Elon Musk's Boring Company has announced Music City Loop construction progress updates, including plans for another downtown station at the JW Marriott.
The digging company is working underground to connect Nashville International Airport with downtown destinations, a trip estimated to take about 10 minutes. Construction started in February and it is slated to open to passengers in early 2027.
On Aug. 1, company officials said they have added JW Marriott to the Loop's list of downtown transit stops. They said hotel guests will have "direct access to the system."
The Boring Co. said it has "more than 40 stations in various stages of planning and design" throughout the city and hopes to expand to Knoxville and beyond. The subterranean tunnels are
set to carry passengers in Tesla fleets between Nashville International Airport and downtown Nashville, where stations are underway at Music City Center and apartment buildings Alcove, Prime and Paramount.
The Boring Co.'s Aug. 1 blog post also announced the launch of Prufrock-MB2, the project’s second tunnel-boring machine, a device used to excavate dirt, remove rocks and create tunnels. The new iteration improves on the last version as the company works to continuously upgrade technology.
"Nashville has great rock!," Boring Co. officials wrote. "Throughout tunneling, core samples are collected regularly to measure the rock's compressive strength. Conditions have been excellent."
The company launches the Prufrock machine from the surface, eliminating the need for launch pits and additional equipment, and installs the tunnel while excavating.
In an April statement to the Tennessean, a Boring Co. representative said, "Expect to see larger iterations between MB2 and MB3 once we have data from Nashville and can optimize accordingly."
The third device, Prufrock-MB3, will arrive in Nashville in September and “incorporate everything we've learned from the first two machines, making it significantly more efficient from day one,” the blog post said.
In June, Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy made separate visits to the site to tour progress on construction.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Boring Company adds JW Marriott stop as Nashville tunnel project expands
