“Elon Musk just tweeted that his Boring Company tunnel project has received “verbal [government] approval” to build a hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. While we work to verify his claim, Musk is continuing to tweet more details about the project. The hyperloop, an ultrafast method of travel first developed by Musk in 2013, would only take 29 minutes to travel between New York City and DC, he claims. And it would feature “up to a dozen or more” access points via elevator in each city. Musk famously released his hyperloop concept as an open-source white paper in 2013, arguing that he was too busy with his companies Tesla and SpaceX to devote energy to it. Since then, Musk has grown increasingly frustrated with surface-level transportation, as evidenced by his tunnel project dubbed the Boring Company. The Boring Company started as a joke, but became increasingly serious as Musk began tunneling in a parking lot outside of SpaceX in an effort to demonstrate his ability to dig faster and more efficiently than traditional tunneling projects. Musk says he’s working on tunnel-boring machines than can simultaneously dig up and reinforce tunnels, which could go a long way toward solving a big engineering challenge. He recently announced the completion of the first section of tunnel under Los Angeles.”