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The Boring Company, Elon Musk\u2019s tunnel-digging company, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee have announced<\/a> a plan to build a 10-mile \u201cloop\u201d that will connect Nashville\u2019s downtown and its convention center to the area\u2019s airport. <\/p>\n The project will be privately funded by The Boring Company \u201cand its private partners,\u201d according to the Governor\u2019s press release, though those partners are not named. The Boring Company and local officials will now begin a \u201cpublic process to evaluate potential routes, engage community stakeholders, and finalize plans for the project\u2019s initial 10-mile phase.\u201d<\/p>\n Construction won\u2019t begin until the project clears the approvals process. But the governor\u2019s office said the first segment of the loop could be operational as \u201cearly as fall of 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n If that happens, Nashville would become the second city where The Boring Company has opened such a system, with the first being Las Vegas. The company has spent the last few years in Sin City digging and opening tunnels around the Las Vegas Convention Center, and claims to have given 3 million rides in Teslas to date. <\/p>\n Musk launched The Boring Company in early 2017<\/a> (after publicly noodling about the idea on Twitter while stuck in traffic in late 2016), and it has taken many forms since then. <\/p>\n The original video detailing Musk\u2019s idea \u2014 now set to private on YouTube \u2014 showed vehicles getting removed from surface street gridlock by an elevator-meets-sled system and lowered into a three-dimensional underground network of tunnels. Musk also claimed during the first Trump administration that The Boring Company had received \u201cverbal govt approval\u201d to dig tunnels from New York City to Washington, D.C. that, leveraging hyperloop technology, could make the trip in just 29 minutes.<\/p>\n None of that ever happened. The Boring Company abandoned plans to dig a major tunnel system underneath the greater Los Angeles area<\/a> after pushback from locals. A similar thing happened in Chicago<\/a>. And the Boring Company has essentially ghosted many other cities around the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n The idea of the hyperloop, which Musk admitted to biographer Ashlee Vance came from his hatred of California\u2019s high-speed rail system<\/a>, was also cast aside. Even the Teslas that traverse the Las Vegas tunnels are being driven by humans, despite Musk\u2019s obsession with self-driving cars.<\/p>\n Instead, The Boring Company now more closely resembles a glorified convention center people-mover, although there are some potential benefits to its approach versus the typical monorail setup. Construction should be less disruptive to Nashville\u2019s daily traffic. And, in its current form at least, it\u2019s not costing taxpayers money. <\/p>\n While the Tennessee governor\u2019s office cites The Boring Company\u2019s safety record\u00a0in Las Vegas in the announcement \u2014 the loop \u201crecently earned a 99.57% safety and security rating\u201d from the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration, according to the press release \u2014 it is careful not to mention the trouble that Musk\u2019s tunnel-digging effort has experienced during construction. (The governor\u2019s office could not be reached for comment.)<\/p>\n Like with other Musk companies<\/a>, the pace at which The Boring Company operates \u2014 the same speed that the Tennessee governor\u2019s office praised in its announcement \u2014 has been a concern for some of its workers.<\/p>\n