Vacant lot at 53 New York Avenue NE in Washington, where a government permit has been granted for work connected with Elon Musk’s Hyperloop project. (Michael Laris/TWP) 
 
 It’s not much now, just a parking lot with a discarded gin bottle and an old exterminator receipt. 
 
 But the slice of pavement near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the District could be the gritty precursor to a tunnel network that could propel pods filled with people and speeding platforms topped with Teslas and Toyotas between the nation’s capital and New York in 29 minutes. 
 
 Or it could be just be a parking lot littered with dashed transportation dreams. 
 
 Electric-car pioneer and space entrepreneur Elon Musk has been touting his vision for a high-speed transportation system since his tweeted announcement last summer that he had received “verbal govt approval” for his tunnel-digging firm, the Boring Company, to build a “NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.” 
 
 The Boring Company team has received an early, and vague, building permit from the D.C. government that will allow some preparatory and excavation work at the fenced-off parking lot at 53 New York Avenue NE beside a McDonald’s and amid the construction cranes of Washington’s booming NoMa neighborhood. 
 
 Asked about the permit, issued Nov. 29, a Boring Company spokesman said Friday that “a New York Avenue location, if constructed, could become a station” in a broad network of such stops across the new system. 
 
 D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) visited the Boring Company in California this month, walking in a tunnel to learn more about the technology the company says will make tunneling faster and cheaper. 
 
 The District’s Department of Transportation is figuring out what other permits the Boring Company would need to cut under city roads and other public spaces, according to Bowser’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio. 
 
 “We’re just beginning, in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop,” Falcicchio said. Asked whether the Bowser administration supports the project, he was somewhat upbeat but noncommittal, adding: “We’re open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently.” 
 
 Musk has received backing from the White House Office of American Innovation, led by President Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), whose administration rolled out a welcome mat and provided a utility permit, though more permits are needed and no tunneling has begun. Maryland officials say the tunnel would run under Maryland Route 295. The Baltimore-Washington leg would be the initial stretch in the East Coast system. 
 
 The overall concept is that pods with perhaps 16 people in each could speed around on electric sleds. Those sleds could also carry individual cars to and from numerous stations. There would be a main artery, with spurs connecting to various stations. 
 
 Elevators would take people up and down to the tunnels. And those tunnels would be built relatively close to the surface without disturbing buildings and other structures. 
 
 The stations would be somewhat modest affairs, numerous but not grand in scale like Union Station. 
 
 “Stations in a Loop or Hyperloop system are small in size and widely distributed in a network — very different from large-station termini considered for train systems,” the company spokesman said. 
 
 “Hyperloop” refers to a vacuum-based, people- and car-moving system, which would get rid of wind resistance. Shorter hops within or between cities might have a non-vacuum system, hence the reference to a “Loop” system. 
 
 Tunnel experts say the digging part is technically feasible, if potentially slow and expensive. As for how to safely orchestrate the underground system of multiple superfast pods, transportation experts say the challenges are legion. 
 
 And the naysayers are numerous, though their views are varied. Some point to Musk’s history of overpromising, as with the slow production of his more-affordable Tesla Model 3. But others, even skeptics, say he has a vision and hard-to-beat record of breakthroughs on the road and in his rocket ventures. 
 
 Some transportation advocates worry that moving people and cars — rather than just people — in the high-speed system would undercut the benefits of more-traditional mass transit. 
 
 “We need to fix the Metro. Traffic is just bad,” said Mohamed Hussein, an Uber driver from Virginia who stopped for lunch beside the New York Avenue parking lot. Hussein was not enamored with the idea of being swept along at harrowing speeds. “It’s like a bullet. Woooom!” he said. “Too much.” 
 
 And he was, he said, realistic about time. “How long will it take them to build the tunnel?” he asked. “It will take a long time.” 
 
 But Mohamed Musa, director of housekeeping at the Hyatt Place hotel a couple doors down, can’t wait. 
 
 “Just the idea of going to New York to have lunch and come back, it’ll be awesome,” Musa said. ||||| First honed as a concept by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk in 2012, hyperloop is touted as the future of passenger transport. 
 
 For the uninitiated, hyperloop is a high-speed passenger transport system that involves a sealed tube through which high-speed pods move, slashing travel times. For example, the journey from London to Edinburgh - which takes more than four hours on a train - would theoretically take just 30 minutes. 
 
 Musk has since encouraged startup firms and student-led projects to create their own versions of hyperloop. The high-speed system uses a version of magnetic levitation, but what is it and how does it work? 
 
 What is magnetic levitation? 
 
 Magnetic levitation, or maglev, is when an object is suspended in the air using only magnetic fields and no other support. 
 
 Along with super-fast maglev trains, magnetic levitation has various engineering uses including magnetic bearings. It can also be used for display and novelty purposes, such as floating speakers. 
 
 How does magnetic levitation work? 
 
 Magnetic levitation’s best-known use is in maglev trains. Currently only in operation in a handful of countries, including China and Japan, Maglev trains are the fastest in the world, with a record speed of 375 mph (603 km/h). However, the train systems are incredibly expensive to construct and often end up languishing as little-used vanity projects. 
 
 There are two main types of maglev train technology - electromagnetic suspension (EMS) and electrodynamic suspension (EDS). 
 
 EMS uses electronically controlled electromagnets in the train to attract it to a magnetic steel track, while EDS uses superconducting electromagnets on both the train and the rail to produce a mutually repellent force that makes the carriages levitate. 
 
 A variant of EDS technology - as used in the Inductrack system - uses an array of permanent magnets on the underside of the train, instead of powered electromagnets or cooled superconducting magnets. This is also known as passive magnetic levitation technology. 
 
 How does Hyperloop use magnetic levitation? 
 
 In Musk’s original concept, the pods floated on a layer of pressurised air, in a similar way to pucks floating on an air hockey table. However, a more recent version of the technology from Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) - one of two companies leading the hyperloop race - uses passive magnetic levitation to achieve the same effect. 
 
 The technology has been licensed to HTT from Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL), which developed it as part of the Inductrack system. This method is thought to be cheaper and safer than traditional maglev systems. 
 
 With this method, magnets are placed on the underside of the capsules in a Halbach array. This focuses the magnetic force of the magnets on one side of the array while almost entirely cancelling out the field on the other side. These magnetic fields cause the pods to float as they pass over electromagnetic coils embedded in the track. Thrust from linear motors propels the pods forward. 
 
 HTT’s main rival, Hyperloop One is also using a passive magnetic levitation system where pod-side permanent magnets repel a passive track, with the only input energy coming from the speed of the pod. 
 
 For both systems, air pressure in the tunnels is lowered using air pumps in order to aid the pods’ movement. The low air pressure dramatically reduces drag so that only a relatively small amount of electricity is needed to achieve top speeds. 
 
 When will hyperloop launch? 
 
 The hyperloop system does appear to be progressing with Hyperloop One recently managing to shoot a passenger pod through a test tube at 192mph (309km/h). But while impressive, it still falls well short of its 250mph (402km/h) goal. 
 
 A student team from the Technical University of Munich recently managed to reach an impressive top speed of 201mph (324km/h) on SpaceX’s custom-built 1.5km test track in Hawthorne, California. The extraordinary achievement was part of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Pod Competition. 
 
 The first commercial hyperloop track could be built by Hyperloop One in the UAE, after the company agreed a feasibility study with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA). The proposed system would connect Dubai and Abu Dhabi with a mere 12-minute journey. However, despite various proposed projects around the globe, critics claim that hyperloop infrastructure is far too costly to ever develop into a comprehensive transport system. ||||| A 29-minute trip from D.C. to New York may seem too good to be true. And it very well may be. But that isn’t stopping Elon Musk from pushing forward with plans to build a Hyperloop along the eastern corridor. 
 
 And while it’s a very small, very vague step forward, Musk’s Boring Company has received a permit for preparation and preliminary excavation of a site in the nation’s capital. The exact location is 53 New York Avenue NE, next to a McDonald’s and near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to The Washington Post. 
 
 In July, Elon Musk tweeted that he had received verbal government approval to build a multi-state underground Hyperloop on the East Coast. While such approval doesn’t formally exist, Bloomberg confirmed that the White House had had positive conversations with The Boring Company over the proposed tunnel. 
 
 Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017 
 
 This latest permit is far from what’s required to actually begin building the tunnel — which would run from New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to D.C. — but it’s a start. Musk recently received a conditional permit to start operations in Hawthorne, Maryland for a 10.3 mile route. Maryland officials told WaPo that the tunnel would run under Maryland Route 295, with the D.C.-Baltimore leg being built first. 
 
 Stations for the Hyperloop would be relatively small and toned down compared to the stations we’re used to, such as Union Station and Penn Station. There would be a main line running between the four aforementioned cities, with smaller lines spurring out from the city’s central station for other potential destinations. 
 
 Right now, the trip from NY to D.C. takes more than three hours. It would certainly be nice to pop down for a meeting with just an hour of travel time, but this first permit is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race. We have not yet begun.
– Elon Musk's dream of building a hyperloop that can move people between Washington, DC, and New York City in 29 minutes may be a small step closer to becoming a distant reality. A Nov. 29 permit issued by DC's Department of Transportation allows Musk's Boring Company to dig at an abandoned lot beside a McDonald's in northeast Washington that the company says might eventually become a station on a hyperloop connecting NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The system would speed up travel times, using electricity and electromagnetic levitation to send people and cars whipping through tunnels in pods. But before you ditch your car, the Washington Post points out the permit is only for "some preparatory and excavation work" at the site, and more permits are needed before any real construction begins. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has visited a test tunnel Musk is constructing under Los Angeles. But though "we're open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently ... we're just beginning, in the mayor's office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop," says Bowser's chief of staff, John Falcicchio. Still, the permit "is comparable to an athlete stretching before a race" and shows Musk is serious about moving forward with his plans for high-speed travel since claiming "verbal" government support for an East Coast hyperloop last July, reports TechCrunch. He's also received a conditional permit to build a tunnel beneath Maryland Route 295 in Hawthorne, per the Post, with Maryland officials saying a leg linking Washington and Baltimore will come first. (Read about the hyperloop pod's first test.)