Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Elon Musk Gives A Jolt To Rahm Emanuel’s High-Speed Train Hopes

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Monday that Elon Musk, the inventor and founder of SpaceX, is interested in bidding on a project to link downtown Chicago to O’Hare airport with a high-speed underground train. Musk and his engineers at his drilling firm, The Boring Company, may be going to Chicago soon to explore possibilities for a direct rail line.

“He has expressed an interest in what Chicago is doing,” Emanuel said of Musk. “It would be a tremendous investment and job creator, an economic engine for the city that would pay dividends for decades ahead.”

Emanuel, who is Jewish, has not revealed where the funding for the rail line would come from.

Musk’s Boring Company received attention last month when it unveiled a technology that it hopes will reduce tunneling costs by 90% and end “soul-destroying traffic.”

Update: This article has been updated to reflect that Elon Musk is not Jewish.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren

We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.

With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.

—  Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief 

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.