Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk's Boring Company To Build High-Speed Transit Tunnels in Chicago (chicagotribune.com)
Chicago has picked Elon Musk's Boring Company to build a futuristic transportation link to the city's airport, The Boring Company said late Wednesday. "We're really excited to work with the Mayor and the City to bring this new high-speed public transportation system to Chicago!' it said in a statement posted on Twitter. Chicago Tribune: Autonomous 16-passenger vehicles would zip back and forth at speeds exceeding 100 mph in tunnels between the Loop and O'Hare International Airport under a high-speed transit proposal being negotiated between Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Hall and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's The Boring Co., city and company officials have confirmed. Emanuel's administration has selected Musk's company from four competing bids to provide high-speed transportation between downtown and the airport. Negotiations between the two parties will ensue in hopes of reaching a final deal to provide a long-sought-after alternative to Chicago's traffic gridlock and slower "L" trains. In choosing Boring, Emanuel and senior City Hall officials are counting on Musk's highly touted but still unproven tunneling technology over the more traditional high-speed rail option that until recently had been envisioned as the answer to speeding up the commute between the city's central business district and one of the world's busiest airports.
This is for Loop, not Hyperloop.
Think SkyTran, but faster and underground. And with both passenger capsules and car capsules.
Also, to anyone who doesn't know how Boring Company is working to reduce tunneling costs... Link.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
We're really excited to work with the Mayor and the City to bring this new high-speed public transportation system to Chicago!'
How can they be excited, since they work in a Boring company ?!?
Seems an expensive way to prove that a "transit" idea is idiotic (although how wide are those tunnels? If they're 12' and straight enough then they might at least be able to repurpose them for London Underground deep bore tunnel style trains once the thing fails. I'm kinda surprised those aren't built more commonly, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to build a 12' tunnel than the full-NEC-loading-gauge type stuff most transit authorities insist on building)
At least no taxpayer's money will be wasted on this.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Isn't it great that the working stiffs get to pay for a few billion dollars into Musk's pocket, while the rich people get to jet in and out of the Loop? How about fixing the fucking Blue line, which is late again today? Oh, that's right, black people take the blue line, and that's bad.
What a beautiful combination of racism and graft packaged in a press release that gets the idiot progressives all wet.
The Chicago system is expected to be able to handle nearly 2,000 passengers per direction per hour
Capacity's a bit low, isn't it? That's the equivalent of something like a conventional metro train running once every 30 mins...
I'll bet in the end this costs a minimum of 10x more than whatever is being quoted right now.
Airport connectors are almost always a boondoggle. I dislike boarding a shuttle bus to connect to the airport as much as anyone else, but it's infinitely cheaper, more adaptable, etc than building a crazy above ground or below ground, permanent, Disney-style train.
What's to stop someone from doing the same exact thing and calling their company Interesting Company?
needs stops at cumberland / Rosemont (river road) For local (non airport) express traffic to the big parking lots.
Chicago will still be the shittiest city in the US.
It seems Chicago is getting a pretty good deal. The Loop is being privately financed. And if this follows in the path of previous Musk projects - everyone involved except short sellers will be rewarded handsomely.
I know it's "boring", but a decent train is a good solution.
There is nothing unproven about the "technology". It is just making a tunnel and putting train shuttles in them, like has been done in airports all over. They aren't doing what Musk was proposing: a series of interlocking tunnels with carts that hold passenger cars which descend from the surface on elevators. Now THAT is a dumb idea.
Or something.
Quite why this is better than a train that could also do 100mph (yes, amazingly there are such trains Elon, they even run in tunnels too!) which could carry 100x the number of passengers at a time is anyones guess though it probably has something to do with clueles politicians thinking they're being On Message which this expensive sci-fi BS.
Alts for O'Hare-Congress Line? Like express tracks or full under ground?
They can have better speeds by just bypassing stations as is used to have A/B stations on that line.
An small build out by added some more 3rd track parts / more X overs even better. Use the 3rd tracks / X overs to hold local trains to let an express pass.
Now if they go under ground use the room to add lanes to kennedy expressway Like the pre CTA plan for the road.
How about you join a load of larger versions of these vehicles together (perhaps 100 people per vehicle, 10 vehicles in total) and call it , I dunno, a "train" maybe? Then put it on steel rails to reduce rolling resistance and hence energy consumption and make it powerful enough to get to 100mph (I've heard strange rumours that in france trains can do over 200mph, but no, that much be witchcraft!), then run each "train" at a 10 minute headway and guess what - you transport far more people! Its obviously a crazy idea, but you never know...
Now go ahead Musk worshipers, masturbate over this.
Way ahead of you. Already cleaned up actually.
Why didnt the L or Metra connect with OHare in the first place? They connect with Midway. This is a larger problem of cities not connecting transpiration hubs together just to pad the taxi coalition.
thanks Elon, what a humanitarian
greedy rich people
They say 18 mile loop, but I think they mean 18 miles one way. At 100 mph it's 12 minutes. At 60 mph 18 minutes. I don't see the point in making it go 100 mph plus, to save 6 minutes. It would be different if the trip took hours.
Autonomous 16-passenger
That's not going to fly in Chicago. If nobody is going to be in the train running it, there's going to have to be an employee sitting in a room monitoring a screen for every active train. The transit unions won't have any of this "autonomous" nonsense.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
This seems to be all very mundane. They are going to make tunnels, which are well understood. Then they are going to put something in the tunnels. From TFA, that something is not anything crazy. For a system like this, there's no reason the capsules can't be automated as long as sensible safety precautions are taken, which are also fairly well understood. It's a closed system so there are no external conflicts to be managed. And if the fancy-ass capsule system doesn't work as expected, it can drop back to a scheduled train style service.
It seems like the "news" here is really just a bunch of hype because one of Mr. Musk's companies is involved. Indeed, I can't really decide from TFA what constitutes the actual project and what is just speculation based on other things Musk has rattled on about.
Note that I'm not saying the project necessarily makes sense. Just that it's a fairly mundane sort of project.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Well, I use to live along the blue line between the loop and O'Hare, and I would welcome the new system. What people don't realize (that haven't ever taken that trip), is that blue line Loop to the airport is between 45-50 minutes one way. Faster and cheaper than a taxi during rush hour, but still slow. They say the target ticket price is $1, but I would gladly pay double or triple the L fare to get there in the 10-15 minutes.
we already have that, it's called the Blue Line. heh.
Really just need to make a set of express rails for Blue Line, no need for tunnels and no need for Musk. In some places the 2nd lines would be up in the air over grade track, which of course is how most the CTA train tracks are anyway, it's 125+ year old proven Chicago tech, we're good at it.
The stupidity and waste of this proposed project is unbelievable.
They have a train line. It doesn't go very fast though. But it is reasonably fast.
In exchange for paying to build the new transit system, Boring would keep the revenue from the system’s transit fees and any money generated by advertisements, branding and in-vehicle sales
Who could reject an offer like this? Innovative, faster, supported by a celebrity, initial costs fully paid and, apparently, with no risk. For Chicago, this seems a no-brainer. For the Boring side, it looks like a long-term investment assumed to be beneficial in any scenario ("1B losses expected to be recovered in 10 years no matter what? It would be excellent if we could build that innovative thing, but putting some stickers on an old train and doing a bit of PR juggling wouldn't be the end of the world either!"). I guess that this is one of the (rare) occasions when having lots of money gives you an unbeatable advantage. It looks like a bit too boring though.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Wow. Chicago is getting a tunnel built with some fairly standard, dinky, 16-passenger cars. If it weren't such a Musk Hole who would even care about this?
Musk is the master of taking Other People's Money and hyping it to the point where people believe he did what he set out to do.
Cheaper only because they low-bid the project. Buying his way into the market.
Faster AND Cheaper---we'll see. Cannot wait to see the operating costs as well.
Like most things Musky---it's going to be all sizzle and gristle, with no steak in sight.
we already have that, it's called the Blue Line. heh.
Really just need to make a set of express rails for Blue Line, no need for tunnels and no need for Musk. In some places the 2nd lines would be up in the air over grade track, which of course is how most the CTA train tracks are anyway, it's 125+ year old proven Chicago tech, we're good at it.
The stupidity and waste of this proposed project is unbelievable.
Clearly you have never taken the Blue Line. Widening that elevated track would be quite expensive, especially in Chicago and especially on the public dime. Think multiple times the cost of the big dig in Boston. While this might not be the best application/location of this type of transportation, if you are doing it in Chicago doing it privately this way might be the only possibility.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
They really need to rip out the above ground rail that makes up the blue line, bury that, and put in additional traffic lanes on the Kennedy. Whatever Musk comes up with can go under the El. Or not. Offsite parking and Lyft have already solved this problem for me.
you're funny, I live here, have lived here over half a century. take blue and other lines all the time since childhood. would NOT need to widen the portion of blue line that is underground downtown for an express line. that would be above ground and same cost as any other elevated track (and might not even be necessary to build much new track if joined and run around loop with other lines)
there are already multiple existing plans for doing this over the decades by the way. I'm old, I've seen them
Was anyone at the handshake event for this? Were they able to tell if folks broke out into song singing the praises of the monorail... err.. ahh.. "loop train"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Musk hasn't invented anything...ever.
Nobody cares.
After acquiring Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field, he will get the credit for all things.
This is just the way it is.
4. Elon's past performance is to be ignored---especially re: Tesla.
5. Elon needed billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to get things rolling.
6. Don't lick Elon's ass as well as ShanghaiBill
ShanghaiBill has spoken. All must obey.
Oh, so you are interested in facts. They say many things in the article.
1. "The Boring Company says that vehicles “will leave each station as frequently as every 30 seconds." Sounds like this is not well thought out, or I guess they will be moving many empty vehicles.
2. "Experts warn that things will likely change as they get down to the nitty-gritty of actually building this new underground system." It's a good thing since Elon is no expert. He isn't even an Engineer (yes, capital 'E', as in registered professional engineer).
3. "The company says that each vehicle would be equipped with [...] luggage storage space...". Yet, the renderings show a few rolling bags on the floor and nowhere else to put luggage.
We'll see how it all shakes out.
Clever, using this joke as a reaction to a novel transportation system. You could be the very first person to think of it.
The city's so far in debt that they're staving off a Detroit incident by a degree measured in angstroms.
And they're going to spend out for this? What IS it about the problems of public transit that politicians just don't understand?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Weird. The overwhelming traffic into and out of O'Hare is not going downtown, so you might guess this to be some kind of perk for the elites. But those bozos don't schlep their own luggage, they get met by their (sometimes armored) town car and chauffeured wherever they are headed. I guess dumb old Rahn was just snookered as may others have been by smooth-talking old Elon. There's nothing in here for anyone but Musk.
He is a self-professed engineer.
Since he owns his own company, he can make his title whatever he wants. Certainly, not a Professional Engineer (at least in the US).
No one has seen this 'novel transportation system' work, but the dream, or idea of it, is now being shopped around. Yup, that's Monorail talk.