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Elon Musk Says He Has a Green Light To Build a NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC Hyperloop (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report:Elon Musk just tweeted that his Boring Company tunnel project has just 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. Update: Eric Phillips, press secretary for the New York City mayor, tweeted, "This is news to City Hall," adding "The entirety of what we know about this proposal is what's in Mr. Musk's tweet. That is not how we evaluate projects of any scale."
I don't particularly doubt that *someone* in the government would give verbal approval. I doubt that there's someone in the government who has the authority and influence to give verbal approval and have it mean anything.
So I have some friends who are of the belief that Musk is just a consummate shyster, and I have disagreed, pointing to promising results with SpaceX and favorable sales from Tesla. This kind of talk makes me believe that there might be something to their concerns. I assume "verbal approval" from the gov't means that he asked someone (who knows who) if in theory he could do this and they said "sure", which counts for all of nothing. What this doesn't sound like is the well-established plan of an enterprise that is going to go forward.
This seems to be the one route in the US where a train service can make money so it's no surprise that he *wants* to build this route. If he could bore under existing railway rights of way, it should be a relatively simple project from an administrative standpoint (no worrying about easements et cetera). The tracks would then carry only freight and the number of tracks would be reduced in favor of green space and walking trails. Amtrak would go bankrupt and there would never be a public train service in this country again. I'll let others opine whether this is good or bad but certainly would be the outcome.
He's trying to fuck up public transportation by proposing "cheap" alternatives that, even if they work, will not be as cheap as he claims, and will on most metrics be horrible.
Maybe he believes in it, I don't know: I do know the CAHSR-killing original Hyperloop proposal was so bad it was impossible to assume it had been written in good faith. Just the fact this "replacement" only served two of the four cities CAHSR is aimed at, wasn't designed to cope with anything like as many passengers, and had end-points 50-100 miles away from the cities they served, was enough to draw that conclusion. That was before getting civil engineers in to dispute the costs.
So no, I don't give someone credit for merely "trying to do something". They have to be trying to do something worthwhile, not negative for me to support them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Of course Elon Musk didn't get verbal approval for the entire track. Perhaps he had the merest hint of a suggestion from someone (DOT? Two people on city councils at either end?).
Getting actual approval from all the different cities, states, counties, and regulatory bodies involved will be an enormous undertaking. The fastest way to get this sort of discussion happening at all of these levels is probably to... force people involved to deny it.
A single tweet and suddenly you have multiple nationwide news articles and, most critically, everyone responsible for approval at every level talking about it. They're talking about it to nail down who said, but they're talking about it. As are all their constituents and peers.
The largest hurdle when dealing with so many people in authority is simply tendency toward inaction. With a tweet, he has solved that. Forcing people to say "he won't be approved without following the process" removes the option of sitting on it silently whether out of apathy or to gain leverage.