The Federal Railroad Administration, the nation’s railroad agency, has brought in the Boring Company, the tunneling firm founded by Elon Musk, to see if it could help with a multibillion-dollar Amtrak project, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
Federal Railroad Administration officials have talked with employees at the Boring Company about assessing the costs and progress of the Frederick Douglass Tunnel program, a new tunnel along a busy Amtrak stretch connecting Baltimore to Washington and Virginia. Amtrak initially expected the development to cost $6 billion, but now estimates it could cost as much as $8.5 billion.
As part of the talks, officials with the Department of Transportation, which oversees the Federal Railroad Administration, met with employees from the Boring Company last month and were told that the firm could find ways to build the tunnel more cheaply and efficiently, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions.
A Transportation Department spokesman, Nathaniel Sizemore, confirmed that the Boring Company was one of several firms being consulted for the purposes of awarding a new engineering contract. He declined to name the other companies.
“No decision has been made on bids,” Mr. Sizemore said, “and Amtrak in coordination with D.O.T. will follow standard procedures for bidding out contracting and subcontracting.”
The talks have raised concerns about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interests as he juggles his businesses, along with his role as a top adviser to President Trump. Mr. Musk leads or owns at least six companies, including the electric automaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. At the same time, he has overseen the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed jobs and resources at federal agencies that regulate his businesses.
In at least a few instances, the conflicts of interest have become public. Mr. Trump hawked Tesla cars from the White House lawn in March, while federal agencies have pushed for the wider use of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
Last month, amid concerns from investors that he was neglecting his work at Tesla, Mr. Musk said he would pare back the time he spent cost-cutting in Washington.
The Department of Transportation said in a statement that the estimated price for the tunnel had increased by $2.5 billion, and that Amtrak had not yet found ways to reduce costs.
“The department has had conversations with many stakeholders in the infrastructure-engineering space to understand opportunities to get this project back on track,” Mr. Sizemore said.
Amtrak did not have immediate comment. The Boring Company and Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
The Frederick Douglass Tunnel is set to replace the 152-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, a 1.4-mile route along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. It is the “single largest infrastructure effort” led by Amtrak, according to a report last year by Amtrak’s inspector general office, which also expressed concerns over ballooning costs and missed deadlines. The tunnel was expected to be completed by 2035.
Last year, Amtrak selected a joint venture between two construction companies, Kiewit and J.F. Shea, to build the tunnel. The firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Previously, Republicans including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and the current vice president, JD Vance, criticized the awarding of federal funds to the project for “favoring Northeastern states over the rest of the country.”
Mr. Musk has also attacked Amtrak and other large-scale rail projects. In March, he proposed that the federally owned railroad be privatized.
“If you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail,” Mr. Musk said about Amtrak at a March conference with bankers. “It’s going to leave you with a very bad impression of America.”
Mr. Musk and his companies have previously weighed in on matters at the Department of Transportation. After a deadly collision between an Army helicopter and a commercial jet in January, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy brought SpaceX employees to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control command center in Virginia to make safety suggestions the next month.
Mr. Musk has also been pushing the F.A.A. to cancel a multibillion-dollar air traffic control contract with Verizon in favor of a system from Starlink.
Over the years, Mr. Musk has promoted his own transportation ideas, including Tesla’s electric cars, SpaceX’s rockets and a hyperloop, a vacuum tube to propel people and goods at high speeds. The Boring Company, which has raised more than $900 million in venture capital funding, has completed few of its proposed U.S. plans.
In 2017, Mr. Musk tweeted that he had received “verbal govt approval” to build an underground hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, claiming that it would take passengers from New York to the nation’s capital in less than 30 minutes.
Two years later, the Boring Company submitted plans to the Department of Transportation to build a 35-mile underground loop for cars between Baltimore and Washington, and said it could be completed in two years. That project was removed from the Boring Company’s website in 2021 and now appears to be dead.
The Boring Company’s leader, Steve Davis, has been working with Mr. Musk and the Trump administration on the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. One of the billionaire’s most trusted lieutenants, Mr. Davis was appointed by Mr. Musk to head the tunneling company in 2018 and was deputized to execute Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting vision for the federal government.
Mr. Musk had been frustrated by the Boring Company’s lack of success under Mr. Davis, whom he privately criticized for not completing projects. In a recent interview with Fox News, Mr. Davis framed his efforts with DOGE as an attempt to prevent the country from going bankrupt and said he and others had been “willing to kind of put our lives on hold” to help Mr. Musk.
Mr. Davis did not respond to a request for comment.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
