Tennessee Tunnel Overseer Enthusiastically Offers Someone Else The First Ride

A member of the Tennessee board overseeing the Boring Company’s Nashville tunnel has offered a memorable assessment of its flood protection. Asked whether the concrete barriers could keep out water from the Cumberland River, Bill Ketron told the Tennessee Lookout: “They say that they will, but I don’t think I want to be one of the first ones riding through it.”

There it is. The confidence you want from public oversight: after you.

Not a permanent refusal to use the tunnel. Just a preference to let the initial passengers establish the tone. Like arriving at a restaurant with the health inspector and watching him politely encourage everybody else to try the oysters.

Ketron is a member of the Subterranean Transportation Infrastructure Coordinator Authority, a title so long that the Tesla could reach the airport before anyone finishes introducing him.

The authority oversees a planned 9.5-mile route carrying passengers in Tesla vehicles between downtown Nashville and the airport. Republican lawmakers say it could ease interstate traffic. Tennessee donated the underground right-of-way, and Governor Bill Lee says the company is making an enormous investment on the state’s behalf.

Fine. We have a route, a company, an authority and an enormous investment. Could we now acquire an assurance that does not instinctively move to the back of the boarding line?

The Southern Environmental Law Center has published a report warning about sinkholes, groundwater contamination and the region’s cave-prone limestone. The company says it will avoid identified karst areas and has a mitigation plan involving exploratory drilling and tests using vibrations to examine what lies underground.

Those are engineering questions requiring engineering answers. Nobody has established that the tunnel will flood. Ketron’s quip is not a geological survey, although it does give us an unusually clear reading of where one official would prefer to be standing.

Above.

He told the Lookout he had toured the completed section and had been told the limestone was very hard. He had not spoken to the company about the environmental law center’s report.

Well, the rock is hard. A reassuring first entry on the checklist. What about the places where the rock is not present, which seem to be the part of a cave that makes it a cave?

The company’s plan says it will avoid identified karst development. The environmental group disputes whether the route can avoid the relevant formations. That disagreement deserves better than a public official’s personal decision to book the second shuttle.

Who gets the first one? Is there a discount? Does the booking screen offer Economy, Extra Legroom and Establishing Confidence for the Board?

I am not asking Ketron to put on a cape and personally wrestle the Cumberland River. I am asking why the official reassurance has arrived wearing a small, sensible pair of shoes pointed toward the surface.

And then, and then, consider the ordinary airport passenger. This person has already packed, checked the weather and attempted to understand an airline’s definition of a personal item. Now the person overseeing the novel way to get there would apparently like some earlier travelers to give it a go.

Wonderful. Another task before departure. Charge your phone. Find your passport. Complete the part of the public-confidence program that the public official has elected to watch.

The tunnel may prove perfectly sound. Engineers, tests and accountable oversight need to establish that—not whichever poor bastard most urgently needs to catch the 8:15.

Put the fucking assurance before the boarding announcement.

Until then, the authority’s most convincing transportation recommendation appears to be: you go, I’ll catch the next one.