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Going by the tunneling work in London, once you have one of those tunnel boring machine underground, they can excavate and line with concrete 500 meters of tunnel each day using just 20 people.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/con...

Regardless of how deep, it will also have to be fast. I believe current borers (correct term?) drill at the rate of 1-2 metres per day.

According to Crossrail, the largest distance tunnelled by one of their boring machines in a single day was "72 metres by Ellie on 16 April 2014 between Pudding Mill Lane and Stepney Green". So 1-2 metres seems to be out by quite a bit.

They don't have to keep Crossrail in a near vacuum for the trains to run though it either. The maturity of the technology of Crossrail is much greater than this hyperloop fantasy.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/

CrossRail is an extraordinary engineering feat.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/new...

That said, it arguably should not have been built and the money should have been spent in the North instead:
http://www.theguardian.com/new...

Bored railway tunnels are only single-track, usually with two parallel bores. Here are some good photos, I believe the "cathedral"-sized cavern was built by digging down from ground level. The finished tunnel diameter is 6.1m.

The London Post Office Railway has 2.7m tunnels, so is pretty much what you want. It was shut down after the introduction of the Congestion Charge, since that removed enough traffic that it was then cheaper to use surface vehicles.

Ask the cities that have transport tunnels why they haven't built any more.

Incomplete list of cities surprised to learn that they are not building new transportation tunnels right now:

New York
London
Delhi
Toronto
Beijing (multiple lines)
San Francisco
Los Angeles (just getting started)
Paris (multiple lines)
Seoul (including a maglev line)
...and so on. Those are just the ones I'm immediately aware of.

CrossRail also seems to be going okay.

There are so many projects like that. It should be made criminal.

Just found this - CROSSRAIL - 1880s?!?!?! WTF!
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/crossrail-from-its-early-beginnings

... There's only a limited direct service, and into Stansted was the best return option on a Sunday evening. However, the flight would arrive at 11pm. The last train to London departs at midnight. Any delay whatsoever, and I would estimate at least 50% of the time there was, one would miss that final train. Only other option is a bus. Even if you did catch the train to Liverpool Street, by the time you arrived, the Underground service was finished and a night bus was the only option (or a taxi of course, but that's pretty expensive). ...

When I first got the Crossrail info I was astounded that they didn't even consider running a service up to Stansted from the Liverpool St end! There's a spur down to LHR from the Paddington end (hurrah!) and an option to get to Stansted at the other end would seem such a grand idea as to be a no-brainer! At least a no-brainer to consider it, but apparently not. Wasn't even a glimmer of a suggestion.

Makes you wonder what sort of numbnuts they get to look into these sorts of things!

LOL I may move there from Redbridge then.

My Council tax is nearly double yours!

Excellent point about Ken bribing the poorer councils, however to pay for it ALL our council taxes will go up.

The only benefit I can see from the olympic bid is that it may force governments hand over crossrail. A project that should've started 15 years ago.