Elon Musk Posts New Video of 'Boring' Equipment and Company's First Tunnel (cnbc.com)

Elon Musk has posted a new video and several pictures of equipment that will be used to start digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles. There's a picture of boring machine segments that are being lowered into the start tunnel at SpaceX, a front view of the tunnel, an inside view of the tunnel, and a picture of the front of the boring machine that will cut through underground rock. Additionally, the video shows a version of the "skate" that will cary cars through the tunnel at a speed of 125 mph. CNBC reports: The project is one of Musk's latest ventures, which was inspired by a desire to alleviate "out of control" traffic in Los Angeles. He aims to first dig a tunnel from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to the nearby Los Angeles airport. Musk frequently flies from Los Angeles to the San Francisco area, where he runs Tesla. Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city.

Comments

Well.. So what?

[bobbied]

Until he actually digs a tunnel that leaves his property, all this is just fun and games with out much point. Not to mention, where is the exit to this billion dollar boondoggle and where are all those permits you require sir? This IS California you know....

Re:Well.. So what?

[thule]

Exactly! And don't forget that LA used to be a decent oil producer. There are still pockets of natural gas under LA. The current subway project has run into them.

He's going to run into the same issues Google has running fiber in some cities. My guess is that LA much be at the top of bureaucratic nightmares compared to other US cities. I've seen first hand how it took months for fiber to get pulled into a building because they had to tear up a section of the street. That was ONE building and the fiber was a short block away!

Then again, he was able to get CARB to buy into features of the Telsa that weren't available yet (I'd say it was a scandal). He's quite a salesman.

Re:Well.. So what?

[thule]

I love ideas, but CA the place that hates building infrastructure. Even for simple things like.... water. Arizona has been building infrastructure for water to handle increasing population. California? Nope. But like I said, Elon is quite the salesman, maybe he'll pull it off.

Re:Well.. So what?

[msauve]

He doesn't need to build a tunnel which leaves his property. His troll is working perfectly as it is, just by posting a couple of animated gif loops.

YHBT.YHL.HAND.

Re:Well.. So what?

[Gavagai80]

A purpose of The Boring Company is to avoid the issue of having to tear up streets, by going under. The main reason Arizona has an easier time building infrastructure than California is that it's mostly cactus and there's nothing to be lost and no worthwhile environment to harm by tearing it up.

Re: Well.. So what?

[corychristison]

Elon a salesman? Have you ever seen him speak?

I like the stuff he's putting his money into, but he is not good at forming a verbal sentence, let alone in front of people or the media.

Re:Well.. So what?

[Aereus]

If its anything like Japan's highspeed network, the trains are linked to seismic alerts and can come to a complete stop within 10 seconds, often before the earthquake even reaches the area.

Re:Well.. So what?

[nukenerd]

Honestly, this feels like Tesla wanting to build it's own subway.

It does not "feel like", it is.

The stupid part about this scheme is the lifts to get cars down to its level. They are going to be a serious bottleneck. Without knowing the details I guess they will be on a side loop which peels off and then rejoins the main lane at speed, but even so it is going to a big delay if you are in the queue for it, and if that queue is underground to get back to the surface, the tailback will stretch back into the main lane and bring it to a halt, defeating the object (ditto the street above). Think of a conventional subway/underground-railway, accessed by a lift that only one passenger can use at a time.

This system will work fine as long as only a handful of billionaires want to use it.

Musk has abandoned doing serious things. He just enjoys playing with big toys and seeing his own face in the media.

Re: Well.. So what?

[guruevi]

So it's like the hyperloop, but theoretically feasible.

Re:Well.. So what?

[HanzoSpam]

I think there's a point. I don't think California is his sole purpose in developing this technology.

Keep in mind, given the solar radiation the surface of Mars is exposed to, at least initially habitats will need to be located underground. I'm guessing he has more than one objective in mind here.

Re:Well.. So what?

[Agripa]

That is a nice boring project that you have there; it would be a shame if something happened to it.

Re:oh man

[bobbied]

Put it where the sun don't shine!

Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[fiannaFailMan]

Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.

If traffic is driving Musk nuts then the solution is not to find innovative new ways to handle more traffic. The solution is to ask why is traffic so bad in the first place.

Recommended reading: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs

Or if that's too heavy, try Suburban Nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream.

Only then will you come to see the culprit: Single Use Zoning, aka the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) rules. Single-use zoning forces everybody to make several car journeys just to get through a typical day. Going to work? Car. Going out for lunch? Car. Going home form work? Car. Need to go out for a bottle of milk and postage stamp? Car. Going to a movie? Car.

No bloody wonder the place is flooded with traffic. You try to build a city around the automobile and it becomes a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. You try to widen roads to accommodate more cars and the laws of induced demand kick in, resulting in even more traffic and roads as choked as they were before.

Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem. Smart growth and sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development is a far better solution than drilling holes in the ground and cracking puns about the word "boring." It requires years of tedious work and politicking to build support for smart growth. A city is not a private company with which you can do what you like. There are elected councils, public advisory committees, public hearings, tax implications, and all manner of complex bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to fix these things.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[jcr]

You're probably joking, but as it happens you're right. Point-to-point VTOL travel solves this problem, saves energy, and saves lives.

-jcr

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[kaka.mala.vachva]

For most places, urban planning is too late - the houses are built, offices are built, shopping areas are built.Unless you propose destroying one of these and moving them, urban planning is a wash - nothing can be done. What Elon Musk has proposed is a potential solution that will solve some of the commute issues - and if it actually takes off, we might see planning around this underground transportation. Imagine - shopping, offices, houses being built underground as transportation moves underground. No more heating or cooling issues, and with TV screens getting better and better, it would be easy to replace windows with appropriate screens to mimic day to night transitions. The surface would be dedicated to farms and gardens and forests - sci fi come to reality, as it were.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[ccguy]

Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem.

Well, he seems to be trying to fix the current situation. Los Angeles is what it is. Sure, if the city could be rebuilt the traffic problem could be avoided completely.

Yes, lots of people have tried to solve the problem. But solving it on paper and actually having the resources to do something are two very different things. This guy can solve the problem technologically and can probably solve it politically (since everyone listens when he said anything).

Anyway what's your point? Since other people have tried and failed it just cannot be solved?

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[ffkom]

If everyone who drives a car now goes by some sort of air-traffic, cities will become a nightmare of constant, extreme noise.
Those who dream of flying cars usually dream of only themselves using them while everybody else keeps quiet.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[PIBM]

LOL, cities are a nightmare of constant extreme noise already. Electric cars will reduce the problem, but there`s just too many people doing too much things, you can't escape the noise.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

His tunnels, as described are low volume though.

It will solve traffic for the rich, but make barely an impact for anyone else.

at least as I gather from the idea of the sled stopping and elevatering up.

Even without the elevator, I'm not convinced sled to still ground capacity can match road capacity (the sled has to stop at both ends of the tunnel).

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Tx]

Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem. Smart growth and sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development is a far better solution than drilling holes in the ground and cracking puns about the word "boring." It requires years of tedious work and politicking to build support for smart growth. A city is not a private company with which you can do what you like. There are elected councils, public advisory committees, public hearings, tax implications, and all manner of complex bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to fix these things.

I think you've just lost an argument with yourself there, buddy. As you said, it would take decades of tedious effort and politicking to turn a city around to your "smart growth", and with the vagaries of politics and finance, there's no guarantee of success; you're always only an election away from some numpty cutting funding for the projects and spending the money on something else. I wouldn't want to get involved in that, and it seems Elon doesn't either. You can, however, start building tunnels today, as Elon has done. The idea may or may not pan out, and it may or may not play a significant role in urban transportation even if it does pan out to some extent, but it's something that you can start the ball rolling on right away, and have a reasonable degree of control over. That's exactly why Elon goes for that kind of solution, and personally I'm all for it. It doesn't preclude any other kind of development, so if others want to pursue "smart growth", great, it doesn't have to be Elon's job.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Gravis Zero]

Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.

You might be completely right about this but I suspect the traffic tunnels is the excuse he's giving to develop his own machinery. I think the primary interest here is actually to develop the machinery that would be needed to mine for minerals on Mars.

Alternatively, he may be secretly planning to create a bunch of tunnels to connect the continents and then make a rail line that can transport goods faster and cheaper between the east and the west faster than huge boats could ever hope to travel. Something like this would take at least a decade and giving a non-threatening "traffic tunnels" excuse prevents the existing transport industry from putting up their guard and blocking his progress with paid off politicians.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[ffkom]

You should try listening to (a) an electric car stopping at your neighbour's house and compare it to (b) an electric helicopter landing in your neighbour's garden. There is hell of a lot of difference. Air travel is loud because lots of air needs to be moved at high speed to make something hover, this won't change even if the motor was completely quiet.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[93 Escort Wagon]

It will solve traffic for the rich, but make barely an impact for anyone else.

Well let's face it - while Elon pays lip service to "eventually" having a network of these tunnels, he's really only interested in his own journey between his business and the airport.

Generally relevant stories from the past: Eric Schmitt saying "privacy is dead, get over it"; then getting upset when his own private information is made available on the web. Or Mark Zuckerberg talking about solving society's problems, but buying all the houses around his own so he doesn't have to deal with those pesky neighbors.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

I wish I could buy an entire company to cut my commute by convincing others it would save problems.

I'm a little less cynical than you though, I think a network will be built, But it will have massive tolls and low throughput. It will solve the problem of traffic for the rich, and maybe along some routes for the doing very well and really want to save time right now. It will make money and provide a useful service, but not one for normal people.

I just don't see the throughput being enough to reduce traffic for the pleabs that can't afford it. Certainly lower throughput than a train.

Maybe if done over long distances, on a schedule, this (sleds) could be a way to split the difference between trains and cars and get some of the best of both, but it will never have the capacity of a Long Island rail road train (they're double decker and packed at times) and even they have congestion problems (different city, blah blah).

Introducing a lower capacity method of travel won't improve things very much, and I really suspect that this is lower capacity than even a medium capacity road.

Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe the sled can improve the capacity of a road by speeding things up, and people transitioning sled to still ground just as fast as driving normally, I could see it working if people weren't idiots, back stops for the tires come up, you put your car in neutral (where idiots would fuck it up) sled slows down and car coasts onto road where you shift to an appropriate gear/drive. Probably not good for the transmission or clutch, but definitely possible.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

His tunnels, as described are low volume though.

Not with computer-controlled spacing between sleds and 125 mph travel speeds.

By dramatically increasing the throughput per lane, and the necessary width of the lane (a typical lane is much wider than a car because people drift), and the need for shoulders, the tunnel diameter can be significantly shrunk for the same throughput. Half the diameter and you quarter the cross sectional area. Boring costs scale linearly with cross sectional area.

Hence one of the publicly disclosed parts of the idea behind Boring Company.

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet. One has, however, which is simultaneous casing and boring, rather than bore/stop/case. There's a number of changes to the head that they're looking to make, but they haven't been discussed yet. Regardless, even if none of the latter pan out, simply reducing tunnel radii for a given amount of vehicle throughput is a pretty straightforward way to reduce tunneling costs.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

It's not really that simple. There's a lot of design decisions that factor strongly into how much noise an aircraft makes - for example, greater rotor area means more air moving at lower speeds. Smaller props for a given rotor area mean lower tip speeds. Greater numbers of blades increases the frequency of noise and thus its atmospheric attenuation. The surface and shape of the foils can have an effect on noise. Ducts can cause the same effect as larger props (increased air mass at lower speed). Any sort of properly designed cowling can reduce noise. Reduced blade thickness (aka, stronger materials, which we get all the time) reduces noise. And on and on. And there's lots of new techniques being investigated for noise reduction - asymmetrical spacing of blade pairs (makes it so that the blades don't pass through previous blades' vortices at perfect intervals), sound canceling, etc.

Also, I don't know of any "flying car" proponent who is proposing that people take off from their driveways - the concept is small urban/suburban helipads. You still need noise reduction, but not that degree of noise reduction.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

The ability to travel where you want, when you want, at minimal sacrifice, is otherwise known as "quality of life".

And I will always be opposed to people whose "solutions" involve sacrifices to quality of life, as will most people in the world.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[aaarrrgggh]

Not true; small scale mixed use infill development can make a big local impact, and do it long enough and you start to have regional impact. With dense walkable communities mass transit becomes viable, even as an afterthought.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[aaarrrgggh]

The real problem for Los Angeles traffic is that places like Temecula and Palm Springs are starting to become "bedroom communities" for people working in Irvine, El Segundo, and Santa Monica. Transit only makes the problem worse.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[niittyniemi]

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet.

An Elon Musk project where the engineering "details" haven't come out yet? Tell me it ain't so.

One has, however, which is simultaneous casing and boring, rather than bore/stop/case. There's a number of changes to the head that they're looking to make, but they haven't been discussed yet.

Simultaneous lining and boring has been a done deal for decades. I refer you to the Channel Tunnel.

I don't know what kind of bedrock they would be boring through but they all come up against something they didn't expect. Doesn't matter if it's sedimentary or metamorphic rock in the case of the English Channel or igneous rock in the Swiss alps. Add to that an area that is prone to earthquakes....piece of piss, right?

I think I've seen enough of Elon Musk to determine that he is full of shit and preys on people who know precisely fuck all about engineering...or anything else, for that matter. That includes the politicians who give him vast subsidies for whatever is the latest delusional bollocks he happens to come out with.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Z34107]

I thought I read this pretentious garbage somewhere else before. It's bad enough when the stories are dupes, but, even worse, /. has declined so far that it's taken at least two stories for someone to inform you that LA is already built. Your suggestion to "build it better" is a hundred-odd years too late to be anything other than cock-stroking.

Unless your suggestion was actually to bulldoze everything and start over, now that you're around to plan things properly. It's not too late for that, but it really puts Musk's "arrogant" tunnel suggestion into perspective.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

How does the fast sled to road transition happen at faster than 5mph? That's the bottleneck I see for through put.

1 car every 30 seconds is not more throughput, even at light speed. It's less latency.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[dgatwood]

I would assume they would do it through fan-out. Have twenty tunnels in the last few thousand feet, with each one going to a different road so that you're adding twenty times as many cars onto the road system as you otherwise would.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Diamond Prospector]

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet.

An Elon Musk project where the engineering "details" haven't come out yet? Tell me it ain't so.

One has, however, which is simultaneous casing and boring, rather than bore/stop/case. There's a number of changes to the head that they're looking to make, but they haven't been discussed yet.

Simultaneous lining and boring has been a done deal for decades. I refer you to the Channel Tunnel.

I don't know what kind of bedrock they would be boring through but they all come up against something they didn't expect. Doesn't matter if it's sedimentary or metamorphic rock in the case of the English Channel or igneous rock in the Swiss alps. Add to that an area that is prone to earthquakes....piece of piss, right?

I think I've seen enough of Elon Musk to determine that he is full of shit and preys on people who know precisely fuck all about engineering...or anything else, for that matter. That includes the politicians who give him vast subsidies for whatever is the latest delusional bollocks he happens to come out with.

Absolutely correct.

As someone who worked on the Channel Tunnel at the dirty end, I can confirm 'simultaneous' lining and boring has been carried out for the last few decades.

However, there will always be an cyclic element to the operation as the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) has to push off of something to get thrust forward and that is usually done by hydraulic jacking off the leading edge of the lining behind the head. The TBM usually thrusts forward to the extent of its jacks, then grips the side of the tunnel and retracts the jacks to allow segment erection before jacking forward once again. The 'downtime' also allows for regular maintenance for replacing cutter heads, drilling forward exploratory holes, lubrication etc.

The TBM also has a 'maintenance train' running on rails behind it, of up to 200m long of connected sub modules, which the head pulls along as it jacks forward. The train contains the logistics such as power packs, transformers, spoil handling, temp storage, grout pumps, spare parts, mobile workshops etc. As the lining has to be the full bore of the tunnel, it has to be broken down into sections that can pass through the centre of the train and then be re-erected behind the TBM cutting head. This erection of sections has to be carried out as close to the head as possible to minimise the length of unsupported ground behind the head for both worker safety and technical reasons i.e. the ground could collapse and trap the TBM from the sides. Add in any water issues or soft flowing ground and the erection has to carried out in a sealed/semi sealed environment as well. As a gap will also exist between the final outer surface of the lining and ground, this has to be pumped full of weak cement mix or 'grout' to fill the voids, both providing a waterproof annular surrounding for the tunnel as well as avoiding any point loads from uneven ground on the lining.

With the TBM head (for a 8m dia tunnel) weighing around 200 tons (with a main bearing of around 30 tons) and lining segments to be handled of 1-2.5 tons ea, (maybe 8-12 segments per metre of lining) you're not playing with small numbers to shift around and construct. Appreciate that Elon's tunnels will be smaller diameter but current tunneling methods are continuously being optimized and the TBM design is matched to the predicted ground conditions, therefore there is next to no chance of increasing tunneling speeds by a factor of 10x as is quoted..

As someone who has worked in hard rock tunnels 10,000 feet underground, where the rock was under some much pressure it was continuously 'spitting' small flakes at you, to shallow 'soft rock' tunnels where you worry about the TBM taking too much ground out and causing sinkholes to appear on surface, I have to call Elon Musk out as full of shit

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Diamond Prospector]

I would assume they would do it through fan-out. Have twenty tunnels in the last few thousand feet, with each one going to a different road so that you're adding twenty times as many cars onto the road system as you otherwise would.

Simplistic idea beyond belief.

Nobody has explained yet how they turn the sleds around for a return journey.

You either run a double decked tunnel (BTW larger diameter tunnel required than the car widths being quoted) or two tunnels with a loop or runoff tunnel arrangement with rail switching between. A fan exit arrangement multiplies the complexity by the number of exits, so is not really practical.

Alternatively run each one way route in isolation with a double deck tunnel, with the lower deck used for empty returning sleds, which don't need as much headroom unloaded.

Out on a tangent, I suppose you could try a rectangular or square tunnel boring shield to reduce tunneling volume for shallow tunnels, this is something currently being trialed in Singapore.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[marquisdepolis]

Not that I disagree with the obvious problems with Elon's project, but a few words in defence of jumping in and trying stuff. It's extremely easy to start reading about the complexity inherent (social, political, technological) and therefore decide the way things are is the only real practical way things can ever be. Sometimes it's better to jump in, try something, and see if it works. Accepted wisdom is right far more often than wrong (hence accepted) but it's still not 100%, and we should try the corner cases where odds of success are 1% (ideally at least 1% of the time). So even as it's foolhardy I'd rather see more billionaires at least trying new ideas, if only because out of the randomness we'll learn something new rather than rely on accepted wisdom.

Re: Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[senatorpjt]

It seems like an even better solution would be to eliminate commuting for the 50% of people who don't always need to be physically present to do their job.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Shirley Marquez]

It was actually Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who said that. More accurately, the quote was "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." If Eric Schmidt ever said something similar he would have been referencing McNealy.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[phantomfive]

The problem with books like that is people like to live in the suburbs. They want to own their own home instead of living in an apartment complex.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[phantomfive]

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet.

Even if this is the only thing to come out of the project, it's a big win.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

An unoccupied sled could probably run under the occupied ones in the credentials under the road.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

Crescents

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

If you have an already-hardened "leading edge" to push off of, including a "downtime", I would not call that "simultaneous". Boring Company is seeking to achieve continuous movement, including the "regular maintenance". As for the details of "how", we'll have to wait. There's no shortage of different ways that concrete can be laid; precast segments carried in and placed is hardly the only one. I'd bet (based on no evidence whatsoever) that they're looking to cast it in place, and push off not some sort of leading edge, but an annular anchor against the hardened concrete further back (e.g. steel ring, pneumatically expanded to fill the tunnel, high traction material on the exterior)

With the TBM head (for a 8m dia tunnel)

Did that video look like an 8m dia tunnel to you? Part of the whole point is achieving smaller tunnels with the same throughput by automated vehicles moving at high speeds. All tunneling will encounter varying problems with the geology, but the smaller diameter the tunnel, the cheaper it is.

Appreciate that Elon's tunnels will be smaller diameter... therefore there is next to no chance of increasing tunneling speeds by a factor of 10x as is quoted..

Diameter is not about tunneling speed. Diameter is about tunneling cost. Smaller TBM, smaller amount of material moved, smaller casing, etc, etc.

Speed is an entirely different factor that they're trying to simultaneously improve.

current tunneling methods are continuously being optimized

And that's just the problem: "continuously being optimized". Boring Company, like everything else Musk has ever touched, is not about "continuous optimization". It's about breaking entirely with how things are traditionally done to achieve big leaps. The rocket industry had been "continuously optimized". Automobiles had been "continuously optimized". Etc. "Continuous optimization" is great, but you need to break "this is how things are done" paradigms every now and then.

There's no guarantees of success in doing so, but it's very important to try. And if you try enough paradigm breaks on a given topic, at least a few will stick, even if the others don't pan out.

Natural geology is not some nice predictable tech environment where you can confidently predict the ground conditions

Which would be a meaningful statement if anything about the Boring Company was based on the premise of geology becoming easier to work with.

, I have to call Elon Musk out as full of shit on this topic.

Reminds me of all of the rocketry people calling Musk out as full of shit on rocketry and all of the car people calling him out as full of shit on Tesla. There even was a blog, "Tesla Deathwatch" out there, counting down the days until Tesla inevitably went under.

If you want your arguments to bear more weight, you need to actually argue against things that the Boring Company is actually doing. For example, argue that all else being equal, narrower tunnels are not cheaper than higher diameter tunnels. Or you need to find out what alternative approach to casing they're actually planning to use, or the approach they're planning to use to reduce cutting head downtime, and so forth and argue against *those,*, rather than insisting that "anything that's not the same as we do it now is impossible". Otherwise, you're just going to come across looking like all of the rocket and car people a decade ago.

Earthquakes???

[Heebie]

What happens when an earthquake collapses or changes the course of a tunnel, so people travelling in it abruptly reach a dead end?

Re:Earthquakes???

[kaka.mala.vachva]

http://blogdowntown.com/2012/0...

Re:Earthquakes???

[rikkitikki]

And now you know his real plan as to how he plans to become the first real-life James Bond villain.

When will he get to the envisioning?

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

The article says: "Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city." I can't believe we call someone who takes this long to envision something an innovator! Why can't he have envisioned this already? It seems like the CNBC reporter beat him to it. Or, perhaps, the CNBC reporter doesn't worry about grammar.

The cities are already built

[KalvinB]

Since we're not going to knock down and rebuild Los Angeles then the option is to find a solution for the city as it exists.

You post also ignores one key fact: the focus is on inter-city travel, not inner city travel.

From Phoenix to Los Angeles there is a good 300+ miles of I-10 that takes up a good 4-5 hours of driving.

Putting in a tunnel between the two cities avoids the most important problems of putting solutions on land:

You have to own the land

You have to work around existing infrastructure.

300 miles at 125 miles per hours is less than 3 hours of travel time. And since it's automated, you can do something productive during that time.

Re:The cities are already built

[dgatwood]

Only at the two ends. Your rights do not necessarily extend all the way to the Earth's core merely because you own the surface. Governments often grant others a legal right to bore under your property (e.g. for subway systems). And the deeper you go, the less likely it is that you'll have to deal with any sort of buried utilities. Once you get a couple of hundred feet below the ground, you're almost guaranteed to not hit anything, even in NYC. So it's strictly a question of whether the state grants you appropriate permits to do it or not at that point.

spyware alert

[swell]

That CNBC link has 14 trackers and about the same number of scripts. I don't bother counting cookies or ads any more. Is that the best link we can find? No slashdotter, properly equipped with malware protection, will be able to see the pics or videos. And if you do see the pics & vids, be aware that you are not alone as you cruise the web.

What I want to know...

[xession]

What I want to know is what happens when someone gets into this high speed tunnel, rolls their window down, and jumps out?

What about people throwing their trash out of their window?

What about pickup trucks, do those fit in this sled? What about the stupid fuckers that have shit in their bed that flies out at speed, potentially impacting the vehicle in the sled behind?

The only way I see this working is if a car that has wirelessly controllable features where they can lock your windows and only allow approved vehicles to travel. Even after all of those potential conflict points, you still have the inevitable problem of traffic at the end of this tunnel. Did anything think about how that was supposed to be handled?

Voting dumb on this idea.

Good investment in moon technology

[fadethepolice]

best way to build a moon base is to bore into the side of a crater that is perpetually sunlit at on of the poles of the moon. Solar panels + boring machine = moon base. For those of you who think this is just to alleviate los angeles traffic -- this is why you are not a billionaire like elon musk.

Good idea except...

[SuperKendall]

I actually like the idea of a lot of tunnels under a city. Since it's basically a subway what is not to like?

The only thing Im not as sure about, are tunnels in California where earthquakes are not totally uncommon. I'd be interested to know what mitigation they have for that...

But apart from that, keep digging!

Caldecott Tunnel fire

[Archfeld]

This brings to mind the Caldecott Tunnel fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I am not particularly claustrophobic but I'd hate to be in a tunnel in CA during an earthquake, or in case of the inevitable car crash and subsequent vehicle fire. I've always had bad feelings in the BART Transbay tube. That would be a bad place to be stuck in an emergency no matter what platitudes and assurances they post about emergency exits and safety procedures. I was living in the bay area during the Northridge quake, and the Loma Prieta quake as well.

Elon rediscovered that when you do, shit gets done

[zr]

and (might be a shock to some) not batting 1000 still gets shit done

Musk's projects are related

[Baron_Yam]

He wants to retire on Mars, so he's building rockets to get there.

Mars has no fossil fuels, so everything's going to be electric and the source will be solar or nuclear. So he's got Tesla working on solar power and storage.

Mars has a nasty surface, so underground is the place to be. Either you build and heap surface material over you... or you bore tunnels. Enter the Boring Company.

Mars has no communications infrastructure... at all. Enter SpaceX worldwide Internet. You think those same satellites couldn't orbit Mars? Probably with less worry of orbital impact or atmospheric drag, too.

Mars has no transportation infrastructure... and the surface (as previously mentioned) is not human-friendly. Mars ALSO has very little atmosphere, and Elon has a boring machine. Enter the Hyperloop. With less gravity and less atmosphere to deal with, the Hyperloop concept seems like it's a perfect fit for a well-bored tunnel.

Each of the things he's working on is part of a future Mars colony, and they all have the potential to make him money here (which helps him get there).

costco car wash

[pablo_max]

Seriously, have you ever been to a costco car wash? Have you ever seen how much trouble many of the people have just driving into the track?
How the hell are these morons supposed to drive their cars onto some "sled" that will drop down into a tunnel?

Not to mention the fact that it would like 5 fucking minutes for ONE car to get down there and cycle the next sled to be moved up to the deck. It would take hours before it was actually your turn to go down.

Google Maps says....

[Ancient_Hacker]

Google Maps says that if he leaves right now, the trip from his HQ to LA airport takes 12 to 16 minutes, by road. Going by his tunnel, maybe half that, if the car elevators at each end are really quick or if he leaves his cars pre-positioned at the tunnel level. If we assume he uses the tunnel twice a week, say 100 times a year, for the next 10 years, that's 2,000 trips, or about 14,000 minutes, or about 200 hours. If he can built it at 1/20th the cost per mile of the chunnel, that would be right around $1 billion. So it's going to cost him $5 million dollars for every saved hour. Is Elon's time worth $5 million an hour? Oh, he's going to open the tunnel to general use? How many cars an hour can the elevators position? Even if you figure one car per minute, that's still a very underutilized and uneconomical tunnel!

Re:Google Maps says....

[psycho12345]

Try seeing what Google maps says the time will be at 8AM on a Wednesday. It will be easily double to triple the time.

Re:Google Maps says....

[rkordmaa]

I think his argument is he can dig tunnels cheaper than anyone. Can he, and by how much? I don't know. I think he is mostly just fishing around for next low hanging fruit. Not a bad strategy, when you have more money than you know what to do with.

What happens if/when...

[martinfb]

What happens if/when a significant earthquake hits?
(Which, I believe is unpredictably overdue.)
Is it safer to be in a tunnel, or on a surface road?
(I know - bridges/overpasses aren't any safer!)