Two tunnel-boring machines are digging The Boring Company’s Music City Loop under Nashville, and the company still has not said how far they have gone or when a passenger can board. The project is a private, all-electric shuttle: Tesla vehicles in twin one-way tunnels, meant to run from the airport and downtown out toward West End without stopping at every station in between. On the company’s own project page, marked last updated Aug. 14, 2026, tunneling is underway. That page does not give a first-ride date.

The date has already moved. When the state and The Boring Company announced the idea on July 28, 2025, the company’s release said the first segment could be operating as soon as spring 2026. A line at the top of that same release said initial legs could be operating as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026. On Feb. 25, 2026, after the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration approved a lease and grading permit for state right-of-way, Gov. Bill Lee’s office said the first segment was expected by the end of 2026. Associated Press, reporting the Metro Council vote on March 4, said the first section was supposed to be operational in the first quarter of 2027. The Aug. 14 company page, the latest passenger-facing description opened for this story, drops the date entirely.

The route has grown on paper. The July 2025 company announcement described an initial phase of about 10 miles, downtown and the convention center to Nashville International Airport, with a stated trip of about 8 minutes, under state roads, at no cost to taxpayers. AP later described an initial 13-mile airport-to-downtown stretch that was expanded to about 25 miles, including a second leg west of downtown. The current company page says the system spans almost 25 miles and would take about 10 minutes from the airport to Lower Broadway. The airport alignment, as the company draws it, starts at a launch site called Lot 16 near the state Capitol, runs south and then out Murfreesboro Pike and Donelson Pike, and ends within 100 feet of the airport. The Broadway alignment runs from Lower Broadway along West End Avenue, past Centennial Park and Vanderbilt University, and stops near Interstate 440. The Feb. 25 state approval, the company wrote on Aug. 1, authorized 25 miles of tunnel inside TDOT right-of-way. That is permitted length, not tunnel already dug.

What is in the ground is narrower than the map. The company’s Aug. 1 construction note says Prufrock-MB1 and Prufrock-MB2 were both tunneling from Lot 16, and that a third machine, Prufrock-MB3, was on track to arrive in Nashville in September. It also said core samples were showing rock at about 14,000 pounds per square inch, which the company called excellent tunneling rock, and that more than 40 stations were in some stage of planning or design. LOOP Nashville, writing Sept. 11 after reading the company’s April, June, and August notes and its Sept. 9 financing announcement, said those materials still did not give a cumulative footage or mileage for either machine. As of that Sept. 9 announcement, LOOP Nashville wrote, the third machine was still in final assembly in Bastrop, Texas, for shipment, not yet described as digging. The 25-mile figure should not be read as miles finished.

On Sept. 9, 2026, The Boring Company announced a $3 billion Series D led by the United Arab Emirates and affiliated entities, at a stated valuation of $23 billion, according to Tunneling Online, which said it was quoting a release then posted on the company site. The trade magazine said the round was also tied to a much larger tunnel buildout in the UAE, separate from the Dubai Loop contract, and that the company described Music City Loop as its first hard-rock project, with two machines mining in Nashville by August. The company’s public “series-d” web address returned a not-found page when checked for this story, so those figures are from the trade account of the release, not from a live company page opened here. Tunneling Online did not report a Nashville share of the $3 billion, or a new opening date.

Stations that have been named are still mostly agreements, not open platforms. The Aug. 1 company note says the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority voted 8–0 for a connection and a station, with design and permitting still underway, and that the Music City Convention Center Authority voted 8–0 for a tunnel easement. WKRN reported May 6 that the company had a first residential deal for three Church Street buildings, Alcove, Prime, and Paramount: residents would take an elevator to a station, then a Tesla, with the company putting the airport about nine minutes away and Lower Broadway about two. The Aug. 1 note adds that the company and the JW Marriott had agreed to terms for a station for hotel guests. AP, in March, said more than 30 stations were being designed. Those reports describe agreements and design work, not stations that are open.

Riders, if the system opens as described, would not be on a train. The company says the vehicles will be a dedicated Tesla fleet, initially Model Ys and Model Xs, driven at first by trained “Loop drivers,” with autonomy something it may explore later. Passengers would go to one chosen station and skip the ones in between. Tickets would be bought in an app or with a QR code. Fares are not set. The company says they are expected to be lower than other options, “as in Las Vegas.” The National, writing March 12, 2026, reported Vegas Loop prices of $4.25 for an ordinary one-way ride, $7 for a round trip that does not start at the airport, $12.50 for a day pass, and $12 from an airport station. The company says Nashville tunnels are aimed at about 30 feet down, with a 12-foot internal diameter, and that the project cost is expected to be a few hundred million dollars, paid by the company, not by taxpayers. AP’s March account matches the “no taxpayer bill” claim and adds a limit on it: the state was providing free use of some land near the Capitol.

Nashville’s elected council does not control the dig. On March 3, 2026, Metro Council voted 20–15, with two abstentions, for a nonbinding resolution opposing the Music City Loop. AP said the resolution cannot make the company stop, stall, or change the plan. Sponsor Delishia Porterfield told colleagues that “public land needs to be for public good.” The resolution, as WSMV quoted it, says residents were not meaningfully consulted about a project on public land with environmental, geological, and safety consequences, and it condemns what the council called a lack of transparency and troubling labor and safety practices. Council member John Rutherford, who voted no, said it would be easy to support the resolution, “but sometimes to do what is best for Nashville, we have to do what is hard,” because the project was going ahead anyway. WSMV reported that tunneling was announced the same day as the state’s Feb. 25 permit. The Nashville Banner reported that a company vice president, David Buss, had told a Bordeaux community meeting the machine was then running only “intermittently.”

The legislature later moved jurisdiction up to the state. Senate Bill 2205, the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Act, passed the Senate 26–5 and the House 69–23 on April 13, 2026, with one House member present and not voting. Gov. Lee signed it April 27. It became Public Chapter 854 on May 5. For most purposes it took effect July 1, 2026. The act defines a covered “transit project” as a tunnel or tunnel system, deep enough to avoid interfering with surface uses, for moving passengers or goods inside the state by electric, autonomous, or low-emission vehicles, and not a highway or a conventional mass-transit line in a state highway right-of-way. It gives the state exclusive jurisdiction over subsurface construction of those projects, including state fire marshal permits, and it creates a state authority that can hear appeals when a city or a utility says no. Cities keep authority over ordinary surface construction. They do not, under the act, regulate the tunnels, the stations, the portals, or the ventilation and electrical systems that belong to the project. A city also may not adopt a rule that effectively bans the project.

Lee’s Feb. 25 statement welcomed that state role. “Tennessee continues to lead the nation in finding innovative solutions to accommodate growth, and in partnership with The Boring Company, we are exploring possibilities we couldn’t achieve on our own,” he said. He credited TDOT with an approach that “will define the future of transportation in our state and beyond.” Steve Davis, identified by the governor’s office as president of The Boring Company, said agencies had brought the project “to a shovel-ready point,” and called Music City Loop “a safe, fast, and fun public transportation system.” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in the same release, called the lease a step toward less congestion. The release does not say the loop is months from opening. As of the records opened for this story, two machines are digging, a third had not been confirmed on site in the September notes reviewed, more than 40 stations are still in design, and no published count of finished tunnel sits next to the 25-mile plan.

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