Elon Musk has been intermittently focused on building underground Tesla tunnels for nearly a decade. According to Bloomberg, the CEO's Boring Company says it's ready to start digging in Tennessee.

In July 2017, Musk claimed the Boring Company secured "verbal" government approval to construct a "hyperloop" connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., but the project never materialized.

Bloomberg reported that the Boring Company "dug a launch shaft" and "assembled a machine" to start tunneling in Nashville — and one local official's remarks on the alleged initiative took the concept of damning with faint praise to heights never before seen.

"If it happens, the ideal scenario would be: mostly harmless, no one dies," Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell said in an interview, as reported by Bloomberg. 

In a scant 13 words, O'Connell expressed doubt that the tunnel would "happen" and outlined a best-case outcome of "no fatalities."

However, Bloomberg spoke with planning experts about the "two roughly 10-mile tunnels" that Boring Company claims will ferry people between parts of Nashville and the airport. 

Broadly, the outlet observed that the entire planned project proved "baffling to people in the tunneling business" and incongruent with basic math. It cited the impossible rate at which Teslas would need to depart to operate within Musk's described parameters.

Most people could easily grasp the impossibility of the latter. Tennessee's distinct underground terrain, however, isn't necessarily something an everyday person would understand. 

Lok Home, according to Bloomberg, has built tunnels for decades and heads up tunneling machine manufacturer, The Robbins Co. He's familiar with the state's rocky subterranean layers and propensity for sinkholes, and he was among the baffled.

"It's just a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants project, and a 99% chance they'll wind up in real trouble and a big mess for the city," Home warned.

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"Many Nashville officials" agreed with Home, the outlet noted. Worryingly, lawmakers have pressed the Boring Company for basic details about emergencies like "fires" and "floods," receiving only "inadequate" responses, if any.

Bloomberg asserted that the Music City Hyperloop "bears all the hallmarks" of Musk-linked companies. It prioritizes showy announcements and speed over safe, realistic progress, and the observation was more than fair.

In November, the Boring Company was fined nearly half a million dollars after officials in Nevada discovered the firm was illegally drilling and discharging wastewater. Those actions were a part of a different, equally controversial Tesla "hyperloop" in Las Vegas.

Two months earlier, Musk's tunneling outfit came under fire in Texas after securing a contract for a flood-prevention initiative. Critics maintained the Boring Company was ill-equipped to supply such critical infrastructure.  

Ultimately, Bloomberg determined that a "chorus of voices from the civil construction and transportation sectors" deemed Musk's Nashville hyperloop promises impossible. The outlet cautioned that it couldn't function as a reliable form of public transportation.

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