenue NE, next to a McDonald’s and near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to The Washington Post.

In July, Elon Musk tweeted that he had received verbal government approval to build a multi-state underground Hyperloop on the East Coast. While such approval doesn’t formally exist, Bloomberg confirmed that the White House had had positive conversations with The Boring Company over the proposed tunnel.

This latest permit is far from what’s required to actually begin building the tunnel — which would run from New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to D.C. — but it’s a start. Musk recently received a conditional permit to start operations in Hawthorne, Maryland for a 10.3 mile route. Maryland officials told WaPo that the tunnel would run under Maryland Route 295, with the D.C.-Baltimore leg being built first.

Stations for the Hyperloop would be relatively small and toned down compared to the stations we’re used to, such as Union Station and Penn Station. There would be a main line running between the four aforementioned cities, with smaller lines spurring out from the city’s central station for other potential destinations.

Right now, the trip from NY to D.C. takes more than three hours. It would certainly be nice to pop down for a meeting with just an hour of travel time, but this first permit is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race. We have not yet begun.