It’s been three years since a Bexar County agency gave the nod for an underground tunnel between the airport and downtown San Antonio.
It now appears those plans have been tanked, but not by the controversy over cost and environmental impact that ensued.
The Boring Company is a tunneling company owned by Elon Musk, the businessman behind Tesla and SpaceX who has emerged as a political figure with a role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In 2021, the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, an agency tasked with improving transportation in Bexar County, released a request for information (RFI) inviting revenue-generating transit proposals. The Boring Company and four others responded; three proposals were advanced for consideration.
Boring’s proposal was a rideshare system using Tesla’s electric-powered cars in a tunnel 30 feet below ground and ferrying passengers the 9 miles between the airport and downtown.
The total estimated cost was between $247 million and $289 million, with estimated revenue to the RMA that was expected to come in at $25 million a year.
Boring said it would foot the entire $27 million to $45 million bill for the first phase of the project, while the other proposals relied heavily on federal subsidies.
The other bids included one that employed an autonomous bus using a combination of elevated and underground tracks; one that pitched an autonomous tram running along the U.S. Hwy. 281 right-of-way, and another that used a system of at-grade or elevated travel lanes running along McCullough Avenue.
A plan offered by TriTrack Motors called for spending $24 million to build an elevated track for three-wheeled autonomous vehicles that could travel at up to 180 mph.
In March 2022, the RMA Board, led by then-Chairman Michael Lynd selected Boring’s bid over the others and created a development agreement to study the feasibility of the project.
“Then we never heard back from them,” said Reggie Fountain, operations engineer for the Alamo RMA.
Boring did not respond to the agreement, he said. That was two years ago.
RMA staff followed up with Boring in February 2023. “They were reviewing it internally and they were going to let us know,” Fountain said.
Further calls went unanswered, he said. “They just kind of ghosted us. So we essentially just assumed that it was dead and didn’t move further with it.”
A Boring spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The RMA had not spent money on the project or budgeted for it, so the agency has moved on, Fountain added.
Funding that could have been allocated to the tunnel project is now committed to other transportation-related projects.
For one, RMA is focused on improving Alamo Ranch Parkway, a $94 million project to ease major congestion in far Northwest San Antonio after a traffic congestion study bumped it into priority.
The 2.4-mile roadway will go from four to eight lanes with overpasses at three intersections. Construction is expected to start in summer 2027.
The RMA will use its cash reserves to fund the improvements, Fountain said.
Boring’s tunnel project may have gone the way of its other proposals — canceled by cities from Los Angeles to Baltimore mostly over environmental concerns — and then forgotten, Fountain said. But the RMA board will likely have to vote to sunset the RFI, which no longer appears on the authority’s website.
Meanwhile, the Boring Company’s website is still advertising its tunnel and loop projects but also what appear to be satirical products like a “Not a Flamethrower” device, and a fragrance, “Burnt Hair.”
It also states the company is “currently working with various local governments and private stakeholders” to test the viability of high-speed transportation in tubes Boring calls “Hyperloop.” The company’s Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, opened in 2021, remains in operation.
Gov. Greg Abbott recently appointed John Asel of Helotes as presiding officer of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, replacing Lynd.
Asel is chairman and managing member of Asel & Associates, a “boutique-style” accounting firm in San Antonio, according to a statement. In 2024, both Lynd and Asel each contributed $25,000 to Abbott’s reelection campaign, according to transparencyusa.com.
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