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Elon Musk's Boring Company Bids On Chicago Airport Transit Link (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, the city of Chicago opened a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for an express train that would take passengers from the city's O'Hare airport to downtown. The system would have to be completely privately funded -- Chicago says no taxpayer money would be used for it. Elon Musk's Boring Company -- a tunneling company that the SpaceX and Tesla CEO started last year -- will respond to the request. Musk hopes to get to the second round when bidding will take place. On Wednesday evening, he tweeted that his company "will compete to fund, build & operate a high-speed Loop connecting Chicago O'Hare Airport to downtown."
Musk's reference to a "Loop" is explained more clearly on The Boring Company's FAQ page: "Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates traveling at 125-150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers (mass transit), or a single passenger vehicle." Unlike Musk's idea for a Hyperloop, a Loop won't draw a vacuum. "For shorter routes, there is no technical need to eliminate air friction," The Boring Company states. The company also clarifies the concept of an "electric skate:" that is "a platform on wheels propelled by multiple electric motors." The platform would operate autonomously without a rail or rails to which the skate would connect. The skate would operate in the tunnel's main artery, and it would enter and exit from side tunnels. With this system, The Boring Company says, the skate's average speed would theoretically be able to operate close to maximum speed.
Musk's reference to a "Loop" is explained more clearly on The Boring Company's FAQ page: "Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates traveling at 125-150 miles per hour. Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers (mass transit), or a single passenger vehicle." Unlike Musk's idea for a Hyperloop, a Loop won't draw a vacuum. "For shorter routes, there is no technical need to eliminate air friction," The Boring Company states. The company also clarifies the concept of an "electric skate:" that is "a platform on wheels propelled by multiple electric motors." The platform would operate autonomously without a rail or rails to which the skate would connect. The skate would operate in the tunnel's main artery, and it would enter and exit from side tunnels. With this system, The Boring Company says, the skate's average speed would theoretically be able to operate close to maximum speed.
Per TFA - actually, per the fucking headline - goddammit ppl, fucking read!!!!
"The platform would operate autonomously without a rail or rails to which the skate would connect."
For all of the people out there who have concerns about the Boring Company and tunnels they are planning to build, you really need to read the Boring Company FAQ.
Worried about earthquakes? They talk about it.
Wondering what the heck an electric skate is exactly? They talk about it.
Wondering how they can do tunnels economically? They talk about it.
The starting point of the discussions about using tunnels should be based on the claims they have there, not worries that have already been addressed...
I personally do not see how any surface based approach can possibly cost less than the tunnel approach or be put in as quickly given the huge amount of problems it takes to put in a new rail line over long existing areas.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Normally in procurement RFQ is the acronym for a Request for Quote. For a large contract like this vendors would be qualified with an RFI (Request for Information). When you actually bid you'd use a Request for Proposal (RFP). This is too large a contract to use quotes's on the primary contract.
This matters because RFI's are used early in the process. At those stages the agency may be able or willing to consider more creative approaches.
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When I went to school RFQ stood for Request For Quotation.
Oh, wait. Looks like it still does.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
we already have an electric train from o'hare to downtown in 40 minutes, and by the way the realistic time without the marketing hype for this proposed thing is 25 minutes.....so for $33 more than the current price you save a whopping 15 minutes. whoop de fucking do.
Well, you wouldn't have the expense of digging a goddamn tunnel.
Further, there are existing rail right-of-ways that are unused or underused all along the route from O'Hare to downtown Chicago. The city doesn't even know what to do with them. They've turned some into bike paths, but they hardly get used because you can safely bike anywhere in Chicago.
I'm sure it's good PR for Elon to be bidding on these contracts, but he's not going to get one in Chicago. Maybe it would make sense in a place like Houston, but there are so few people riding existing public transportation there, that I'm not sure anyone would use it. People love their cars in Houston, because for 10 months out of the year the weather is so bad you really can't go outside even for a walk from the parking lot to the Metro trains.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I personally do not see how any surface based approach can possibly cost less than the tunnel approach or be put in as quickly given the huge amount of problems it takes to put in a new rail line over long existing areas.
You might want to look at what happened with the DC Metro. The Red Line started leaking before they even finished it. It ended up costing more to repair the tunnel than it cost to build the entire system. They diverted money from maintenance for so long that the entire system is failing. And the Red Line is still leaking.
Chicago already has a very good alternative to tunnels: elevated tracks. I've only visited a couple of times but their system seems to work quite well.
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(1) There's already an electric train
(2) Why NOT have rails in the tunnel? They add little to the cost compared to drilling a tunnel, they drastically simplify guidance at high speeds, and they act as an electric power return path.
(Also, metal to metal friction is lower than metal to concrete.)
This is basically an automated subway using single cars, without the rails and, thus, with more difficult guidance issues.
First, after reading up on this it's practically unneeded. 20 minutes O'Hare to Downtown? The blue line El Train takes 45 minutes and costs hardly anything. If it took 5-10 minutes, maybe you'd have an argument.
Second, a car leaves every 15 minutes? you're going to need a rather steep cost of tickets to ride this thing. The private sector isn't going to invest billions if they can't make it back. What about upkeep, too? Is the city going to oversee it? Hire a Union (you bet yer sa-sij inna frunchroom there'll be one involved if it's Chicago)?
Third, above poster is correct: the actual cost of this will be about 3x the initial cost. Greasing palms in Chicago is how things get done, whether it's codified like a Union or not.
Fourth... Can someone please explain how any of this makes sense? Maybe it's the start of something great, but Chicago is in a bad spot right now. I'd half guess this is all just Rahm Emanuel grandstanding for political points rather than anything that will ever actually happen.
My one Chicago cent (the other gets taken by taxes and Union dues).
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You might want to look at what happened with the DC Metro. The Red Line started leaking before they even finished it.
It's not like there are not a lot of tunnels all around the world that go under water and handle leaks just fine. Just because the DC government is notorious for poor choices in construction quality does not mean Musk will be.
Did you know that all through the recent hurricane Harvey, most of the Houston underground tunnels did not flood at all?
Chicago already has a very good alternative to tunnels: elevated tracks.
I've been on them also a number of times, and in other places - but I do not think they are a good alternatives. Have you ever stayed anywhere near to trains on elevated tracks? I have, and it's not at all nice. Any new line would be a huge number of people having to live with this new noise, forever. All of the supports required for a train block an otherwise relatively clean view of buildings and parks around. And external trains can be subject to weather delays as well, in a way a tunnel never will be.
The main reason I don't think Musk will be chosen as the provider of the service is not because of cost or tunnels being less practical - it will be because working with Musk and high levels of automation offers insufficient opportunity for graft.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know about you, but around here, buses aren't computer-controlled car carriers (passengers inside) that operate in tunnels.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Rails are a minor part of the cost of a tunnel. Especially considering there needs to be a power supply system anyway.
For one thing, there are a ton of old disused tunnels under Chicago. I'd imagine they're poorly annotated given that many of them were completed over a hundred years ago.
If they unexpectedly run into one of those water-filled tunnels, I'd imagine that would be pretty bad.
Plus it's Chicago, so there's going to be major costs of bribery. That goes on the surface of course, but I'm sure local government will work overtime on how to wring more money out boring under, then bill someone for that overtime.
The oldest tunnel still in use under the Thames in London is coming up to its 175th birthday, half of them are over a century old and still dry. It's not that hard.
upgrade the blue line express can be done to speed up the trip.
The funny thing is, their boring tech is actually rather interesting ;) If their hot-swap liquid-cooled advanced-alloy cutting discs and continuous casing system work as designed, the performance should be amazing. I can't wait to see a video of a TBM operating at something like 1-2 rotations per second (today's TBMs are currently limited to far slower speeds to try to preserve disc life, as wear increases dramatically as cutting head temperature increases (which corresponds with rotation speed), and they can only be replaced when stopped)
Boring Company will never escape the randomness of geology, unmarked utilities, and so forth. But when it's moving - if their design works as intended - it should really move.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Okay. A flat-bed bus, then.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's also pretty short. Contrast with the TransBay Tube in San Francisco, which is having a bit of a mid-life crisis at only 43 years of age.
This is not to say that the problems aren't solvable, just that they have to be thought through.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not clear to me that the individual skates will require external power. My bet is that he's planning to have some kind of high duty cycle batteries on board. If the skate (with full battery/guidance/motor systems) can be easily detached from the car and replaced with a freshly charged skate, you just need enough skates "in the queue" to handle the load.
Without the need to run high-power electrics through the tunnel, and no risk of human exposure to high-tension power rails or cables, the whole thing could be much simpler to build and maintain.
That is not a good alternative. The elevated trains are *bone-shatteringly* noisy. I was posted on the 4th floor of a building on Wabash and the effect on productivity was MASSIVE. People think it's no big deal because they're "used to it", but having to mute your conference call every 2 minutes due to train noise is a massive inconvenience. And forget walking! After months of nearly losing my mind walking under those tracks, I finally started hunting down hotels that were far enough away from the tracks that I didn't have to walk parallel to them.
Half a year of working in Chicago and I was ready to murder somebody. It was unbelievably unpleasant.
I lived there, until immediately after Hurricane Harvey. And I lived in the Museum District, one block from the Metro going downtown. Houston has several times the population of Chicago, but they can barely fill a four-car Metro train during rush hour.
There's basically one real Metro line for a metropolitan area of 8.5 million people that's almost as big as the state of Delaware. And the Metro doesn't even go to Minutemaid Park or NRG stadium or the Toyota center. So if you wanna go to a Texans, Astros or Rockets game, it's automobile or no deal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Old tech -- elevated trains on a concrete elevated viaduct with rails bolted to the concrete (with rubber pads) would be much quieter.
I'm not saying I'm an expert on the subject - but I do live in the DC metro area and take the red line metro regularly.
As far as I'm able to determine, the maintenance issues they're experiencing are primarily the result of mismanagement and possible corruption. Whatever issues they had addressing water leaks in the tunnels should have LONG since been taken care of as an expected complication of building the tunnels. And yes, they "still leak" in the sense that when we've had a few instances where there was enough torrential rain and/or melting snow -- it caused certain metro stations to be flooded. (I'm not sure that's realistically avoidable? Within a day or so, they had things back under control when that happened, and the system kept running anyway, minus the stations they had to shut down. It wasn't so bad the trains couldn't pass on through them.) Most of the time, any leaking I see is just the slight sound of dripping water, like you'd expect to hear in a cave, and possibly a few small wet spots on the concrete walls. Pretty sure they have pumps in place that are pumping the water back out that's getting in and collecting someplace it's designed to go, and that's where the dripping sound comes from.)
The biggest challenge I see with the DC metro is simply that they designed the whole thing with only 2 tracks ... one in each direction. So any time a track needs repair, they go to "single tracking" to get around that spot, and that causes big delays for everyone. It would have been much more efficient if it was built with at least a third "spare" track they could switch to and use in either direction, as needed, in order to fix one of the main two tracks.
But still? There are obvious questions about where the money is all going with DC metro. Doesn't add up that you can have 24 hour/7 day operation of a subway system like New York City has, and yet their fares are still cheaper and their system that much more reliable overall. (I know they keep saying it's because of the larger volume of users in NYC. And that plays a role ... but that should ALSO mean more wear and tear, and need to hire more staff to manage it all.)
Part of the environmental benefit of electric transit is actually NOT needing to use environmentally-costly batteries, with their manufacturing/recycling problems and charging losses. Powering a vehicle directly from a contact rail or overhead wire is a lot better environmentally. Human exposure is not a major issue -- stick the contact rail or wire overhead as they do in some metro systems. Train stations with a low platform and 10,000v (or more) overhead wire are pretty common. The tracks (ground return) are at 0 volts, so safe to touch.
That's not how it's done. The train that's passing through at speed takes the straight-line route. Points don't affect its speed. The train that's stopping at a station is the one that will be shunted to the side by points.
You are correct. I made a mistake. I looked up Chicago city population and compared it to Houston metro population.
I also forgot to add that Chicago is a beautiful, world-class city and Houston is a horrible place to live.
You are welcome on my lawn.