Mayor Ron Nirenberg, pictured here at a 2018 press conference, was one of 13 Texas mayors to ask the governor for a special legislative session to address gun reform. Credit: Sanford Nowlin
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg says he’s unconvinced the tunnel connecting the airport and downtown proposed by billionaire Elon Musk’s Boring Co. should be a priority of the city’s transportation initiative, the San Antonio Business Journal reports.

Initiated in 2018, Nirenberg’s plan aims to enhance public transportation and accessibility throughout the city. However, Nirenberg told the Business Journal he doesn’t see how a tunnel ferrying passengers from the airport to downtown in Teslas fits in with that vision.

“We have a lot of transportation priorities,” Nirenberg told SABJ. “We need multimodal connectivity. I don’t see where a tunnel project fits into that. I don’t know what it accomplishes.”

Instead, the mayor wants to focus on VIA Metropolitan Transit’s Advanced Rapid Transportation (ART) project. VIA’s ART also would transport passengers from the airport to downtown, and could receive $158 million in federal funding if Congress approves the Biden Administration’s recommendation to help fund the project, the Business Journal reports.

Unlike VIA’s project, the Boring Co.’s tunnel project is under the authority of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority. According to John Overman, a research scientist at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute, the proposed tunnel project would ultimately be approved by the Texas Transportation Commission, not San Antonio’s city government.

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This article appears in May 4-17, 2022.

Michael Karlis is a Staff Writer at the San Antonio Current. He is a graduate of American University in Washington, D.C., whose work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Orlando...