Transportation Sector Sets Its Sights on Big Plans
The inevitable advent of autonomous vehicles isn’t slowing down the planning and construction of large-scale transportation projects in the Mid-Atlantic region. While the second phase of Virginia’s Metrorail Silver Line is on track for a 2020 completion and Maryland’s Purple Line broke ground in August, Elon Musk’s Boring Co. received a conditional utility permit to build a 10.3-mile East Coast Hyperloop tunnel in October. The project involves still-experimental high-speed transit technology and will include twin 35-mile tubes underneath state highways between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and could reduce to 29 minutes the trip between New York City and D.C. Also in October, a private company proposed a high-speed magnetic-levitation rail line between Baltimore and D.C.
Nevertheless, Kevin Cole, chief executive of Manassas, Va.-based Ennis Electric Co. Inc., says these transit projects would be “complementary” to autonomous vehicles because travelers could take them into D.C. and “then take a driverless car the last mile.”