Virginia Officials Say The Boring Company Tunnels Are All Show, So No-Go

While Elon Musk’s The Boring Company has been awarded contracts for a couple of tunneling projects across the United States, Virginia doesn’t appear to have much faith in the entrepreneur’s radical transportation solution.

Earlier this year, Virginia transit officials flew to California to take a look at the test tunnel The Boring Company built near Tesla’s headquarters in Hawthorne. They walked away unimpressed, Virginia Mercury reports.

“It’s a car in a very small tunnel,” Virginia’s chief of rail transportation Michael McLaughlin told the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s public transit subcommittee. “If one day we decide it’s feasible, we’ll obviously come back to you.”

The criticism of what The Boring Company didn’t stop there; in fact, Commonwealth Transportation Board member Scott Kasprowicz suggesting that Musk’s latest venture hasn’t accomplished anything important just yet.

“I think there’s a lot of show going on here. I don’t mean to suggest that they don’t have a serious plan in mind, but I don’t consider the steps they’ve taken to date to be substantive,” Kasprowicz said.

“They’ve purchased a used boring machine. They’ve put a bore in the neighborhood where they developed the SpaceX product, and they’ve taken a Model 3 and put guidewheels on it and they’re running it through the tunnel at 60 miles per hour.”

According to Kasprowicz, The Boring Company could be decades away from offering states meaningful new transportation options. He also noted that Musk is the only major investor in The Boring Company and suggested outside funding will be needed for the company to successfully deliver large infrastructure projects.