Vacant lot at 53 New York Avenue NE in Washington, where a government permit has been granted for work connected with Elon Musk’s Hyperloop project. (Michael Laris/TWP) 
 
 It’s not much now, just a parking lot with a discarded gin bottle and an old exterminator receipt. 
 
 But the slice of pavement near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the District could be the gritty precursor to a tunnel network that could propel pods filled with people and speeding platforms topped with Teslas and Toyotas between the nation’s capital and New York in 29 minutes. 
 
 Or it could be just be a parking lot littered with dashed transportation dreams. 
 
 Electric-car pioneer and space entrepreneur Elon Musk has been touting his vision for a high-speed transportation system since his tweeted announcement last summer that he had received “verbal govt approval” for his tunnel-digging firm, the Boring Company, to build a “NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.” 
 
 The Boring Company team has received an early, and vague, building permit from the D.C. government that will allow some preparatory and excavation work at the fenced-off parking lot at 53 New York Avenue NE beside a McDonald’s and amid the construction cranes of Washington’s booming NoMa neighborhood. 
 
 Asked about the permit, issued Nov. 29, a Boring Company spokesman said Friday that “a New York Avenue location, if constructed, could become a station” in a broad network of such stops across the new system. 
 
 D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) visited the Boring Company in California this month, walking in a tunnel to learn more about the technology the company says will make tunneling faster and cheaper. 
 
 The District’s Department of Transportation is figuring out what other permits the Boring Company would need to cut under city roads and other public spaces, according to Bowser’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio. 
 
 “We’re just beginning, in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop,” Falcicchio said. Asked whether the Bowser administration supports the project, he was somewhat upbeat but noncommittal, adding: “We’re open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently.” 
 
 Musk has received backing from the White House Office of American Innovation, led by President Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), whose administration rolled out a welcome mat and provided a utility permit, though more permits are needed and no tunneling has begun. Maryland officials say the tunnel would run under Maryland Route 295. The Baltimore-Washington leg would be the initial stretch in the East Coast system. 
 
 The overall concept is that pods with perhaps 16 people in each could speed around on electric sleds. Those sleds could also carry individual cars to and from numerous stations. There would be a main artery, with spurs connecting to various stations. 
 
 Elevators would take people up and down to the tunnels. And those tunnels would be built relatively close to the surface without disturbing buildings and other structures. 
 
 The stations would be somewhat modest affairs, numerous but not grand in scale like Union Station. 
 
 “Stations in a Loop or Hyperloop system are small in size and widely distributed in a network — very different from large-station termini considered for train systems,” the company spokesman said. 
 
 “Hyperloop” refers to a vacuum-based, people- and car-moving system, which would get rid of wind resistance. Shorter hops within or between cities might have a non-vacuum system, hence the reference to a “Loop” system. 
 
 Tunnel experts say the digging part is technically feasible, if potentially slow and expensive. As for how to safely orchestrate the underground system of multiple superfast pods, transportation experts say the challenges are legion. 
 
 And the naysayers are numerous, though their views are varied. Some point to Musk’s history of overpromising, as with the slow production of his more-affordable Tesla Model 3. But others, even skeptics, say he has a vision and hard-to-beat record of breakthroughs on the road and in his rocket ventures. 
 
 Some transportation advocates worry that moving people and cars — rather than just people — in the high-speed system would undercut the benefits of more-traditional mass transit. 
 
 “We need to fix the Metro. Traffic is just bad,” said Mohamed Hussein, an Uber driver from Virginia who stopped for lunch beside the New York Avenue parking lot. Hussein was not enamored with the idea of being swept along at harrowing speeds. “It’s like a bullet. Woooom!” he said. “Too much.” 
 
 And he was, he said, realistic about time. “How long will it take them to build the tunnel?” he asked. “It will take a long time.” 
 
 But Mohamed Musa, director of housekeeping at the Hyatt Place hotel a couple doors down, can’t wait. 
 
 “Just the idea of going to New York to have lunch and come back, it’ll be awesome,” Musa said. ||||| A 29-minute trip from D.C. to New York may seem too good to be true. And it very well may be. But that isn’t stopping Elon Musk from pushing forward with plans to build a Hyperloop along the eastern corridor. 
 
 And while it’s a very small, very vague step forward, Musk’s Boring Company has received a permit for preparation and preliminary excavation of a site in the nation’s capital. The exact location is 53 New York Avenue NE, next to a McDonald’s and near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to The Washington Post. 
 
 In July, Elon Musk tweeted that he had received verbal government approval to build a multi-state underground Hyperloop on the East Coast. While such approval doesn’t formally exist, Bloomberg confirmed that the White House had had positive conversations with The Boring Company over the proposed tunnel. 
 
 Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017 
 
 This latest permit is far from what’s required to actually begin building the tunnel — which would run from New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to D.C. — but it’s a start. Musk recently received a conditional permit to start operations in Hawthorne, Maryland for a 10.3 mile route. Maryland officials told WaPo that the tunnel would run under Maryland Route 295, with the D.C.-Baltimore leg being built first. 
 
 Stations for the Hyperloop would be relatively small and toned down compared to the stations we’re used to, such as Union Station and Penn Station. There would be a main line running between the four aforementioned cities, with smaller lines spurring out from the city’s central station for other potential destinations. 
 
 Right now, the trip from NY to D.C. takes more than three hours. It would certainly be nice to pop down for a meeting with just an hour of travel time, but this first permit is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race. We have not yet begun. ||||| Several city, state and federal spokespeople concur that Tesla CEO has not received permission to build high-speed tunnel from NYC to Washington DC 
 
 Elon Musk does not have government approval to build a Hyperloop tunnel from New York City to Washington DC. 
 
 The Tesla executive took to Twitter this morning to tantalize his legion of fans and the tech press with the “news” that he had “just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins … City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city.” 
 
 Lest any billionaires need to brush up on civics 101: the US system of government does not operate on “verbal government approvals”. 
 
 Musk walked back his claim about 90 minutes later, tweeting: “Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly”. 
 
 A lot of work is needed to receive formal approval, indeed. 
 
 Musk was received with typical credulity by the tech press, and considerable consternation by various government agencies. Several spokespeople who answered the phones at relevant city, state and federal government bodies laughed upon hearing of the claim that an interstate transit project with a significant street-level footprint in four of the east coast’s largest cities could be approved verbally. 
 
 “Who gave him permission to do that?” asked a spokesman with the Maryland department of transportation. 
 
 “Elon Musk has had no contact with Philadelphia officials on this matter,” said Mike Dunn, the city spokesman. “We do not know what he means when he says he received ‘verbal government approval’. There are numerous hurdles for this unproven ‘hyperloop’ technology before it can become reality.” 
 
 A spokesperson for the state of Pennsylvania confirmed that neither the governor nor the state’s department of transportation had been contacted by Musk or his company. 
 
 Ben Sarle, a spokesman for the New York City mayor’s office, said in an email: “Nobody in City Hall, or any of our city agencies, has heard from Mr Musk or any representatives of his company.” 
 
 “The New York state department of transportation did not give verbal approval for a hyperloop,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Post. 
 
 Anthony McCarthy, the spokesman for the Baltimore mayor, Catherine Pugh, said: “Mr Musk’s announcement on Twitter was the first that the city heard of the Hyperloop project. ” However, Pugh said in a statement that she was “excited” to hear about the idea, which could “create new opportunities for Baltimore and transform the way we link to neighboring cities” – if it becomes a reality. 
 
 Similarly, LaToya Foster, the spokeswoman for Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser, said: “This is the first we heard of it . We can’t wait to hear more.” 
 
 Spokespeople for other state and federal regulators said they were getting numerous calls about Musk’s claims but did not yet have any information to share. 
 
 “I really have no idea,” said Ben Fritsch, spokesman for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Washington DC and sits on the House transportation committee. 
 
 What Musk does seem to have had are informal discussions with White House officials about his proposal for an east coast Hyperloop, a system of underground vacuum tubes through which trains or pods could be shot at high speeds. 
 
 A White House spokesperson confirmed that officials had had “promising conversations” with Musk and executives from the Boring Company, adding that the White House is “committed to transformative infrastructure projects, and believe our greatest solutions have often come from the ingenuity and drive of the private sector”. 
 
 Which is great for everyone who dreams of futuristic transportation options along the eastern seaboard. But the difference between a billionaire businessman’s “promising conversations” with a country’s executive branch and “formal approval” is the difference between an oligarchy and a representative democracy. 
 
 Sam Teller, a spokesman for the Boring Company, said the company had had “a number of promising conversations with local, state and federal government officials”, though he declined to comment on which localities were included, so it is unclear whether any of them were even on the New York to DC route. 
 
 Teller also said the company had “received verbal support from key government decision makers for tunneling plans” and “expect to secure the formal approvals necessary to break ground later this year”. 
 
 Infrastructure projects in the US generally require approval by elected officials and regulatory bodies, significant planning and environmental review, and opportunities for public engagement and comment. Musk did not respond to questions about whether he planned to purchase the land on the route he’s proposing or seek easements – another lengthy and bureaucratic process. 
 
 “There is just a gigantic environment of people that this project would be required to work with,” said Madeline Brozen, associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, noting that the Hyperloop would be considered a “mega project” that would require collaboration with cities, states, the federal government, railroad authorities and other agencies. 
 
 “There is no such thing as a verbal environmental approval,” she added. “The government really wants to be very careful about how they permit and allow projects, and a verbal agreement is not how that process works.” 
 
 It’s also important to note that the concept of a Hyperloop remains largely theoretical. While two companies have worked on developing the technology, they have yet to release working models to the public. 
 
 This is not the first time that Musk has made dubious claims about his ability to dig tunnels wherever he wants on Twitter. In January, he announced his intention to start digging a tunnel to ease traffic in Los Angeles within “a month or so”. In reality, he was planning to drill a tunnel near his SpaceX office in the city of Hawthorne, near the Los Angeles airport, and had not yet received any permits or approvals from city, county or state agencies. 
 
 Musk did not respond to questions about the motivation behind his bombastic claims, but the tweets obviously succeeded in generating significant press coverage for him and his company. His initial statement about “verbal govt approval” has been retweeted more than 34,000 times. The follow-up tweet acknowledging a lack of “formal approval” has been retweeted less than 1,000 times.
– Elon Musk's dream of building a hyperloop that can move people between Washington, DC, and New York City in 29 minutes may be a small step closer to becoming a distant reality. A Nov. 29 permit issued by DC's Department of Transportation allows Musk's Boring Company to dig at an abandoned lot beside a McDonald's in northeast Washington that the company says might eventually become a station on a hyperloop connecting NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The system would speed up travel times, using electricity and electromagnetic levitation to send people and cars whipping through tunnels in pods. But before you ditch your car, the Washington Post points out the permit is only for "some preparatory and excavation work" at the site, and more permits are needed before any real construction begins. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has visited a test tunnel Musk is constructing under Los Angeles. But though "we're open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently ... we're just beginning, in the mayor's office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop," says Bowser's chief of staff, John Falcicchio. Still, the permit "is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race" and shows Musk is serious about moving forward with his plans for high-speed travel since claiming "verbal" government support for an East Coast hyperloop last July, reports TechCrunch. He's also received a conditional permit to build a tunnel beneath Maryland Route 295 in Hawthorne, per the Post, with Maryland officials saying a leg linking Washington and Baltimore will come first. (Read about the hyperloop pod's first test.)