Transparency Is Fair Game. Saying There Is No Oversight Is Not.

The Nashville Scene published a story Monday under a striking headline: “The Boring Company Consistently Evades Oversight.”

That is a serious accusation.

It is also broader than the evidence underneath it.

There are fair questions about The Boring Company’s approach to transparency. The company has declined repeated interview requests from the Scene. Some technical information surrounding the Music City Loop could be easier for the public to find. And Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton should complete his appointments to the state’s new Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority.

Those are legitimate criticisms.

But transparency and oversight are not the same thing.

A company can be frustratingly selective about how it communicates while still being subject to permits, inspections, engineering review, environmental requirements, and government regulation.

The Scene repeatedly blurs that distinction.

State Jurisdiction Is Still Jurisdiction

One of the article’s central arguments is that because much of the Music City Loop runs beneath state-owned roads, The Boring Company has effectively avoided meaningful Metro oversight.

That is framed as though the company found a regulatory loophole.

It did not.

The tunnels are largely being constructed within state rights-of-way. The state therefore, rightfully, has jurisdiction over them.

Critics may prefer a different regulatory structure. But state oversight is not the absence of oversight.

Earlier this year, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration jointly approved The Boring Company’s lease application and enhanced grading permit for the use of state-owned highway property. The Boring Company says the fully executed tunnel permit and lease followed roughly seven months of technical review.

That point deserves more attention than the Scene gives it.

The plans announced to date were not simply handed to state government and rubber-stamped. They went through technical review by transportation professionals at TDOT and FHWA before the company received authorization to begin tunneling within the permitted state right-of-way.

TDOT is not an agency unfamiliar with complicated transportation infrastructure. Its engineers spend their careers reviewing, designing, building, maintaining, and regulating roads, bridges, interchanges, drainage systems, rights-of-way, and other major infrastructure across Tennessee. When those engineers review a transportation project and the department signs off on the permits necessary for construction, that is oversight.

It does not mean every engineering question has been answered forever.

It does not mean subsequent phases will not require additional review.

And it does not mean critics are wrong to ask questions.

But it does mean the project has already undergone meaningful technical review by the state agency whose job is to understand transportation infrastructure.

The General Assembly also created a separate regulatory framework specifically for subterranean transportation projects.

That framework does much more than create a board.

Tennessee law places subsurface plan review, permitting, inspection, fire safety, life safety, and enforcement under the State Fire Marshal.

Other state agencies participate through the Governor’s Infrastructure Coordination Council.

The Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority has a different role, including coordinating agencies, hearing appeals, and resolving disputes.

That distinction matters because the Scene spends significant time on the Authority while leaving readers with the impression that it is supposed to be the primary entity inspecting tunnels and reviewing engineering plans.

It is not.

The state’s oversight structure is broader than that.

Metro Has Not Disappeared

The article also suggests Metro Nashville has been largely cut out of the project.

Again, the reality is more complicated.

Where Metro has jurisdiction, The Boring Company still has to deal with Metro.

The project’s environmental assessment identifies a Metro Water Services discharge permit for construction activity at the Rosa L. Parks Boulevard site. The company has also said it coordinated with Metro Water Services for excavation work at another launch site.

Stations create additional layers of approval.

The Music City Center Authority had to approve an easement.

The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority approved financial terms for a BNA connection.

Private property owners must grant the rights necessary for construction beneath their property.

This is not a project operating in a regulatory vacuum.

It is a project moving through a regulatory system divided among state agencies, local agencies, public authorities, and property owners depending on who has jurisdiction.

Critics can argue that system should be different.

That is a policy argument.

It is not the same thing as saying the company has escaped oversight.

The Karst Questions Are Real

The Scene’s strongest substantive argument involves Nashville’s geology.

The Southern Environmental Law Center recently commissioned hydrogeologist Chris Groves to examine the Music City Loop route and the risks associated with tunneling through Middle Tennessee’s karst geology.

His report raises legitimate questions.

Nashville sits on limestone formations where underground voids, groundwater pathways, and sinkholes can occur. Tunneling through that environment requires careful geotechnical investigation and engineering.

Those concerns should not be dismissed.

But neither should readers be left with the impression that The Boring Company’s existing environmental work ignored them.

It did not.

The Music City Loop environmental assessment discusses karst geology, groundwater intrusion, limestone formations, the Cumberland River crossing, subsurface investigation, tunnel-depth adjustments, grouting, and other mitigation measures.

It specifically identifies groundwater intrusion as a potential health and safety concern.

It says additional geotechnical work will continue as design progresses.

And it acknowledges that if future borings identify active karst conduits or other unexpected conditions, additional geological review may be required.

That does not mean SELC is wrong.

It means there is a technical disagreement over whether the investigation and proposed mitigation are sufficient.

That is a much more useful debate than pretending one side studied Nashville’s geology and the other did not.

There Was More Than One Environmental Review

The Scene also describes The Boring Company as having released “its own assessment.”

That phrasing leaves out important context.

The environmental assessment was prepared by Davey Resource Group.

A separate third-party review was later conducted by UES, which agreed with the assessment’s environmental-effect determinations and described the work as technically sound.

Critics can fairly point out that those reviews were performed as part of the project rather than through an adversarial government environmental process.

That is relevant.

So is the fact that outside environmental and engineering professionals performed the work.

Both facts belong in the discussion.

The NEPA Comparison Misses the Point

The Scene also highlights SELC’s comparison between the Music City Loop and Nashville’s Woodland Avenue bike lane project.

The argument is straightforward: the bike project spent years caught up in National Environmental Policy Act review, while a much larger underground transportation project moved more quickly.

It sounds compelling.

But NEPA is not triggered by how large, unusual, expensive, or controversial a project is.

It applies when there is qualifying federal action.

A comparatively small project involving federal funding or approvals can therefore go through a federal environmental process that a much larger privately financed project does not.

The Music City Loop’s environmental assessment recognizes that federal environmental review could still become necessary if future federal involvement triggers it.

The fact that another Nashville project spent years in NEPA review does not, by itself, show that the Loop avoided a review it was legally required to undergo.

It shows that the two projects have different regulatory circumstances.

Where the Scene Has a Point

There is one criticism The Boring Company has largely brought on itself.

It should answer reporters.

The Scene says it has repeatedly sought comment from the company without success. Other outlets have had similar experiences.

That is not good practice for a company building a major transportation project beneath Nashville.

Publishing construction updates is useful.

Meeting with public officials and stakeholders is useful.

Offering site tours is useful.

Answering questions submitted directly by members of the public is useful.

But none of those replaces independent scrutiny.

If The Boring Company wants to claim “maximum transparency,” it should be more willing to answer difficult questions from reporters who may not share its enthusiasm for the project.

That would strengthen public confidence.

It would also eliminate one of the easiest criticisms opponents have against it.

But the distinction still matters.

Refusing an interview is not refusing an inspection.

Not answering a reporter is not the same thing as not obtaining a permit.

And communicating poorly is not the same thing as operating without regulation.

This May Be Less About Secrecy Than Corporate Culture

There is another possibility worth considering before treating every unanswered media request as evidence of something more sinister.

The Boring Company is an Elon Musk company.

And Musk companies have long operated differently from conventional corporations, particularly when it comes to communications, management layers, and spending on functions they do not view as directly advancing the mission.

Tesla provides the clearest example.

In 2020, Tesla eliminated its U.S. public-relations department altogether. Musk later publicly rejected calls to rebuild a traditional PR operation.

That was an extraordinary decision for a company of Tesla’s size.

It also tells us something about how Musk appears to view corporate communications.

His companies have developed a reputation for lean organizations, unusually flat management structures, and relentless pressure to justify costs against the core objective.

That philosophy is unconventional, but it is difficult to dismiss as unserious. Musk has used variations of it while building Tesla and SpaceX into two of the most valuable and consequential companies of the modern era.

The same instinct that leads his companies to eliminate layers of management, question traditional corporate expenses, and focus resources on engineering can also leave them remarkably unsophisticated in areas conventional companies consider essential, including public relations.

That tradeoff has obvious drawbacks.

A company can be world-class at engineering and still be remarkably bad at dealing with local reporters.

It can have people focused on tunneling, permitting, engineering, construction, community meetings, and government coordination without maintaining a conventional communications apparatus designed to respond promptly to every media inquiry.

That does not excuse silence.

And it certainly does not mean reporters should stop asking questions.

But it does offer a less dramatic explanation for why those questions sometimes go unanswered.

The Boring Company’s own Nashville updates suggest that it is communicating, just not always through the channels journalists would prefer. The company says it has responded to more than 220 inquiries sent directly to its Nashville email address, in addition to conducting meetings, public outreach, site tours, and regular project updates.

That is not the same thing as having an effective media-relations operation.

But neither is it evidence that the company has gone silent because it has something to hide.

Sometimes poor public relations is simply poor public relations.

In this case, it may also be the predictable result of a corporate philosophy that has produced extraordinary results by relentlessly asking whether every dollar and every employee advances the mission.

For The Boring Company, that may mean spending another dollar digging a tunnel rather than hiring someone to explain the tunnel to a newspaper.

Tennessee Should Finish the Framework

The state has work to do too.

Speaker Sexton should complete his appointments to the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordination Authority.

A nine-member board should have nine members.

The Authority’s meetings are public. Its minutes are public. Members of the public have an opportunity to comment.

If Tennessee created the board in part to provide accountability and coordination for subterranean transportation projects, there is no good reason to leave seats vacant.

Completing those appointments would strengthen the framework.

It would also remove an unnecessary argument from critics who want to portray that framework as incomplete or cosmetic.

Ask Hard Questions. Just Ask the Right Ones.

There are plenty of questions worth asking about the Music City Loop.

How will tunneling interact with Nashville’s karst geology?

What happens when groundwater is encountered?

How are emergency systems tested?

How often are tunnels inspected?

What does the State Fire Marshal require before passengers can enter?

How are contaminated soils handled if they are encountered?

What geotechnical information should be made publicly available?

And why does a company undertaking one of Nashville’s most closely watched infrastructure projects not have a more effective way to answer basic questions from the press?

LOOP Nashville intends to keep asking those questions.

But saying The Boring Company has “consistently evaded oversight” is a much broader claim.

The public record shows a project operating under TDOT approvals, State Fire Marshal jurisdiction, Metro permits where applicable, agreements with public authorities, easement requirements, environmental review, geotechnical investigation, and a new state regulatory framework.

That system can be criticized.

It can be improved.

And The Boring Company can certainly be more transparent.

But there is a difference between imperfect transparency and absent oversight.

There is also a difference between a company that is deliberately hiding from regulators and one that may simply be institutionally bad at traditional public relations.

The Scene has asked whether The Boring Company is transparent enough. That is a fair question.

Claiming the company has evaded oversight is a different argument. The evidence does not make that case.