The thing is, traditional tunneling projects in the US are incredibly expensive and wasteful. Someone approaching it from a fresh perspective (or even a, say, European perspective) can easily improve on it.

What we need is more people like Elon. It's not magic, many others can do what he does, though few do (maybe because of social pressure? Look at all the crap Elon gets). There's a lot you can do just by having energy and willingness to try things and being unsatisfied with the crappy status quo.