People walk through a Hyperloop tube after the first test of a propulsion system at the Hyperloop One Test and Safety site on May 11, 2016 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. The company plans to create a fully operational hyperloop system by 2020. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

People walk through a Hyperloop tube after the first test of a propulsion system at the Hyperloop One Test and Safety site on May 11, 2016 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

Billionaire and Tony Stark-inspiration Elon Musk made a big announcement this morning about his latest venture, the Hyperloop, a transportation system that would quicken travel by shooting people through underground tunnels in pods at speeds of more than 700 miles-per-hour.

He said that the Hyperloop route would go from city center to city center, with about a dozen entry/exit elevators in each city.

Get from D.C. to the Big Apple in less than half an hour? Sounds great! The only problem is that none of the city governments seem to know what the hell he’s talking about.

“This is the first we heard of it,” says Susana Castillo, a spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “But we can’t wait to hear more.”

Bowser favorably compared the speed of Hyperloop to that of the Amtrak train on Thursday evening.

Jalopnik has compiled comments from a slew of other public agencies on the city and state level who would ostensibly need to give their “verbal govt approval” and so far, none have acknowledged that they’ve given any indication of the sort.

But there’s one agency that did not seem totally flabbergasted by the idea: the Department of Transportation. ““We have had promising conversations to date, are committed to transformative infrastructure projects, and believe our greatest solutions have often come from the ingenuity and drive of the private sector,” a spokesperson for the federal agency told The Washington Post.

Later this afternoon, Musk tempered his claims slightly, tweeting that there’s “Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly.”

The technology is still in development, and Musk’s The Boring Company is just one of the companies working on the idea. Interestingly, when competitor Hyperloop One presented 11 potential routes for the technology this past April, the Northeast corridor path described by Musk today was not among them.

At a test for the vacuum-based tube system this May in Nevada, hyperloop advocates claimed success after the pod traveled above the track for 5.3 seconds, reaching 70 miles per hour.

“I’m convinced that we will be building freight transportation systems in 2017 and 2018,” Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd told Engadget. “I’m very convinced we’ll be working collaboratively with a government and regulatory environment to start construction of passenger systems in 2018. I’m entirely convinced we’ll be seeing freight moved in a Hyperloop by 2020, maybe 2019, and our first passengers by 2021.”

For anyone who has been following the journey of the Purple Line or the “Super Maglev” rapid rail, that timeline sounds wildly optimistic.

Musk called upon fans of the idea to help speed up the process. “If you want this to happen fast, please let your local & federal elected representatives know. Makes a big difference if they hear from you,” he tweeted on Thursday evening.

This post has been updated.

Filed Under: d.c., Elon Musk, hyperloop, mayor muriel bowser, new york, transportation,