Tennessee’s capital city is primed to gain an underground transportation system unlike any in the Southeast.
Movement throughout Tennessee’s capital city Nashville is anything but boring.
The state’s largest metro area is not only an active tourism hotspot but a key center for business. While there is no lack of activity in the city, its traffic challenges have invited an innovative solution, coming in the form of a zero-emissions underground transit system unlike anything else in this part of the nation.
For over a year, The Boring Company and state leadership explored a nearly 10-mile stretch below the city’s surface that would connect the Nashville International Airport directly to downtown and the Music City Center. In July 2025, it was officially announced that a future Music City Loop would soon head into construction, at no cost to the city or state.
That’s right, The Boring Company has said it will foot the entirety of the Loop’s construction bill, which is anticipated to cost a few hundred million dollars. Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry President and CEO Josh Brown says that the initiative is a prime example of the power behind a public-private partnership, which is both forward-looking and fiscally responsible for taxpayers.
“A project of this scale would be much more difficult to accomplish relying strictly on public dollars, especially with competing demands for transportation funding statewide,” says Brown. “The private investment is what makes rapid deployment possible. It allows Tennessee to pilot a transformational concept without shifting resources away from critical priorities like roads, bridges and freight infrastructure.”
The Music City Loop will be the second underground transportation system pursued by the company, which is still strengthening its Vegas Loop in Nevada. The latest project blog update posted by Boring in December 2025 notes construction of the system’s launch pit is completed, the first of six Tunnel Boring Machines has been assembled onsite and the newly installed conveyor system is undergoing calibration.
Once complete, the Music City Loop will be capable of moving passengers from the airport to downtown Nashville in about nine minutes nonstop, traveling in dedicated Tesla Model Y and Model X vehicles with trained Loop drivers. The initial route segment from the airport to downtown is expected to be operational by 2027.
The blog additionally announced a potential future system expansion along the Broadway corridor, detailing the integration of a perpendicular underground system that would head southwest from Lower Broadway, pushing into the West End Avenue past Centennial Park and Vanderbilt, ending near Interstate 440.
“For Tennessee, being a first mover means taking a leadership role in advancing the future of mobility in the Southeast. Nashville is demonstrating that innovation in infrastructure is not just theoretical,” states Brown. “This positions our state as a place that embraces new ideas, supports business growth and prioritizes efficiency.”
He says that transportation around Nashville’s airport has been a priority for years, as state officials and the Tennessee Department of Transportation have explored multiple approaches, from increasing roadway capacity to considering transit enhancements and multimodal systems.
In short, The Boring Company’s arrival allowed the state to accelerate solutions without waiting decades for funding cycles to align.
Since the Music City Loop’s announcement, public curiosity remains high and Brown expects this interest to continue to build. Aside from residents, he notes that the Chamber hears from employers frequently who believe expanded mobility options like this will be key to giving Tennessee a competitive edge when attracting new investment and talent. Once it’s been deployed, officials will gather insights from the Music City Loop to help guide future transportation planning decisions — not just for tourism but for workforce access, freight movement and long-term competitiveness.
“This is an opportunity to gather real data on how alternative transportation can function in a rapidly growing metro region,” says Brown. “Leaders want to understand rider demand, economic impact, safety performance, congestion reduction and how replicable the model may be in other Tennessee corridors.”
Going Hybrid
In November 2025, as officials from Toyota Motor Corporation celebrated the opening of the company’s first in-house battery manufacturing facility outside of Japan — Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina — the company additionally unveiled plans to invest $10 billion across its U.S. operations by 2030.
In the days following, Toyota Motor North America announced a $912 million investment would soon be heading to five of its U.S. manufacturing plants. The strategic selection of both vehicle assembly and component supplier locations in West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee will be key to the rollout of Toyota’s future hybrid vehicle production.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Tennessee (TMMTN), located in Madison County’s city of Jackson, has played a vital role in producing engine blocks and transmission cases and housings for the company’s North American operations for over 20 years. The facility will now receive $71.4 million to increase its current production capacity, which saw 3 million units produced in 2024.
The company’s other casting plant in Troy, Missouri, will receive $57.1 million through this investment to install a new cylinder head production line for hybrid vehicles by 2027.
“This location does high pressure diecasting, so it’s a natural choice when we need to add more parts that use that casting method,” says TMMTN Corporate Communications Manager Leah Almeling. “With this new capacity, more than 60% of the units we’ll make in Jackson will be for hybrid vehicles.”
TMMTN will scale output of hybrid transaxle cases and holdings, in addition to engine blocks for hybrid vehicles, by up to 500,000 units annually. To do so, three new production lines will be introduced in the facility and are expected to become operational between 2027 and 2028. Almeling notes that the additional production lines will not bring any additional square footage to the current 450,000-sq.-ft. facility, and that “the parts made in Jackson go onto our engine and/or transmission plants in West Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama.”
