The Boring Company gets a permit to dig up Washington DC parking lot
Enlarge / A view of the parking lot The Boring Company has permits to dig up (partially obscured by a tree, the parking lot on the left is for McDonald's). To the right is a mural that local cars editor Jonathan Gitlin hopes will not be destroyed. (credit: Google Streetview)
The city of Washington DC has approved a permit that will allow Elon Musk's Boring Company to dig up a parking lot just north of Capitol Hill and just east of downtown. The lot, at 53 New York Avenue NE, is on a busy street adjacent to a McDonald's, near the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
The Boring Company doesn't have permits to dig under any streets yet. But according to the LA Times, the city's Department of Transportation is working to find out what other kinds of permits the company would need to pass under city roads and public spaces.
The permit is an interesting step forward in a project that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced vaguely last July. At the time, Musk tweeted that he had "verbal government approval" to build a New York-DC Hyperloop tunnel, although it was unclear who had issued such approval. The Boring Company later commented that it was engaged in discussions with local, state, and federal officials to make the project happen. In October, the company received official approval from the state of Maryland to dig a 10.1-mile tunnel under the state-owned portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway using a utility permit (which is generally easier for a state to grant). Still, additional permits would be required for any construction beyond that limited scope.
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments