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Elon Musk Changes 'Boring Company' Vision To Reward Cyclists and Pedestrians (techcrunch.com)
"Remember Elon Musk's plan to dig a massive web of traffic-beating tunnels underneath Los Angeles...?" asks CNN. "Now, that plan appears to be getting a huge makeover." An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch:
While it will still focus on digging tunnels to provide a network of underground tubes suitable for use by high-speed Hyperloop pods, the plan now is to use that Hyperloop to transport pedestrians and cyclists first, and then only later to work on moving cars around underground to bypass traffic. Musk shared the update via Twitter, noting that the idea would be to load customers onto cars roughly the size that a single parking space takes up currently, [thousands of which] would be dotted around an urban environment close to any destinations where someone might travel. The single-car station model would be designed to replace the current subway-style model, Musk said, where only a few small stations are very spread out... This is a big departure from the original vision, and it seems like one that might have evolved after Musk and his collaborators on the project spoke to urban planners and transit authorities.
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first," Musk posted on Twitter, sharing a new conceptual video where an elevator lowers one of these pedestrian- and cyclist-focussed shuttle pods underground.
TechCrunch says this new vision "would be appealing both to urban officials looking to decrease congestion on downtown roads and discourage personal vehicle use, and to anyone hoping to increase access to affordable transit options."
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first," Musk posted on Twitter, sharing a new conceptual video where an elevator lowers one of these pedestrian- and cyclist-focussed shuttle pods underground.
TechCrunch says this new vision "would be appealing both to urban officials looking to decrease congestion on downtown roads and discourage personal vehicle use, and to anyone hoping to increase access to affordable transit options."
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first" - I love the insinuation that the only people who don't have a car are those that can't afford one. I quite often forget that Musk is an American but every now and then, he makes it super obvious.
I'm happy to see that Elon Musk's vision is flexible. This indicates to me that maybe he does indeed want The Boring Company's work to benefit as many people as possible, and not just help himself and the rich "elites" dodge traffic as I've seen the Elon bashers insinuate.
Now will his detractors applaud this move, or will they simply adjust their conspiracy theories and redouble their efforts?
Capacity tends to get used; see the computer industry: 25 years ago 640k of memory seemed enough -- nowadays 16 gig seems to barely get things done.
One of my biggest complaints about mass transit is that it's inconvenient on both ends. If this is fast, pods leave frequently, and I only have to walk a couple blocks on both ends it, why would I drive even if I owned a car?.
If hyperloop is going to be used for short transit trips for pedestrians and bikes, the overhead of having a vacuum enclosed space, with pods shooting around begs the question--can't we just build the tunnels and build a setup that uses something like a segway or personal vehicle on a small track to get your around to your destination? It seems this would have much a much smaller failure impact (people can still walk in the tunnels) and would require far less investment in technology and upfront cost to build.
nobody notices he just moved the goal post (either because their tech don't work or they don't have the money).
Not sure what article you read, but this new plan means MORE stations, and MORE tunnels to provide access to the wider variety of entry points scattered around the city. Before it was just a handful of terminals at either end of a city.
So the only implication one can possibly derive from this new plan is that tunneling is either easier or cheaper than originally thought (probably both).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not true, period. No matter what, pedestrians slow down traffic, because they have to cross in front of traffic, and they cross far more slowly than cars, which means you have a minimum traffic light cycle time, and often means cars having to wait to make turns while someone walks across.
The only way pedestrians could not slow down traffic would be if you have second-floor pedestrian bridges between buildings like they do up north (or basement or whatever).
Don't believe me? Take a look at which traffic lights in the Bay Area have the worst problems with traffic backups, and you'll find high-pedestrian zones at nearly every one of them (with the exception of a few that back up because of freeways).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Musk does this honest bullshit thing sometimes; What he says is factually correct, but his statements play on human psychology to distract from his true motives and concerns. Here are some examples:
- Launching the roadster into space. Really, he might have been wary of lifting off the first prototype of Falcon Heavy with a full capacity load and wanted to fly with a much lighter test mass. A light test mass would look weak. So he flew the roadster. A car in space! Wow! Everyone was so distracted by a car in space that nobody thought to ask so hey, what's wrong with this thing that you are not flying it at even close to full weight capacity?
- Gwynne Shotwell, President and CEO of SpaceX. Musk is never going to find an equal proportion of highly qualified man and women engineers to staff SpaceX because colleges and universities do not graduate them in equal proportion. So he finds one super-competent woman and gives her the two most prominent jobs in the company to distract for the skewed gender ratio among top engineers.
- Prioritizing people and bicycles over cars in his Boring Co tunnels. Well, someone probably ran the numbers and found something out. Like that you can't run internal combustion engine cars through these things because of the exhaust CO and yet the number of electric cars on the road will not be enough pay for the tunnel until decades from now. So what does Musk say? "Errr, sorry everyone, I was wrong, car plan is not going to work now. Sucks" Nope. Instead that, in the interests of courtesy and fairness, the people and bikes get priority. With no mention whatsoever of any technical or financial flaws with his car skid plan, despite those probably being the determining concerns.
- The electric semi and next-gen roadster reveal were timed to coincide with the worst of the model 3 manufacturing hell. The effect was to distract from the failure to meet announced production rates.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
As the title says, but I'll get to that. First a bit of devils advocate:
Launching the roadster into space
Marketing, nothing more. The only people who think this is a distraction from the fact that the Falcon Heavy wasn't loaded at full capacity have never done a project before. You never flick the switch to 100% and hit the GO button on your first startup. It doesn't matter if you're designing a spaceship, a nuclear power plant or building a new kind of smartwatch.
Gwynne Shotwell
Yes there's a problem with how the Universities are cranking out graduates. That doesn't make what Musk is doing a distraction. If anything this is THE SINGLE BEST WAY to turn around the industry. Why would women chose STEM if there are no role models for success? He can't fix the skewing due to the underlying issues in society, so he's attempting to portray the power of women. This is more common sense than anything most other companies have come up with.
Prioritizing people and bicycles over cars in his Boring Co tunnels
You do realise this entire concept is in early stages of front end loading right? At this point there's still all sorts of ideas floating around. Finding a different way that may suit the original goal of the project (making money through a new form of mass transit) doesn't mean the original way didn't work, wasn't profitable, or wasn't technically feasible. This isn't a government project where you start at the conclusion and work backwards, it's a private company which generally means that projects look for the best possible outcome, even if that outcome isn't moving cars around.
Electric Semi
Well there's two things here, Firstly the Model 3 production shortfall was far worse several months before the semi was announced and had pretty much already been done to death in the media, and secondly these products don't just appear out of nowhere. This semi is clearly something that had a lot of engineering already completed. Why would you delay the announcement of your cool new shiny just because of some teething problems on a completely different product line?
Now back to Musk not having a clue
The thing that separates Musk and his companies from others is that he is comfortable with not having a clue. He is basically shaking up everything he touches in ways that people consistently say won't work. The end result may not be that each of his companies has blasted into profitability, but rather the result has had an incredible effect on the industry and society as a whole. He doesn't know what he's doing because no one has done the things he's doing. That ultimately means that some things aren't going to pan out.
Whenever you see someone like Musk failing at something or get criticised for not knowing what he's doing it's worth remembering these two statistics:
1. 95% of start-ups fail to get off the ground.
2. 90% of businesses even using established and traditional methods in normal industries fail in the first 2 years.
And these two say nothing of the number of companies that manage to change the course of entire industries.