Elon Musk's The Boring Company scrubbed any mention of its LA and DC tunnels from its website, leaving the future of those projects in doubt
- The Boring Company removed its LA and DC project plans from its site.
- The plan for a tunnel to LA's Dodgers Stadium was announced in 2017 and the DC plan in 2018.
- The company might not be able to build the hyperloops because of environmental regulations.
The Boring Company removed any mention of its plans to build transit tunnels in Los Angeles and Washington DC from its website in April.
Bloomberg first reported the projects had been removed from the site on Thursday and Insider was able to confirm. The removal of any mention of the two tunnels from the projects section of The Boring Company site is a sign both projects - which were announced several years ago - might not come to fruition.
Dena Belzer, president of consultancy Strategic Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, told Bloomberg the projects could likely be declared "dead" since they are facing environmental regulations.
The plans to connect Washington and Baltimore via an underground tunnel called a hyperloop were announced in 2017. The Boring Company bought a piece of land in Washington to start the project, but was faced with a 411-page environmental assessment two years later. That threw a wrench in the East Coast tunnel plans.
In order to move forward with the project, the company would have to receive confirmation from the Federal Highway Administration that the tunnels would not have an detrimental environmental impact or face a further review of the potential impact, Bloomberg reported.
Similarly, in 2018, Boring's CEO Elon Musk, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, announced plans to build an underground shuttle to the Los Angeles Dodger Stadium. The project has yet to establish even a potential location for a tunnel entrance or station. Last summer, Los Angeles city officials said the project was being reviewed by an outside firm for its environmental impact.
The two projects are some of many The Boring Company plans that have either stalled or been cancelled altogether. In 2018, Musk's plans for a tunnel in Chicago were cancelled when it lost the support of the city's mayor, while the LA plans and tunnel between Maryland and DC had both already been scaled back from the company's initial ideas.
A The Boring Company spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Insider. City officials from LA and DC also did not respond to a request from comment. As of Friday, The Boring Company's site only features information about its projects in Las Vegas and Hawthorne, California.
Not all The Boring Company projects have stalled. Musk's Las Vegas plans have progressed to the point where the company was able to release videos of Teslas moving through the tunnels earlier in the month. The Boring Company received initial approval from Las Vegas officials to progress with its plans to expand the tunnel in December.
The company has already expressed interest in building tunnels in several other major cities, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale. In February, Musk offered to build a hyperloop under Miami for about $30 million.