Musk's Boring Company Proposes High-Speed Underground Subway To Dodger Stadium (geekwire.com)

Elon Musk's Boring Company wants to build a transit tunnel connecting Dodger Stadium to a Los Angeles subway station. An anonymous reader quotes GeekWire: The Boring Company laid out the plan for the Dugout Loop on its website, saying that the linkup could take baseball fans and concertgoers to the stadium in less than four minutes for a roughly $1 fare. This ride would be nothing like your typical subway trip: Loopers could book their tickets in advance, through an app-based reservation system that's similar to what's used to purchase theater tickets, or buy them over the phone or in person for a given time (say, 5:45 p.m. heading for the stadium).

At least initially, the Dugout Loop clientele would be limited to about 1,400 people per event, or roughly 2.5 percent of stadium capacity. The Boring Company says that capacity could be doubled over time. Loopers would board electric-powered pods (also known as "skates") that are based on the Tesla Model X auto design and are capable of carrying 8 to 16 passengers at a time. The skates would be lowered into the tunnel system, and sent autonomously at speeds of 125 to 150 mph from one terminal to the other. The Boring Company says it'll cover the cost of digging the roughly 3.6-mile tunnel with no public funding sought.
The Boring Company's site says this project will preempt construction of their proof-of-concept tunnel under Los Angeles' Sepulveda Boulevard.

"The Boring Company has made technical progress much faster than expected and has decided to make its first tunnel in Los Angeles an operational one, hence Dugout Loop!"

Comments

Rome 2.0 jive

[alternative_right]

Bread and circuses, technocracy version.

Americans oppose public transportation for a single reason: they do not want poor people coming into middle class neighborhoods.

Fix that, and this whole problem gets a lot easier.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

>Americans oppose public transportation for a single reason: they do not want poor people coming into middle class neighborhoods.

What's this got to do with going to a stadium? The participants have already bought a ticket that's open sale to the public.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Rei]

It's funny that most of the comments in this thread so far seem to be... upset about people going to sports events. I mean, I'm no sports fan, but this just strikes me as weird.

Neat that they're going to make their first full LA tunnel an operational one. A connection to Dodger Stadium was drawn up on their longer-term man of plans for the LA area, so looks like they're jumping ahead a step. I wonder what upgrades they're going to be making to Godot for it? Maybe bringing it closer to Line-Storm? I know they've been modifying Godot over time in order to test tech for Line-Storm.

Boring Company has been going through phases as they transition from standard TBM approaches toward their ultimate goal. In their first tunnel with Godot (a mostly standard TBM in the beginning), they required the standard laying of tracks and power lines (time consuming and expensive, particularly the power lines) and a powerful ventilation system to deal with diesel exhaust from the diesel locomotive that hauls ore, as well as pushing off the casing ends and using normal cutting discs. Their third TBM, Prufrock, will be using delivered/replaced battery packs, no tracks, a battery powered electric locomotive, pushing off the wall sides and automating their assembly, and advanced alloy highly cooled hot swappable cutting discs; it's in the advanced design stage. Between Godot and Prufrock is Line-Storm, which has nearly completed construction, and is a mix of technologies between Godot and Prufrock, and is expected to be 2-4 times as fast as Godot (Prufrock is expected to be 10-15x faster). Line-Storm will be used on the east coast.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, I suppose, that it is much easier to find public favor for a public transport system to a stadium than for example to suburb, where it would arguably be a better fit: There are more suburbs and traffic is a lot less bursty. But neighborhoods with good public transport tend to attract lower class people, so even people who would otherwise benefit from it reject public transport in their neighborhoods.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[mrclevesque]

"It's funny that most of the comments in this thread so far seem to be... upset about people going to sports events"

Agreed.

"Neat that they're going to make their first full LA tunnel an operational one"

I wonder who will invest in this without a 'proof of concept' of the tunnel and transport system.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[orlanz]

I would say most people in the US reject public transit because they don't want to pay the extra taxes. Even if there is public transit, most families will still have carS so they see that transit as just extra taxes.

Yes, Americans can do without cars, but it's just the thing here. The exceptions exist in places like New York City, cities in California & Florida. Until there is a major cultural shift where the "American Dream" doesn't include cars, a single family home, and two kids, it won't change.

What keeps most people out of neighborhoods is property values. And since everyone from the sellers, lenders, agents, neighbors, and tax collectors want higher values, it's kind of difficult to build low priced housing. Even when Cities here try to build "affordable housing", it just ends up being unaffordable housing with unsustainable subsidies.

The first time buyers here are mostly priced out of good markets in the US. A problem that other countries have primarily due to population densities.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[ChrisMaple]

Yes, Americans can do without cars

We can also do without plumbing, central heating, electricity, paved roads, refrigeration, telephones, and computers. Why would we want to? Those things all make life better.

For example, Los Angeles has hundreds of bus routes, yet few places have buses that run more often than once every 20 minutes, and some places it's every 2 hours and not on Sundays. Would you want to wait 20 minutes before you can go someplace, and another 20 if you have to make a transfer? Repeat that for the return trip? Even while not waiting a bus goes half the speed of normal traffic because it has to let passengers on and off. Time is money, and time is life.

Cars make life better, and for most Americans car ownership and use is a rational choice.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not be alarmed. We are negros.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[ChrisMaple]

Your understanding of technology, and even everyday life, is sorely lacking. Do you know the difference between open-cell and closed-cell foam? Paint is more likely to crack and flake off than "have bubbled up and melted off".

With regard to the Tesla in space, so what? Nobody claimed it was going to be driveable, or even pretty. It was just a publicity stunt, and almost everybody knows it.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in traffic lately, and seen all the problems that have arisen. That includes the drivers.

Sorry, but that is not a "better" life, and that isn't counting all the bother of dealing with car dealers, car mechanics, gas stations and insurance companies.

I would gladly give up the automobile and all its problems.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Rei]

Right now, Boring Company is working entirely on private funding. Mostly from Musk. Obviously that will have to change before they go large scale, but I doubt this one line will cost that much.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans oppose public transportation for a single reason: they do not want poor people coming into middle class neighborhoods..

All too often, poor people = violent criminals.

When you have become aware of them committing violent crimes against innocent people,
you understand why decent people don't want them around.

If you don't understand this sad reality, wait until someone you love is murdered or raped. You'll gain understanding then.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[aaarrrgggh]

Not sure how much better they make life in Los Angeles. The region is at a breaking point, and everything that can be done to limit individual car trips makes life better for everyone.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are free to do that. Just donâ(TM)t go trying to impose your nutty beliefs on the rest of us sane people.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt this one line will cost that much.

That's because you have a retard level IQ and believe everything a conman tells you. fElon musk secured that funding about as well as Tesla secures the bumpers on their shit cars. Here's another satisfied customer.

Look at that downward trend in tesla's stock price continue!

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about those dead hookers in the trunk of that car? I bet their families think they are real.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the much larger number of people that die every year due to murders committed by corporations? Or how about the many that die as a result of inadequate access to health care services because the rich would rather spend that money murdering brown people in foreign countries for profit?

Poor people have a lot less to lose than the rest of society and are an increasingly large portion of society thanks to psychopaths like you that prefer to spread propaganda. The body count between the rich and the poor isn't even close.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the much larger number of people that die every year due to murders committed by corporations?

The above is a false dichotomy, and you are exceptionally stupid for even attempting such a lame argument.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

Then do it, and do what I do - a motorcycle. Lane splitting means that when you're stuck on the 10 or the 101 - I'm still moving. I can always find parking between vehicles. I get free parking in public garages, in the striped sections at the ends of the rows. I get 50+ MPG. I pay $285/year for insurance, for full coverage with a $500 deductible. It's a Honda motorcycle that needs an oil change every 8000 miles (very low service intervals). Get out of your car, get on a motorcycle, and free yourself.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[drinkypoo]

Cars make life better, and for most Americans car ownership and use is a rational choice.

Cars also make life worse. It's not an either-or thing. An overabundance of ICE-based automobiles is why Los Angeles led the way with emissions standards, and guess what? It worked.

Self-driving public transportation is what will finally put the nail in the coffin of excessive vehicle ownership. People who make long trips will probably continue to own their own vehicles for some time, but commuters will give them up as soon as there is a viable alternative. And that alternative doesn't look like buses or even trains, at least not the way they look now. It looks like vans, and individual vehicles rolling on rails instead of joined-up trains. You tell the system where you want to go, it tells you what vehicles to get on in order to get there, and vehicles are dispatched as necessary in order to deliver as many people as are attempting to go places. The vehicles make only necessary stops, in order to efficiently handle demand. The smaller vehicles don't perturb traffic and don't require special stop areas in many cases, and not such large ones in others.

Public transportation isn't the problem, the number of drivers required to serve everyone's needs is. When the drivers are removed from the system, public transportation can be much more efficient.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[phantomfive]

The problem with Los Angeles: everyone there wants public transportation, but no one wants to ride it. They want the other people to ride it, so the roads will be clear.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[phantomfive]

Obviously that will have to change before they go large scale, but I doubt this one line will cost that much.

A 3.5 mile tunnel in Los Angeles sounds like a very expensive project, actually.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[hazardPPP]

Cars make life better,

Where? For whom? In which situations?

A blanket statement like that is simply not true.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Where?

Everywhere

For whom?

For everyone

In which situations?

in every situation.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[AmiMoJo]

I'm just getting bored (pun intended) of all these stories about random stuff Musk and his companies say. The chances of it actually happening are 50/50 at best and this seems like one of the more half baked ideas.

Get back to us when they start digging it

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you're still imposing your beliefs on me, so what am I to do?

Or do you think your mindless obsession with personal automobiles isn't impacting anybody else?

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, those motorcyclists annoy me as well, especially how they just love to rev up and down my street.

But also cutting through traffic and other bothers.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[AmiMoJo]

It depends what you use the bus for. If you just turn up randomly to go somewhere you have an average wait of 10 minutes, but if know the timetable or make the same journey every day you can get the wait down to nothing.

In some places like Tokyo the train/bus is often the fastest option.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Gravis Zero]

I would say most people in the US reject public transit because they don't want to pay the extra taxes. Even if there is public transit, most families will still have carS so they see that transit as just extra taxes.

Yes, Americans can do without cars, but it's just the thing here.

And you would be wrong. What you fail to realize is that the US is really fucking large. No seriously, look at it on a map and you will see that almost every state dwarfs the size of almost every European country. On top of that, we built most of our populated areas after the invention of the car. Unlike European cities, they were designed to be traversed using a car instead of being shoehorned in afterwards.

Until there is a major cultural shift where the "American Dream" doesn't include cars, a single family home, and two kids, it won't change.

That is to say that it won't change.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Middle class Americans would take more mass transit if
A) it was available
B) it was reliable
and
C) it was fast.
I wish The Boring Comoany good luck with their ventures because this is more important than EVs and self driving car B.S.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[MightyYar]

they do not want poor people coming into middle class neighborhoods.

You are thinking of zoning. Public transit is opposed because it generally sucks and is a pasted-on solution to what is essentially a planning problem. In places where it makes sense, it is quite popular and is used to bring huge numbers of low-income people into service jobs in areas that they could not possibly afford.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[MightyYar]

I only know two kinds of motorcyclists, young ones and those that have been in serious accidents. Even then, the Venn diagram has a big overlap.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

So now my live has to revolve around somebody else schedule? I'll stick with owning a car.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[MightyYar]

Toll the roads with demand-based pricing to keep them moving and use the proceeds beyond road maintenance to fund public transit. This fleeces the well-to-do and subsidizes everyone else. A compromise that lets everyone wait in line if they really want to is a parallel express highway like they have in Virginia near DC - this fleeces the rich to pay for the roads while letting everyone else continue wait in line like they always have.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[currently_awake]

You get wet in the rain, ice and snow hazards in winter, and drastically higher risk of death in an accident.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Lane splitting means that when you're stuck on the 10 or the 101 - I'm still moving.

So you're a fucking asshole who breaks the law.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[currently_awake]

A publicly owned self driving car network, with express lanes, would solve most of the problems. Summon a car using your phone, ride directly to your destination. Cheap, not crammed with strangers, faster than a car. Done as a National Project it would make owning a car very undesirable. Make the express lanes underground or overhead and you can install power rails to recharge the car batteries while they drive.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's perfectly legal in California, where Los Angeles is based. Too bad your State doesn't allow what California, and 95% of the rest of the world, allows.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

> Americans can do without cars

As a frequent visitor to the States, that isn't true for most people. Certainly in New York, but trying to get around LA on public transport is a recipe for disaster. The infrastructure doesn't really exist, and the culture doesn't accommodate it. In a country where most people have no savings and you can be fired for being late even once, you can't expect people to trust their livelihoods to a massively under-funded public transport system if they have other options.

Mass transit is poorly funded, so provides an unreliable infrequent service. Anyone who can avoids it, so anyone who can't is concentrated onto it, making it an even less pleasant experience. Mass transit continues to have poor revenues and utilisation, and so is continues to be poorly funded. Unless there's political will to fund it properly, there's no way to break the cycle. The places where it works today are because they had that will 50, 100, 150 years ago. None of our current crop of politicians has the balls to do approve something like a new mass transit system, never mind fund one.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[quanminoan]

Where did you get this info? Would like to read up more...

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Darinbob]

I think this has been changing over time. Certainly the ridiculously rich still opposed any pass through of mass transit, or even expressways. But I see lots more new upscale condos and apartments being build next to or near rail or light rail stations, places previously associated with either poorer neighborhoods or retail. I think this is because there are a lot more young people who don't use autos.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Rei]

Yes, we all know that the NYT ran a hit piece on Friday containing false information (including a claim that Tesla was looking for COO which Bloomberg has since debunked), and whose author made a snarky brag on Twitter about lowering Tesla's stock price.

And OMG, stop the presses, a few cars out of over 70000 turned out bad! Hint: the plural of "viral anecdote shared endlessly by short sellers who scour twitter and Tesla forums for any bad examples they can find" isn't "data". If it's data you're looking for...

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuff shit faggot. I will continue driving my ICE car and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Rei]

They've already made a 2-mile tunnel under Hawthorne.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[AmazingRuss]

Ever driven in LA? Takes 2 hours to get ANYWHERE in a car. Busses are equally fucked.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Miamicanes]

This is why Musk's tunnel-boring is so important. Transit often makes gridlock on city streets WORSE... unless it has its own dedicated right of way. Tunnels are the least-objectionable way to do that, but traditional methods are just too expensive to do it large-scale.

With cheap tunneling, you CAN pitch transit to NIMBYs by saying, "it might reduce gridlock, and at LEAST won't make it even worse than it already is". You can't say that honestly about buses, streetcars, etc.

It's a shame the ADA made future transit projects based on overhead suspended cables impossible (no way to provide a 3-foot wheelchair-accessible egress path from vehicles... floor hatches with unrolled ladders to climb down aren't legal anymore), because it eliminated potential cheap solutions that could literally run overhead with widely-spaced support towers (especially as a way to increase the "reach" of subway stations by a mile or two perpendicular to the main line).

Musk's subways can potentially do that. You could take a subway station that was built in a less-than-ideal location (with a major trip-generator a mile away), and build an automated mini-subway a-la-Musk to shuttle people between that destination and the subway.

Illustrative example: downtown Miami. When Metrorail opened 35 years ago, the "downtown" station was a good half-mile west of what most of what Miamians considered "downtown", and the station in Brickell (Miami's original financial district) was ~2/3 mile from all the tall buildings. The elevated PeopleMover ("Metromover") VASTLY increased the reach of both stations & made most of downtown Miami accessible via Metrorail. Without Metrorail, Metromover would have been a useless toy. Without Metromover, 80-90% of the people who voluntarily used Metrorail (despite owning cars) to commute to downtown Miami in the 80s and 90s would have driven instead.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

It will. In 10-15 years, when you can't keep paying your bills, things will go back to normal.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Miamicanes]

The US is huge, but the population isn't all evenly-distributed. Look at a night satellite image of the US... the lights will show you where most Americans REALLY live.

Take Florida... vast & sprawling, but ~90% of Floridians live within 10 miles of I-95, I-4, or I-75. Ditto for Georgia, where ~80% of the state lives in Atlanta or Macon.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all know that the NYT ran a hit piece on Friday containing false information (including a claim that Tesla was looking for COO which Bloomberg has since debunked), and whose author made a snarky brag on Twitter about lowering Tesla's stock price.

That's not why the stock fell and continues to fall. fElon musk is also trafficking illegal narcotics through the giga factory.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Amiga Trombone]

Considering the New York Times routinely runs hit pieces on the best things the Western world has to offer, why would that be any surprise? Elon Musk would be doing us a favor if he bought it just to burn it down.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

That has no ventilation shafts, emergency exits, fire suppression, or any of the thing that building codes require for something to be used by the general public.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Where? For whom?

In Detroit. Well, at least they did, for a while.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Aighearach]

I would say most people in the US reject public transit because they don't want to pay the extra taxes.

No. Republicans reject transit, because taxes. Blue states usually have good transit, and taxes to pay for it. In my area, when the transit district wants more money for new routes, we vote on the tax increases, and they're often approved. They're not approved as often as school and fire department taxes, but more often than for police, or new administrative buildings. They're like parks; people want to say yes, but they do check the plan first. Schools, people just vote "yes" if D, "no" if R.

LA, the place in the story, is the only major city in a D state without good transit. And the problem isn't the taxes, the problem is that LA is a suburban wasteland with no effort to force people to build "up," they built "out" to the horizon and beyond. Transit benefits heavily from population density; if you build "up" or "out" you still need transit stops about every 2 blocks, and so if density is low then you have way more stops per rider, which means that the service is slow and inefficient, and costs way way more money per rider. It also does less to alleviate traffic congestion, because the bus is making lots of stops for just 1 person. If a new type of transit technology can provide better neighborhood-neighborhood service that connects to the regular transit system, that would really really help. It could be as important for transit in LA as Caltrain is in the bay area!

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

" I can always find parking between vehicles. I get free parking ..."

Don't forget, your kind provides most organs because usually you get decapitated, while all the organs are still young and fresh.
OK, for the old Harley riders you can throw out the liver, but still...

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[angel'o'sphere]

Paris most of the time, too. And cheaper than the gasoline/insurance/maintanance of a car most of the time.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many misconceptions about public transportation in this thread, it is mind boggling.

I live in LA and use public transportation, and I don't know what you are talking about. I use the subway, light rail, buses, commuter trains, and Amtrak. I don't usually have too much of a problem unless I have to carry a lot, but, in that case I can share/rent a vehicle. Things are a lot less stressful when you don't have to do the driving.

On the other hand, a huge change for the worst happened in 2004 in public transportation in many cities across the USA, including LA. In that year, a trend started to drastically reduce bus service and transfer flexibility, in favor of limited train routes rapid/express bus routes and more expensive day-passes/bus-cards.

Invariably, people who don't use public transportation and have no clue about it sit in metro transportation offices looking at maps and removing bus stops and splitting-up bus routes, acting like they are doing incredible work. What they are really doing is deconstructing thoroughly evolved routes/stops that serve riders well.

Don't know what's going to happen if it keeps getting worse. A lot of newer cities have good bike trail systems, and I have been looking building an electric bike for years.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil change ever 8000 miles? Must be from the 90s... My car wants an oil change every 18000 miles / 30000 km and gets 42mpg or better.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear, I do own a car but I use public transportation 95% of the time because I can use my time to be productive: reading and work. When driving, you cannot do anything else without impairing your own security. In most European countries with a fairly developed train, metro, tramway and buses, car is nearly never a good choice for commuting and even with longer commuting (which is not the case, quite often), you time is not lost.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who does live in Los Angeles, and does take public transportation, the trains and buses I take are packed -- it can be hard to get a seat at rush hour -- and run every 5-10 minutes. The limitations are capacity, not ridership, at least in my part of town.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? The self-driving cars have the same occupancy as person-driven cars, thus use the same road capacity. In fact, self-driving cars could *increase* traffic, because they sometimes drive around with zero people in them -- it's rather hard right now to have car occupancy 1. I agree that would improve parking, but see no reason it would improve traffic.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[mrclevesque]

"Right now, Boring Company is working entirely on private funding. Mostly from Musk. Obviously that will have to change before they go large scale, but I doubt this one line will cost that much."

So basically no outside investors to speak of, no plans, no cost estimates, and the expected revenue is extremely low.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm... We already have subways here in LA.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Honda? You goddam traitor.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Your life resolved around so many people's schedules. The car changes very little of that.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[orlanz]

Right, except it is possible to live in NYC without a car. With Uber/Lyft it is possible to live in many US cities without a car. With rideshare it is possible to get to work without a car. I know people who only had one car and two people working 30 minutes apart. This was quite common 20 years ago. I know people who only have a bicycle! I know people who live in walking communities with major grocery stores within 1/2 a km. My youth was spent without a car for a few years. I was a full time travel consultant. I had but didn't need a car. I always booked close to the client I flew to.

Trust me, it's quite possible.

And the primary problem you have with public transit in the US is that it simply sucks. It is horribly funded, costs too much, and gets you close but not where you want to go. Partially because of sprawling retail shops and housing.

It's not that there is a bus/train every 20 minutes that bothers people. It's that there isn't a bus/train every 20 minutes. It's 20+/-5 minutes that gets people in a twist. You can plan for a scheduled bus... if it's on schedule. We all do it for sports, meetings, and various other events throughout our life. Heck 15 years ago, a family would get together on schedule to watch a TV show!

I understand, the car isn't a luxury but it's also not an absolute necessity in may parts of the US like heating or plumbing.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[phantomfive]

Building a 2 mile tunnel under Hawthorne doesn't sound nearly as expensive, actually, for a lot of reasons.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[orlanz]

From what I have seen there are only two places with Ok transit. NYC and DC. Those would be passable in the EU. All the others don't hold a candle to the likes of EU, Singapore, and Japan. Heck places like Hong Kong, Hyderabad, and Moscow have better transit systems than some US metros.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[orlanz]

As a frequent flier, I am well aware how big the US is. Most people fly rather than drive to get around it. But traveling those distances isn't what we are talking about. US cities are just as dense and similar in size as many other foreign cities but with worse public transit.

Most of our cities are designed around horse drawn carriages, trollies, and pedestrian traffic. Only in the last 80 years have we really redesigned them for automobiles. We basically pushed pedestrians to the side (get it?), phased out carriages, and defunded trollies. It was just 60 years ago that we decided to have standard roads outside of cities. 35 years ago, you couldn't get from one side of the US to the other on a standard road! We completed our national highway system just 25 years ago!

This car craze we have in the US is literally just 2-3 generations old. And the current generation is using ride shares. And the next one is looking forward to driverless taxies.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's the same oil that's used in the transmission - so it gets a bit dirty from the clutch. Still, it's equivalent to most brand-new cars, but uses a lot less oil (about 3.8L) and gets great mileage. And because I'm not sitting in traffic all the time, I'm even more energy efficient.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well, you know the saying... Something like 94% of all Harleys ever sold are still on the road today.

The other 6% actually made it home.

:) I like the reliability I get. I ride - a lot. My current main ride is a Honda CTX700 (mid-sized cruiser) with 49,000 miles on it in 3.5 years. And I'm overseas for about 4 months a year. So I typically put about 2200-2500 miles a month on the bike. It's been rock solid. Four rear tires, two front tires, 6 oil changes, one air filter, two sets of front brake pads, one set of rear brake pads, and one chain - that's it.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

It's perfectly legal in California, where Los Angeles is based. Too bad your State doesn't allow what California, and 95% of the rest of the world, allows.

California is the only state where lane splitting is legal. Most countries have not made it legal, but might be de facto legal.

You are the ignorant, self-centered Americans that make the rest of us look uneducated!

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

What country are you from? If you're in the EU, Asia or South America, there's a good chance I rode - and lane split, like all the other riders - in your country. And yes, it is legal AND is more environmentally friendly.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[aaarrrgggh]

Rode the bus to work today in LA. There are some great bus services (like Commuter Express) that solve problems for people that can afford a car... and can afford someone to drive them to work. The areas with direct service to downtown via train work well too.

What is painful and makes a lot of people avoid public transit in LA is the need to transfer. That is an urban planning issue more than a transit issue though.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[stoatwblr]

The USA used to have the best urban public transportation services in the world. They were heavily stressed before, during and after WW2, resulting in a need for heavily capital investment and making them ripe targets for hostile acquisition - which is exactly what happened.

The existing public transport companies and city operators were quietly bought up by front companies (National Bus Lines and friends) backed by General Motors and Standard OIl and deliberately mismanaged in order to encourage people out of streetcars/busses and into cars.

This isn't speculation. There are a number of antitrust judgements against the companies at the time and in the following decades, but you can't undo a destroyed public transport system because the shell games played meant that the reparations involved can't be taken directly from General Motors and Standard Oil.

Los Angeles in particular had one of the very best public transport systems in the world, with high frequencies of service, high levels of punctuality and rapid transit. The Streetcars depicted in Who Framed Roger Rabbit weren't fictional, nor was the laughter at the idea of freeways taking over.

It's amazing what a cartel can achieve with underhanded tactics and huge advertising campaigns about the freedom of the highways, isn't it?

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[stoatwblr]

"Transit often makes gridlock on city streets WORSE... unless it has its own dedicated right of way"

That statement is rooted in the assumption that the Car is King.

First and foremost, Cities are for People.

Transportation systems and urban planning need to work on that basis, not on one particular mode of transport to the exclusion of all others or the detriment of the inhabitants. This is something European city planners started realising in the 1970s and adjusted their thinking accordingly.

In a lot of places it makes more sense to ban private cars entirely from urban centres, replacing them with buses/light rail (park and ride) and restricting delivery traffic to specific routes for heavy vehicles or particular times of day (so you don't get large vehicles and heavy pedestrian/pubic transportion flows getting in each others way)

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of states do not allow lanesplitting. Seems to be for good reason. The majority of motorcycle accidents I've witnessed were due to lanesplitting. Of course, the motorcyclist always blames the car. Before you get huffy about it... I ride. I also do not lanesplit for very good reason.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[stoatwblr]

"What is painful and makes a lot of people avoid public transit in LA is the need to transfer. That is an urban planning issue more than a transit issue though."

Transferring is _easy_ if there's a universal pass. I do it all the time in London. One ticket purchased at the start of the day/week covers riding the trains, subway, buses and various other transports, all operated by up to 60 different companies, or a PAYG card does the same duty.

Solve that and people will happily wait 20 minutes outside urben centres (but they'd prefer 10)

Make riding the bus easy and people will ride the bus. Make transfers easy and people will happily take longer journeys. If they have to fiddle around with change for each transfer, you're putting them off. That's one of the main tactics that General Motors/Standard Oil used with their National Bus Lines sham operation (amongst others including making schedules sparser) to push people into cars.

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[kaatochacha]

No, i reject public transport because a public transport ride to my work takes FOUR HOURS, while awful city driving in grinding traffic takes two.
If that was reversed, I'd have my butt on a bus seat every day.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[kaatochacha]

Because it doesn't work. When you're taking a train to a bus to a train and waiting 40 minutes between legs, it doesn't work.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[kaatochacha]

Comparing mass transit in Tokyo and Mass transit in Los Angeles is like comparing a Mercedes and a kid's kick scooter.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[aaarrrgggh]

LA does actually have a universal pass; the action of transferring is easy enough, but the wait and ...transfer station demographics particularly in LA can be a bit of a problem. The Tube, MTR, SMRT, or Tunnelbana make it quite easy to transfer within the subway, and not entirely painful between modes, but LA has a long way to go there.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Miamicanes]

As far as the overwhelming majority of Americans are concerned, cars ARE king, and pedestrians are the intruders. You can debate whether that's good or bad, but the fact is, even people who LIVE in the urban cores of big cities almost always own cars unless they're prevented from doing so by virtue of poverty (or they use cabs and Uber SO OFTEN, the distinction between owning and not-owning a car is almost a matter of abstract semantics).

From the standpoint of that overwhelming majority, transit has actual MERIT only if it promises (truthfully or not) to reduce traffic congestion, and any form of transit that's likely (or practically GUARANTEED) to make traffic congestion worse is politically intolerable.

The utter failure of transit planners to come to terms with this reality is why Miami voters feel like victims of an elaborate bait & switch scheme every fucking time we get tricked into voting to increase transit funding. The county transit agency runs a multi-month advertising and public relations campaign that makes it look like they're planning to extend Metrorail down to Homestead, up to Broward, to South Beach, and out to West Dade... then six months later, quietly spends all the money on buses.

Fact: if Miami-Dade Transit had been 100% honest about how they intended to spend new transit funds (eg, on buses), voters would NEVER have agreed to either of the past two transit tax referendums. They would have gone down in flames and been defeated SO BADLY on election day, half the transit department's planning staff would have probably been laid off the following day in retribution.

Making matters worse, Miami's transit agency has an absolute KNACK for taking a good idea, then turning it into a proposal that's so fundamentally-flawed and awful, even people who SUPPORT building new rapid transit lines can't stomach it.

Specific examples I remember from recent years:

* The "East-West" Metrorail line, proposed to extend Metrorail from its current orange-line terminus at Miami International Airport west along State Road 836 (more or less) to Dolphin Mall, the south to Florida International University. Slam-dunk, right? Wrong. At one point (around 2007), they drew up fairly specific plans that showed where they planned to build stations. Let's just say that they literally couldn't have come up with worse proposed locations if they'd explicitly TRIED to achieve that as their primary design goal. Take the proposed station "at NW 87th Avenue". OK, solid choice... a square mile of medium-density office park to the northeast, a square mile of medium-density apartments and condos to the southeast, another square mile of medium-density apartments & condos to the southwest, and a HUGE lake with no room to build anything meaningful within walking distance to the northwest. Guess where they proposed putting the station? Yep... the northwest side of 836 and 87th Avenue. Literally ANYTHING of pedestrian interest would have been at least a half-mile walk away from the station. You could give Miami-Dade Transit a barrel full of fish & a shotgun, and they'd manage to explosively amputate their own foot. Any HALFWIT could look at Google Maps & realize that the sane place to put the station would be above the CSX railroad tracks, between NW 87th Avenue and NW 82nd Avenue (which would put much of the area to the north and south of the station within direct, easy walking distance, including the residential area south of 836 since 82nd Avenue now connects on both sides (it didn't back in 2007, but the reconstruction of SR836 was ALREADY underway, and if MDTA planners DIDN'T know about it, they sure as fucking hell SHOULD have).

* An EVEN WORSE plan to extend Metrorail west along SW 8th Street instead of 836... a route that would have not only managed to completely miss two huge malls (International Mall & Dolphin Mall) by 2 miles (as opposed to putting stations on the edge of their respective parking lots), but would have put two or three $50-100 million stations within conveni

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Just posting to let you know that your comment has been read. That was a good read.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if people shared your opinion, they wouldâ(TM)ve voted differently?

Funny how that works.

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[chainsaw1]

Motorcycles should not use engine oil equivalent to most new cars. Modern auto oils have friction modifiers that affect clutch performance in motorcycles. You either have to use very cheap car oils (which have other shortcomings), motorcycle engine oils (which are very expensive) or some types of diesel oils that are outside recommended weights but work great (in my experience) and are not expensive.

Topmost among this last group are Rotella 15w40 and the synthetic Rotella 5w40 "T6".

Re: Rome 2.0 jive

[LynnwoodRooster]

I use T6 - and a LOT of motorcycles use the same oil for the engine as for the transmission. One system...

Re:Rome 2.0 jive

[eric_harris_76]

Not this American. I oppose it for many reasons, not just one.

Because it loses money (at least, when run by a government) it destroys value. If a $10 million project creates an enterprise that is worth $8 million, the world is a poorer place. In addition to this destruction of capital, it also has to be subsidized to remain in operation, taking money from one group of people to provide benefits to another group of people.

It's dangerous. Because the St. Louis County Prosecutor * got into a pissing contest with the light rail operator's security department, the trains don't feel safe, and very often aren't. ( * Soon-to-be former prosecutor. He lost his primary election.)

It doesn't go where I want to go when I want to go there in a reasonable amount of time. Commuting, in particular. Drive 20 or 25 minutes to get to work, or ride the bus for over an hour, with a transfer? Golly, how to decide?

Let's use a tie-breaker: standing in the heat or cold or snow or rain, waiting for that bus? Or a different tie-breaker: knowing that if I am late I miss the bus, but if it is late I just wait longer. Or yet another one: there is no bus stop near my home (so, a long walk) nor near my work (and if get off the bus where there's no stop, I still have to jay-walk to get to the building, where cops ticket such scofflaws).

I'm sure there are more. But aren't those reasons enough?

Is that it?

[AC-x]

At least initially, the Dugout Loop clientele would be limited to about 1,400 people per event, or roughly 2.5 percent of stadium capacity. The Boring Company says that capacity could be doubled over time

Is that it? 2-3 subway trains worth of people per event? If someone just built a real subway system then it could potentially shift everyone to the stadium and back.

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having followed this at all, I'm wondering how this is even economically viable with such a bad business plan. Will tickets be >$500 a person?

Re: Is that it?

[110010001000]

Tickets will roughly be $1 and limited to 1,500. That means about $1,500 gross per event. Oh LOOK - a squirrel!

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tunnel will let Dodgers fans stay until the seventh inning rather than leaving after the sixth. That's got to be a lot of ballpark hot dog dollars!

Re: Is that it?

[Geekbot]

Google has changed the game though. The cost doesn't have to be the rider's cash. $1 is enough for their contract. The real funding would come from advertisers and vendors in the portal. If you had 1400 people traveling to a specific area for a specific reason, you have a pretty good guess who they are and what they like. That's some good target advertising.

Re: Is that it?

[110010001000]

Nice! Advertising solves everything. I'll bet the click rate of 1,400 people would generate about 90 cents in advertising. Sounds like a plan.

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love it if they required so many clicks per second to make the train move

Re: Is that it?

[vtcodger]

Let's see. Virtually all passengers will be making a round trip, so $2 per passenger times 1500 vict ^h^h^h ... clients =$3000 per gameday. And I think Dodger Stadium is used for things other than baseball sometimes. Let's say it's used 150 "days" a year. So, revenue = $450,000 a year. Seems a bit low. By a factor of maybe 100. But what the hell do I know?

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the part where tax dollars will be dumped into this project to make up the difference.

Re: Is that it?

[Gavagai80]

It's a proof of concept, and also an introductory price. It doesn't have to make a profit, it has to demonstrate the concept so that some city/company will buy the tunneling service for something else.

Re:Is that it?

[SumDog]

Or just even normal sized trains in the tunnels. Why have car capacity limitations?! That's the whole point of a fucking train. You've can easily hold 10+ people in the same square area of a train than you could in car.

Re: Is that it?

[edi_guy]

You didn't read the full summary (RTFS ?) The max capacity is double the initial 1,400 people so that's 2,800 people they can get to the about 80 home games...That's over $200k per year this will make! One can only assume the diligent and professional Musk Corp bean counters have and the respected, and city planners have taken this into account against the assuredly very low construction price. Also the effort will be subsidized by stadium game day giveaways, such has Boring Hats, shirts, flamethrowers. Don't you worry. People much smarter than us have certainly covered all the bases...

Re: Is that it?

[edi_guy]

Web advertising does work. I already bought a 110010001000 monogrammed t-shirt.

Re: Is that it?

[edi_guy]

OMG...I think you stumbled upon the next great start-up idea. Forget about solar, fusion, microwave beams from orbit...the real energy of the future will be generated by billions of thumbs frantically clicking away.

I can see Twitter pivoting as we speak to become the next Exxon

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has changed the game though. The cost doesn't have to be the rider's cash. $1 is enough for their contract. The real funding would come from advertisers and vendors in the portal. If you had 1400 people traveling to a specific area for a specific reason, you have a pretty good guess who they are and what they like. That's some good target advertising.

Going on a limb here, I don’t think google invented sporting event sponsors, and we still have to pay $$$ to get into an event with advertising, merchandise, new cars for sale parked at the entrance, $10/cup beer every ten feet. Not sure what google changes with this dynamic.

This ain’t the Internet, advertising can fully fund operations of some websites, not train rides and MLB events.

Seriously, how much beer per person annually would need to be bought for Miller to fully pay for you to sit on some light rail staring a beer poster for 30m? Then if people were buying THAT much beer already why even advertise?

Re: Is that it?

[slashdice]

it will also be good for homeless people to sleep and shit in.

Re:Is that it?

[Aighearach]

Trains aren't the right shape to make efficient use of the space. These "skates" are like a carnival ride where you load in an area with headroom, but when they're traveling you're seated.

You would need to tunnel out 4x as much volume per traveler to fit a regular train.

Re:Is that it?

[squiggleslash]

You would need to tunnel out 4x as much volume per traveler to fit a regular train.

The tunnels loop proposals assume are about the same size as London Underground's deep bore tube tunnels. It's extremely hard for me to believe, given the high capacity of the deep bore trains, that they have less capacity than a similar tunnel with skates (that will often carry cars instead of people.)

I'd be surprised if your figures are accurate anyway, civil engineers have been banging on about the apparent low capacity of the Loop proposals anyway. I think they'd be considerably more enthusiastic if capacities were similar per square foot of tunnel.

The bigger issue is that the proposed system is designed to trickle people into an area when it needs a system that can cope with massive floods of people. Trains are literally the only system in existence that'll give you that.

American infrastructure is crippled because the establishment is unwilling to adopt anything that's rail based. It's extremely obvious and it's depressing to see people jump on the next "great new alternative to doing the right thing", following the failure of numerous "people mover" designs since the 1970s when it became the American, and only the American, establishment's article of good faith that passenger trains can't possibly work because over regulated, over taxed, commercial passenger trains were unable to compete against massively subsidized competitors.

Build. The. Fucking. Subway.

Re:Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof that Musks solution will only be for the elite.

Just build out the train system, FFS.

Re: Is that it?

[bluegutang]

An advertisement that only 1400 people will see? Worthless.

For 1% of the price you could run a bus shuttle to Dodger Stadium, it would carry the same 1400 people and have the same ads. Why hasn't anyone found this to be profitable?

Re:Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only were they "unable to compete" I think some car companies even bought them out just to destroy them and large parts of the existing infrastructure.

Re: Is that it?

[tlhIngan]

Going on a limb here, I donâ(TM)t think google invented sporting event sponsors, and we still have to pay $$$ to get into an event with advertising, merchandise, new cars for sale parked at the entrance, $10/cup beer every ten feet. Not sure what google changes with this dynamic.

This ainâ(TM)t the Internet, advertising can fully fund operations of some websites, not train rides and MLB events.

Seriously, how much beer per person annually would need to be bought for Miller to fully pay for you to sit on some light rail staring a beer poster for 30m? Then if people were buying THAT much beer already why even advertise?

Advertising pays for most or all of it. Those sports games on TV? Guess how much money gets tossed around in advertising just to show it on TV. The Superbowl with its $10M 30 second spot is on the high side, but a sports event on TV can pull in several tens to hundreds of millions of ad dollars.

Ticket prices generally go to the team, who pay the players, pay the league, and that's about it. Players can supplement their income with sponsorships (aka ads), but teams in general are very limited in what advertising they can do. Most of the ads are done by the league itself and they make the huge money - though more is generally made from TV.

All the other gouging is well, someone has to pay for the arena and all that as well as captive audience profits. You don't go to a fair and pay $10 for a corndog because it costs that much, you pay $10 because you're stuck in the fair and that's what everyone wants you to pay.

And here's a 30 minute opportunity for a captive audience. One that is truly captive - being underground, cell signals might be hard to get (they usually have a passive cable repeater or active repeaters in order to bring cellular underground) so everyone is stuck looking awkwardly at each other for 30 minutes.

Re: Is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you worry. People much smarter than us have certainly covered all the bases...

Sadly, that just doesn't hold up. Just look at the POTUS (or, if you're a supporter, look at the other side, cause one or more of them need a clue stick).

More accurately though, the $1 a trip is probably just to cover ongoing costs, and may barely cover that. How many full time employees can they get for $100k - $200k/year!?!? This thing will still use some power, require some maintenance, need cleaning, tunnel will probably need cleaners / exterminators / etc, wear and tear, etc.

This tunnel will barely be a demo. Hell, it's only 3.6 miles long, which is trivial to bike even using heavy bike share bikes, and there's loads of other transport options if you're going less than 5 miles.

IMO, this is all about simply being allowed to try it out and tunnel under all that stuff, and not be an entirely useless hole in the ground. The paperwork and legal fees will probably cost them more than this thing will make in a decade. Shouldn't they have to announce it as a planned loss (assuming he doesn't take Telsa private)?

Re:Is that it?

[ASAPNow]

Build the subway where? Folks that just repeat political non-sense based on feel goodism are the reason the majority don't give a shit about rail cars or subways. Rails are NOT efficient everywhere. They only work in certain high density areas, and that even excludes many city neighborhoods. Not all cities are built alike, and most are very suburban with average blocks of houses spaced an average space apart from each other. Makes no sense to build a rail system in 90% of this country.

No public funding? Why not then.

[treymichaelcook]

So Ol'Musky wants to cut down on LA's traffic, with a project that won't need anything from the local government except approval & right of ways. So why not let him give it a try. Absolute worst case is that it doesn't pan out, and the city just ends up using the tunnel as storage space or fills it back up with dirt.

Translation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give us more tax breaks and subsidies to serve a niche private business.

Zero emmisions?

[olddoc]

In the linked story there is a tweet from the Boring company proclaiming the Dugout Loop to be Zero Emissions. I hate this often repeated fraud that anything electrical is zero emissions. To me, the best term I've heard is Remote Emissions. To educate the masses I propose to build a small electric generating plant next to the Dugout Loop and run it off whale blubber and coal.

Re:Zero emmisions?

[110010001000]

Wait, you mean a $60,000 Tesla isn't going to save the planet?

Re:Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric vehicles ARE zero emissions; they don't emit any pollutants.

Setting aside the whole climate-change-going-to-screw-over-all-human-civilisation-thing (which is bizarrely somehow still up for debate in the USA), there are direct and measurable health costs associated with transport pollution that can only really be removed by moving to electric vehicles. Look at the incidence rates for respiratory illness along busy roads and ask yourself if the people who live there would prefer that everyone was driving "zero emissions" vehicles.

Yes, it's possible to hook an EV up to a dirty coal power plant, but coal is an increasingly small percentage of energy generated. Right now it's making up 0.5% of supply here, for instance. Taking the average mix of energy sources, the total pollution per mile of an EV (including the pollution from generation and transmission costs) is both about 70% lower than an efficient ICE, and that pollution is remote from population centres rather than right in the middle of them. Here (and in many other places) it's possible to power your home and/or EV from clean energy, either by generating your own or by choosing energy suppliers that don't buy carbon-based energy.

The argument that "electric vehicles aren't that much cleaner than modern ICE" is just FUD spread by carbon lobbyists and car manufacturers with a lot invested in soon-to-be-worthless ICE technology. If you have any actual data to support it, please share.

Re:Zero emmisions?

[Rei]

Meanwhile...
In other news...

Re: Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the Tesla owning crossfitting vegan

Re:Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed no. If the population of the earth keeps going at the current rate, it won't. But no solution to the problem will save the planet in itself.

That said, electrical vehicles are much more power efficient than gasoline vehicles, and every bit helps. That's why hydrogen vehicles are more of a scam: it takes too much energy to make the hydrogen, and the best way of doing so is using carbon based fuel.

Re: Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an ICE-driving, lazy, carnivore; I can also accept facts even when they aren't convenient, so I know that EVs are where it's at, I should exercise more, and that eating a lot of meat is bad for the environment. I'd rather make my next car an EV than give up bacon, so I did some research.

The thing about a lot of this tree-hugger crap is that it's actually cheaper. The EV I'm looking at is about $6k more than the ICE version of the same vehicle, but I'd save about $2k per year on fuel costs on my daily commute. Properly insulating my house cost about $1500 and saves me $500 every winter. Buying meat from the local farms via local butchers is maybe 20% more per lb, but when you cook it off it doesn't shrivel down to 3/4 the size as all the injected water boils off. Buying high quality stuff that lasts for years works out cheaper than keeping buying crap that you have to constantly replace.

I know that there are some people whose identity hinges on spending lots of time/money on being "environmental" and get off on their own righteousness, but for me it's just basic self interest. I feel the same level of contempt for the self-righteous vegans who fly to Nepal twice a year in search of enlightenment as I do towards those who mod their already ridiculous vehicles to "roll coal". Both groups have far more in common with one another than they do with me.

Re:Zero emmisions?

[currently_awake]

It's easier to put polution scrubbers on a stationary power plant, and generators don't idle. This means lower emmisions even if they use the same power source. It's easier to change out 500 generators than 5,000,000 IC cars. This means quicker technology updates instead of keeping 30 year old IC cars on the road.

Re:Zero emmisions?

[EETech1]

They could easily install solar to charge the pods before and after each event, and add battery storage to have it available when needed.

Granted, the production of those materials will have some impact, but one they are there, it runs on the sun.

Re: Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Im all for EVs but a recent study shows that particulate dust emissions from tires is a problem in urban areas. This is why mass transit is the best solution for getting people around with much lower emissions. And since we have so much infrastructure on the ground tunnels make the most sense. Personal air travel is ridiculously inefficient for mass transit in short regional hops. There should be high speed tunnels from Boston to DC and NY to Chicago for example.

Re:Zero emmisions?

[tquasar]

Remote emissions. Much of the electric power in southern California comes from coal, oil, and natural gas plants in the state of Utah, six hundred miles away. Eight hundred and sixty six Km. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re:Zero emmisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric vehicles ARE zero emissions; they don't emit any pollutants.

Tesla's are not zero emission.

Re:Who "The Boring Co" really is....

[jfdavis668]

Nope! Chuck Testa.

Musk and empty promises

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk makes more promises then a politician. The guy is clearly a ego maniac as well as a good engineer and terrible CEO.

Re:Musk and empty promises

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Citation needed for that "good engineer" comment. Good at building a small team of people with the right skills for a startup? Sure. Good at motivating teams, both small and large? Yup. Good at selling? Hell yes. But, to my knowledge, he never engineered anything. Even PayPal had him in a more leadership/money role.

The opiate of the masses

[alternative_right]

It's funny that most of the comments in this thread so far seem to be... upset about people going to sports events.

Many of us have come to realize how dangerous it is to have a massive sports industry centered around what is essentially an opiate for the masses to keep the surly proles from revolting.

Re:The opiate of the masses

[ChrisMaple]

Sports is a celebration of human excellence, something you obviously oppose.

Re: The opiate of the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Pride and vanity is a sin, and the massive amount of injuries, drug use, and corruption is a problem for the sports entertainment industry.

At least we aren't quite ready to return to death sports.

Re:The opiate of the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Sports is a celebration of human excellence, something you obviously oppose.

Sports is a bunch of trained monkeys entertaining the masses so they will remain in a state which allows those in power to control them.

And you're a stupid sack of shit who would benefit from being kicked in the teeth.

Re: The opiate of the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Go easy on the dope. Clearly he has been smoking the opium.

Re:The opiate of the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah it’s actually a way for us to experience & fulfill our tribalistic instincts in the context of a modern society. No one is really that impressed with “Thonk throw rock good, Thonk throw rock reeeel gud”.

That’s why there are teams. If it has teams, it’s a panacea for instinctual tribalism. That’s why you feel so good when “your” team wins. ... and why people have more sex when their team wins.

If it were just about human excellence soccer players wouldn’t root for their team when a member obviously takes a fall like a giant baby mangina, but it happens every game.

If it has a group it is mostly about tribalism. If it is has one winner, it slants more toward excellence but if you get excited because your girl or guy won, tribalism.

Just what the hell are we doing on this rock anyway. Humans are weird as shit.

Re:The opiate of the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. Sports is a celebration of my town's pack of wild negroes beating up on your town's pack of wild negroes.

Re:Zero emisions?

[olddoc]

It helps a little. Automotive CO2 is a small part of total greenhouse gas emission and overall electric vehicles result in less energy consumption than gas powered cars. Electric vehicles are great for the planet in Canada where so much of the electricity comes from hydroelectric sources. It's too bad that nuclear power isn't used that much in the USA.

As a roadmap.

[Anonymous Coward]

For tunneling, the best model is a german one.

Re:As a roadmap.

[johnsie]

Pretty sure the English and French building an tunnel under the English channel was a bit better than any German one.

Musk is one boring clown...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything to divert attention from his failing Tesla business, the lack of investors, the SEC interview.

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Rei]

1) Tesla is on a roll. Their production rates make everyone else look like they're missing a zero. They're well en route to being sustainably profitable starting this quarter.

2) I have no clue what you mean by "lack of investors". Obviously, all of Tesla's stock is owned. Actually in a way well more than "all of Tesla's stock", as people who've shorted the stock have put other people's borrowed stock back on the market, and people have bought *that* as well. If you mean "lack of interest in a capital round", Tesla has no interest whatsoever in another capital round; they plan to fund their expansion internally. If you mean for going private, however, they would like more to water down Saudi interests - although that means paying a premium over market prices.

3) SEC investigations are rarely fast, and can take years. By far the most likely result, if they find against Musk, would be a fine ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. Against him personally, not against Tesla (the SEC has generally taken on the view that it's not right to punish shareholders for an individual's actions that may have worked against them).

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, Tesla is on a roll :)))))
 
.) Having not produced an $35k car, fElon Musk is about to not produce $25k car. In three years.
 
.) Having not secured funding, fElon Musk is desperate to find investors, and the markets (TSLA=303) don't think he can pull it off. Potential "Saudi, Apple, Norwegian, Russian, Martian" buyers, who the shills have been dreaming about. But there are rumours SpaceX may be the "white knight", like Tesla white-knighted the previous Musk failure - Solar City. Congrats, stockholders ;)
 
.) Having not fixed manufacturing problems, fElon Musk is shipping shoddy vehicles and setting himself up for a customer service nightmare
.) Having a stalling demand after the initial peak of preorders, Tesla is stocking up unsold cars.

SEC or no SEC, Tesla and fElon are busted.

Tesla will most likely bankrupt by the beginning of next year. Yep, this will be before the SEC investigation is over, but SEC will catch up with Musk eventually.

Finally, Tesla has no investors. Tesla has stock holders, but their claims come after everyone else, so they'll get a drink of cold water from their "investment". Provided, of course, they pour it to themselves.

Cheers, shill.

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Tesla lost $700+ million to sell those cars. They already lost money just making them and selling them, before any R&D or debt servicing or other expenses are included. They lose money on every vehicle they sell, and are down to less than 3 quarters of cash in the bank, at current burn rates. Not very good...

PS: SG&A was, once again about 20% of revenue. It's continuing to scale linearly with revenue growth, there is no savings in volume at all.

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Rei]

Having not produced an $35k car, fElon Musk is about to not produce $25k car. In three years.

1) Is your view that companies should offer lower-margin variants of their vehicles while they're still scaling production to meet the demand for their higher margin vehicles?
2) You do realize that most EV manufacturers are doing this right? I-Pace is doing this, Taycan is doing this, Kona is doing this, etc.
3) Nice distortion of Musk's statements on the interview. He was very careful to repeatedly express the caveats that 3 years would be in an ideal scenario only.

Having not secured funding, fElon Musk is desperate to find investors

Again, you keep using the word "investors" without clarifying what you mean. Tesla has investors holding all of their stock. And is not seeking further investment for fundraising. I think you're using vague terms while talking about privatization, but that's an entirely different story. Tesla has been quite clear that they're seeking a larger pool of investors to dilute the Saudi investment.

And while this is a bit of an aside, but as a retail investor, I'm very glad that Tesla saw fit to let all investors know about their privatization plans, rather than what many companies do which is only negotiate with their large retail investors behind the curtain, often leading to retail investors getting screwed over.

.) Having not fixed manufacturing problems,

Keep telling yourself that.

Tesla will most likely bankrupt by the beginning of next year.

And this is where a figurative LOL turns literal ;)

Right now, Tesla appears to be on track to beat, not simply meet, their Q3 projections (which were only for an average of 4k per week across the quarter). They have a very straightforward path to profitability ahead of them - production volumes are being sustained at far higher levels than in Q2, margins were already positive in Q2 without AWD and P, which are now 50% of the take, so even if you assume no process improvements whatsoever (which are the primary focus at present), that alone is going to generate sizeable margins.

But by all means - please short, short, short! Come on, how much interest will you pay on your credit cards or home mortgage versus how much you'd make when Tesla "goes bankrupt", right? Get those shorts in!

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Is your view that companies should offer lower-margin variants of their vehicles while they're still scaling production to meet the demand for their higher margin vehicles?

If a company is gonna saw they will produce something they better well do it. Otherwise it is illegal stock manipulation.

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your view that companies should offer lower-margin variants of their vehicles while they're still scaling production to meet the demand for their higher margin vehicles?

Inability to deliver has nothing to do with "scaling up". Musk cannot build cheap cars, period. He's got no qualification, no people around him who can help, and he's out of money.

You do realize that most EV manufacturers are doing this right?

No. I've bought two EVs already. No waiting lists, no playing games, no bullshit. No Tesla.

Nice distortion

What "distortion"? Musk will not be delivering $35k Teslas "in 5-8 months", because Tesla will have closed down by then. He won't be delivering $25k cars either.

Keep using the word "investors" without clarifying what you mean.

Investors are the people who are needed to bring in fresh 2-3 billions to pay Tesla's bills. You see, the people who have money. The stockholders of current stock are not investors in Tesla - they are speculators on the stock market. And are about to get shafted again, but at a much lower price than the "funding secured" $420 that pathetic attention whore lied about.

I'm very glad that Tesla saw fit to let all investors know about their privatization plans,

I bet you'll be even gladder in the coming few weeks, when the board replaces Musk and the stock tanks to $150 and below. Because you're a paid shill, and not an "investor". You should be ashamed of yourself.

Keep telling yourself [bloomberg.com] that [insideevs.com].

Keep preaching that there'll be demand after the Kickstarter peak. The numbers are in, and post-preorder sales are ... flatter than flat.

They have a very straightforward path to profitability ahead of them

LOL. They lose thousands of dollars per car, burn cash like there's no tomorrow, face flat sales and have a growing stock of unsold vehicles. Where will the "profits" come from? Mars?

But by all means - please short, short, short!

Sure, baby. It is a glide down from now on. Meanwhile, you can "hold" and wait for the $420 buyout.

IT IS COMING, ANY DAY NOW.

Re:Musk is one boring clown...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, Rei, are you buying today? I myself will buy when fElon's margin call strikes on Thursday.

Maybe.

Re:Zero emisions?

[110010001000]

Definitely. There is nothing more efficient than a rich person driving himself around in a $60,000 car. Why, we could just power it via the smugness alone...and the rich person doesn't have to deal with the common people on mass transit.

No way will tickets cost $1

[Anonymous Coward]

at least not after an initial gimmicky giveaway. With such a bottleneck only 2.5% if the stadium and a proposal to double it, the free market will cause the fares to those of bus prices, whatever they may be in that area.

Re:No public funding? Why not then.

[Rei]

‘Literally No One Calls Me That Or Has Ever Called Me That’: Our Interview With Ol’ Musky

Glomar Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the real purpose for doing this???

Re:Glomar Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the real purpose for doing this???

To accelerate the occurrence of the next earthquake, by inserting "items" near the Hayward fault during the tunneling process.

Re:Glomar Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

VIP escape route in the event of a zombie outbreak at the stadium

Re:Glomar Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

All of this tunneling under Los Angeles is to provide underground access to Musk's secret lairs, where he keeps his supply of monocles and fluffy white cats (tended by "little people").

BTW did you know that Elon Musk's wife is Talulah Riley, who played the incredibly hot cyborg host Angela in Westworld? He already has his "Bond girl" collaborator.

Re:Zero emisions?

[Rei]

1) $60k is around 80th percentile in price people are optioning out their Model 3's to - even today where production is starting with the more expensive variants. But by all means, inflate, because price distortion totally makes your points legitimate.
2) The median Model 3 buyer is spending around $24k more on their Model 3 than on their previous car. Aka, they're not "rich", they just really want the car.
3) See the production volumes linked here.

Unlike other manufacturers, Tesla can't sell vehicles at a loss; they generally get about 25% margins on their vehicles (Model 3 just broke positive in Q2 and is expected to be around 15% in Q3). Others by and large sell subsidized or no-profit EVs - and consequently will not sell more than they have to.

So far there have been three different independent teardown studies of the Model 3. Two of the three (Munro and the German teardown study) show that even a base Model 3 without any options will turn a good profit (one disagreed - although they used a demonstrably inflated battery cost estimate). But of course almost nobody buys a car without options. The average car sale price in the US is $36111.

It was a space suit test

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a space suit test :-)

Re: Musk is on the brink of psychosis.

[that this is not und]

He will just grow slowly crazier, like Howard Hughes... and Nick Tesla.

Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

he should focus on bankrupting one company at a time

I think the GP's point

[rsilvergun]

was that we could do without cars if we had things like buses that take 2 hours to go 20 miles on a Sunday.

Cars are what I'd call an irrational rational choice. We fight approximately 8 wars, breath toxic fumes and spend a large chunk of our GDP for the sake of those cars. Plus we devote a huge mount of prime real estate to parking them (there's a researcher who calls them the deserts of the city). There is literally not enough metal on the plant to give one to everybody, almost guaranteeing some form of conflict over basic transportation. And that's before we talk about the time spent in traffic jams or the loss of life and injury from a transportation system built around amateur drivers responsible for maintaining their own vehicles.

From a purely objective standpoint they make life worse than the alternatives. But there are no alternatives (2 hour short bus rides and all). The rational thing is to build those alternatives but nobody wants to spend the money and even if they did the car companies would fight tooth and nail. Given the disadvantages it's irrational but if you can't change the system then operating within it becomes rational. It's a classic catch 22: You'd have to be crazy to do it but once you're doing it you'd have to be crazy not to.

Re:I think the GP's point

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of your objections are specific to internal combustion cars. Electric cars relieve the exhaust (you can power than with nuclear or renewables) and the wars-over-oil problems.

Re:I think the GP's point

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars will need even more space because they have to be charged now.
But maybe we can focus on positive stuff to do like bus lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks - some of these are cheap or can be done with painting a line.

Re: I think the GP's point

[Miamicanes]

If "prime" property is used as a surface parking lot, its "prime-ness" is more a case of wishful thinking. Most new skyscrapers (the TRULY prime property) have their parking sandwiched between ground-floor retail & rooftop resort-like park/garden in the 10-20 story pedestal below the tower itself. One of the ironies of downtown Miami is that an average tower built within the past 20 years actually has more parking spaces per leasable square foot than Sawgrass Mills (a huge outlet mall on the Everglades-fringe of Fort Lauderdale). Planners *hate* it because they think pedestal garages are ugly, but they do mostly solve the parking problem without wasting surface/roof area.

Re:I think the GP's point

[Anonymous Coward]

No! Fuck that SOCIALISM shit. I ain't sharing my lane with anyone. I am an Amurrican.

Re:Zero emisions?

[Ksevio]

Automotive CO2 is a substantial part of greenhouse gas emissions. Light vehicles make up around 17% of total emissions. Switching to electric would have a huge impact

aka Personal Rapid Transit

[pesho]

Self driving pods on dedicated track that move people between stations without intermediate stops was supposed to be the transportation of the future back in the 1970's. The term is PRT - personal rapid transit. Experimental track was build at West Virginia University and is still operating. Even the pod capacity is the same as the one proposed by the boring company

book their tickets for local trains does not work

[Joe_Dragon]

book their tickets for local trains at X time does not work.
Right now the local trains work with tickets have no fixed time and trains run at head ways from each 2-3 min each to 15-60 min.
and after events / games they run on load and go no fixed times.

Book in advance with gates can jam up line / lead to people getting crushed. In some places right after an big event they just make the gates go to open and do quick checks of tickets.

What if you get stuck in line getting out and miss the time? get there before your time? With mass people it's better for the on site staff to just use load and go vs dealing with people needing to back out from the gate find staff to help them and then wait.

Even going in if say to have an transfer that can get backed up as well.

Running the numbers

[kenh]

Assuming Dodger stadium is limited to one event per day, and there are only a finite number of days per year (365 or 366), with a daily capacity of 1,500 passengers per day, and assuming full-capacity, every day, with every passenger booking round-trip passage, that gives you:

1,500 passengers x 2 trips (round-trip) x 366 days = annual revenue of about $1,098,000 with a one-dollar fare.

How can this venture support itself on a million dollars/year? Add in the reality that Dodger Stadium probably hosts fewer than 120 events/year (81 regular season home games, plus other events no more often than about once a week in my estimation), and annual revenue comes to $360,000/year.

How many jobs can this one-third to one-half million dollar enterprise support AND cover operating expenses?

Obviously Musk is looking for a showcase project to run at a loss to win larger, more lucrative projects going forward, and that's OK, but what happens when Musk no longer needs this showcase project?

Re:Running the numbers

[WindBourne]

The simple answer is, that it will depend on how smart a builder is.
If they look far enough ahead, then they make it trivial to connect multiple systems into 1.

Re:Running the numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it's puzzling that Musk even includes oddball figures in his spiel. The per person fares will obviously be much higher than a $1. I admire Musk's seemingly endless ambition, but his constant overselling of projects is tiresome.

Billionaires should get smart

[WindBourne]

So many of them speak about cleaning the air and yet, few put their money where their mouth is. Building fast transportation across the edge of cities into the heart of them, would make lots of money. Right now, most of the public transportation is either outrageously expensive, AND/OR it is as slow as cars, but with numerous stops. Musk is developing a system where by they can do 100-150 mph which would enable moving from the edge of a city to the heart in just minutes. This system will make a LOT of money over time. Few 'public' systems in America will.

Re:Billionaires should get smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, guess what sunshine, such systems have already been successfully built and have been in operation for a long time.

They aren't called "hypeloop", "highspeed bullshit" or "elon's musk".

They are called "metro" or "train" or in places "rapid transit system", and they are available in hundreds of cities across the world.

No need for billionaires, just a fair tax system and an efficient government that works for its people, and not for its corporations.

Re:Billionaires should get smart

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like Apple patting yourself on the back for inventing phones. Every country but America already knows about public transport. Guess it's just too Commie for America and takes a billionare to mention it before you even listen.

Across the edge of cities? Some of those words don't mean what you think they mean.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[WindBourne]

mod down, please. Hard to believe that we have so many fucking trolls at such low numbers.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a great website, I also joined to protest the idiotic plans to bore the ground under my property.

No more free pass for Musk's idiotic fantasies.

Re:Zero emisions?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Rei! You're back! You're needed over on the "Musk made Tesla shorts billions" thread... But anyway...

The average new car in the US today is around $34000; the typical Model 3 is between 60 and 100% higher than that. In other words - it's well above what the average person is willing to spend on a vehicle.

Tesla LOSES MONEY on every car sold. How many times do I have to correct you on this? They lost over $700 million last quarter, selling around 41,000 cars. You talk about "gross margins" and ignore the fact there are sales costs (S&GA) that are REQUIRED to deliver those revenues. And that makes the company lose money (it's been scaling linearly with revenue for years). You want to look at revenue and only SOME of the expenses REQUIRED to get that revenue. And that doesn't even include the servicing of all that debt. Nor R&D, or other expenses to keep the company going. Just sales of product and cost of sales makes it a losing proposition.

Tesla has less than 3 quarters of cash burn left. Musk committed securities fraud. Tesla cannot - has not - delivered a $35K vehicle. It's not looking good at all, and this money-losing tunnel is simply another "look over here, people!" from Musk in an attempt to deflect from the failure of Tesla.

Re:book their tickets for local trains does not wo

[93 Escort Wagon]

Here in the Puget Sound area, people can buy their tickets ahead of time from Sound Transit (our local multi-county transit agency). It doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Now, we don’t have turnstile gates to contend with - instead, we have fare enforcement people doing frequent spot checks on our trains. It seems to work decently, and it’s rare that I see someone get caught without a ticket.

Even with gates/turnstiles... I’m not sure why there’d be a problem. It’s not like you can’t put scanners on the turnstiles - I believe that’s what they do in Japan. And I assume most transit agencies allow for the purchase of monthly passes, which functionally are identical to advance tickets.

But I’m a bit puzzled that you think you’d have to buy a ticket for a set time. What you likely *would* buy is a ticket good for a single (round trip) fare. Tickets have unique identifiers, and ransit system computers can deal with that, no problem.

Re:book their tickets for local trains does not wo

[93 Escort Wagon]

On that last point, I stand corrected - I see that the press release actually claims people could buy tickets for a specific time.

I suspect the person who came up with that specific statement (Musk?) has never ridden on mass transit. It seems inefficient and likely unworkable, as the OP stated.

However I expect they’d figure that out one way or the other, and it’s not like they couldn’t shift to single-trip tickets easily enough.

BTW that Geek Wire article’s statement about being “nothing like your typical subway trip” is pretty silly - I ride a train to work most days, and what is described sounds very much like how our “typical” subway system works.

Re:No public funding? Why not then.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Right of ways are valuable property rights and government subsidies.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[WindBourne]

Crimson Tsunami/Caffinated Bacon. ,take a hike. You continue to troll everywhere.

It's not cheap tunneling

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not cheap tunnelling, its blowing of safety standards. Tunnels are large and have safety systems to protect occupants from fire. Musk's tunnel requires a confined space procedure to work in by OSHA regulations.

Bullshit. Don't trust Elon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon has proven himself to be a bullshitter and a criminal. His illegal manipulation of Tesla's stock is going to get him sent to jail.

I don't trust anything Elon says anymore - especially after that Ambien horseshit excuse he used. There was never funding for taking Tesla private and he lied.

Period.

Seriously Rei, are you that stupid to keep defending that asshole and believe his horseshit?

I don't think you are.

So, cut the shit. Because it's really damaging your credibility now.

Re:Bullshit. Don't trust Elon.

[Amiga Trombone]

So the guy isn't perfect. He still developed a cheap, reusable rocket and a popular and coveted electric car.

I'll give you he's a bit of a bullshitter, but he isn't going to go to jail over one ill-considered tweet. Worst case, he pays a stiff fine and learns a lesson about shooting off his mouth.

Why so bitter? Because Elon Musk turned out to be human, just like the rest of us?

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Crimson Tsunami/Caffinated Bacon. ,take a hike. You continue to troll everywhere.

WindBourne...that name sounds familiar... aren't you that hypocrite that claims Taiwan belongs to the indigenous people, while you said you live in Colorado which by divine intervention belongs to the white guy?
Maybe you should take a hike? (like out of Colorado).

Howsabout he get the tech PERFECTED?

[Chas]

Before he starts all his unicorn jizz and fairy fart-laden pie-in-the-sky BS?

#Monorail!

sad news - Elon and Grimes broke up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard the news on twitter -- Elon "E" Musk and Claire "Grimes" Boucher have broken up. Rei is on suicide watch.

Doesn't matter...

[superdave80]

Dodger fans will STILL not show up until the third inning.

How cheap?

[superdave80]

...to the stadium in less than four minutes for a roughly $1 fare.

...the Dugout Loop clientele would be limited to about 1,400 people per event

So, even operated every day, they would only have revenue of about $500k/year? Even if they could somehow build this tunnel system for $5mil (which I highly doubt), and even if this thing ran with zero overhead operational costs, you are STILL looking at a decade to break even.

I actually doubt you could pay for the operational costs for $500k/year.

Only 1400 per event?

[Mal-2]

Has nobody informed Musk that baseball games generally don't pull the entire crowd simultaneously? Some people arrive early and watch batting practice, while others don't show up until after the game has already started. Now getting everyone out of the facility at the same time might be a bigger challenge.

Personally, I have found that parking at Union Station and then walking up the hill to the ballpark just isn't that bad, and keeps me out of the horrible traffic that always results when 60,000 people try to drive away from the same place at the same time.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Fuck off Windy you lying sack of shit.

No, really, I am not

[alternative_right]

You are thinking of zoning.

No, because the market regulates who can be in a neighborhood more effectively than that.

Most cities have nice northwestern suburbs and a toxic, cheap southeastern area. The worry is that proles from the cheap areas will be easily able to go to the suburbs and raid them. After all, suburbs were formed when people fled the prole infestation of the inner city.

Re:No, really, I am not

[MightyYar]

No, because the market regulates who can be in a neighborhood more effectively than that.

Absolutely not. A piece of land can be zoned single-family, which completely subverts the market drive to put high-density housing up.

The worry is

No, the worry is that people will blow a bunch of money on a useless suburb-to-suburb transit system that even the proles have no use for. Good luck getting a bunch of loot on a bus or train, anyway.

Sounds about right

[alternative_right]

Sports is a bunch of trained monkeys entertaining the masses so they will remain in a state which allows those in power to control them.

The herd is generally inert, but sports/entertainment/beer keep them unlikely to do anything but keep going to work and complaining on the weekends. Mentally disorganized people are harmless.

Placebo

[alternative_right]

If it has teams, it’s a panacea for instinctual tribalism.

This placebo effect allows people to engage in sports tribalism instead of pursuing their own interests as a group (religion, ethnicity, class, race). In theory, this keeps us all unified so that we can pursue the ideology that Government lays out for us.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Why would I be against public transport Windy? It makes no sense. It's one of the reasons American's have such a huge carbon footprint. More public transport and you can start to drop back towards twice the world average from 3 times.

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no "public transport", Lardy, this is panhandling for government subsidies.

As in:

Musk to Federal gubmint: "Gimme billions, I make a cheapah ilektrik car". Gubmint: Yes!
Musk 10 years later "OMG no funding secured i cry a lot"

Musk to State Gubmint: "Gimme billions, I make a cheapah ilektrik from Sol". Gubmint: Yes!
Musk 7 years later "OMG boring market Solar bad. Let's buy my stock it and close it".

Musk to City Gubmint: "Gimme trillion, I make a tunnel whar no sunshine". Gubmint: Yes!
Musk 10 years later "OMG ASSHOLE"

Re:Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Throw in a couple pedo accusations and an SEC investigation and you have the beginnings of a made for tv movie.

Musk = Trump

[ayesnymous]

When there's bad news, create a distraction.

Typical Musk - tax subsized bennies for the 1 %

[Anonymous Coward]

A big disruption at taxpayer expense to the regular people for construction of special facilities for the elite. Cannot miss. Should make just everyone ecstatic. Can't wait.

Pre-empting their proof of concept tunnel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which sounds like they can't do the proof of concept so they are misdirecting with something flashy to distract from the fact and buy some time while they line up taxpayer subsidies.

Reminds me of the old missile defense days when the Dems would trash the current projects to get them cancelled with the promise to support the ones just a little further out out in time, and then repeat the process until they lost big in the elections.

Re: Stop Musk, visit noboring.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the Rise and Fall of the Musk Empire.

Soon on HBO. Starring Iwan Rheon as the Attention Whore.

Zoning

[alternative_right]

A piece of land can be zoned single-family, which completely subverts the market drive to put high-density housing up.

Only if you zone everything else around it in the same category, which in the age of the car would mean many miles.

Re:Zoning

[MightyYar]

They do exactly that in suburbs, with only relatively small areas sequestered away as high density or mixed use - usually right next to high-density commercial or even light industrial .Even inside the city limits, they will often restrict building heights in residential zones. For instance, in Philadelphia the building height limit is 38 feet in most of the residential-zoned areas. That is the vast majority of the city by area.

Small areas are enough

[alternative_right]

They do exactly that in suburbs, with only relatively small areas sequestered away as high density or mixed use

If small areas are allowed, that enables apartments to coexist with the burbs.

This strengthens my point, which is that people coming out of the inner city are not wanted in the suburbs, which is why Americans oppose public transit.

Re:Small areas are enough

[MightyYar]

If small areas are allowed, that enables apartments to coexist with the burbs.

Sure, they coexist - but once developed, there is no more more market force at work. Density cannot be increased and so prices go up, up, up as demand increases with no more supply. Demand is artificially constrained by the free market. The only place for poor people to go is where market forces are still free to work: blighted areas with depressed demand and further away from the city where land values have not yet appreciated and supply is still keeping up with demand.

This strengthens my point, which is that people coming out of the inner city are not wanted in the suburbs

It rather depends on the city. In Manhattan or San Francisco, poor people mostly come from outside the city. This is increasingly true as cities revitalize/gentrify, depending on how you want to paint it. Most cities of appreciable size (Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, etc.) have some form of commuter rail, meant to bring in well-off suburbanites into the city center. It's cheaper to go the other way, out to the suburbs - precisely because people generally don't want to do that. The type of public transit you say is opposed already exists. The kind that doesn't exist is public transit that can efficiently take you from one suburban location to another.

Re:Musk is on the brink of psychosis.

[kaatochacha]

Why? He's pushing space exploration, and other technologies. While I don't myself own a Tesla, I don't understand the Hate. Is he a showman? Yeah. Name one really front page executive who wasn't.

Public transport would connect these areas

[alternative_right]

The only place for poor people to go is where market forces are still free to work: blighted areas with depressed demand and further away from the city where land values have not yet appreciated and supply is still keeping up with demand.

This is why Americans oppose public transport: poor people, who commit most of the crime, will then be able to get from their ghettos to the suburbs.

Re:Public transport would connect these areas

[MightyYar]

A point which I have refuted on other grounds, and which you've failed to counter. Repeating your thesis is not proof.

But in the end, what opposition are you talking about? There are 12 brand new commuter rail systems since 2000 in the US. These new systems are in the West, the East, the Midwest, and hell, even Texas. There appears to be broad support for new commuter rail, with dollars being spent to build new systems.

Do you speak English?

[alternative_right]

A point which I have refuted on other grounds, and which you've failed to counter.

When did Slashdot become Reddit?

Re:Do you speak English?

[MightyYar]

Ah, well that answers all of my concerns with your thesis. Thanks.

The Reddit Method

[alternative_right]

The Reddit method of debate is to keep repeating yourself, asking the other guy alternately if he just doesn't understand you or for a source. Then, declare victory and make a snarky comment.

This type of behavior has blighted the internet, so I ask you to reconsider employing it.

Re:The Reddit Method

[MightyYar]

I feel like I'm in bizarro land, because that's exactly the tactic you are using.

Excellent points

[alternative_right]

If a $10 million project creates an enterprise that is worth $8 million, the world is a poorer place. In addition to this destruction of capital, it also has to be subsidized to remain in operation, taking money from one group of people to provide benefits to another group of people.

This is a great way to visualize how unrealistic programs and policies weaken the economy. Imagine thousands of these at once and some of our recessions no longer seem so inexplicable.

Re:Excellent points

[eric_harris_76]

Recessions aren't caused by the capital destruction of money-losing government businesses, bad as they are. Amtrak, the Post Office, mass transit, and the like aren't a large part of the economy, and aren't in a position to screw things up.

The financial sector, on the other hand, certainly can.

Public transportation

[alternative_right]

Again, Americans do not want it because it allows poor people into their neighborhoods. You have not really done anything except offer tangentials here, and then you made accusations, and now you seem to be just confused.

Re:Public transportation

[MightyYar]

No, I've directly refuted your core point with actual data.

But in the end, what opposition are you talking about? There are 12 brand new commuter rail systems since 2000 in the US. These new systems are in the West, the East, the Midwest, and hell, even Texas. There appears to be broad support for new commuter rail, with dollars being spent to build new systems.

Your entire thesis is built upon a false premise, that there isn't support for commuter rail in the US.

Not relevant

[alternative_right]

There are always new commuter systems; however, it depends on where they go and how useful they are.

Houston, for example, adopted a new line that runs between downtown destinations. Does it head to the suburbs? Heck no. There is a reason for that.

Not all rail systems are equal or even alike. You have to dig deeper.

In the meantime, you still refused to address the core point, which is that class warfare makes mass transit unpopular in the USA.

Re:Not relevant

[MightyYar]

Houston is not even on my list, because you rightly point out it is not a commuter rail. I listed 12 new commuter rail systems, which directly contradicts your point. I am not avoiding your point at all - I am directly addressing it. You are apparently not even giving me the courtesy of opening the data I provide you. Your assumption that the US is anti-commuter rail is not necessarily wrong, but it is 20 years out of date.

Linear causes

[alternative_right]

In my experience, most cause/effect relationships are like building a campfire: if you make a circle of rocks, pile wood in it, put newspaper and kindling under that, and soak it in lighter fluid, you have a complete fire awaiting a spark.

All of these little failures contribute to the conditions required for the economy to crash.

Re:Linear causes

[eric_harris_76]

Another analogy: cylinders, disks, frustums of cones.

A cylinder on its side will move a little if you nudge it a little. It'll move a lot if you nudge it a lot. But only if those nudges are from the side. Onto its ends, nothing much happens.

If it's standing on one of its ends and it's not very tall relative to the radius, a little nudge will do nothing lasting. A big nudge, same thing. But a huge nudge, and over it goes.

If it is tall enough, the slightest breeze will topple it.

If it's so short it is better called a disk, a nudge won't topple it if it's standing on one of its faces. At most, it'll scoot a bit.

If it is on edge, a breeze on its edge will do nothing, but one to its face will send it down.

Similar observations for a frustum of a cone with circular faces, depending on its orientation: big face down, little face down, on its side.

And if it is on its side and the distance between its faces is large enough, nudges and breezes won't topple it, just move it to a new point on a circle.

OK, now where was I going with this?

Oh, right. Something that experience tells you is always stable can become unstable if the impact it receives increases in magnitude, or comes from a different direction.

So, by this analogy, the subprime mortgage industry was a frustum whose bottom face kept getting smaller and whose height and top face kept getting bigger. Kinda sorta.

All data is relative

[alternative_right]

I listed 12 new commuter rail systems, which directly contradicts your point.

Depends on prior rates and what these rail systems are doing relative to the point of suburbinner city transportation.

Aided by government intervention

[alternative_right]

Good analogy, I think.

So, by this analogy, the subprime mortgage industry was a frustum whose bottom face kept getting smaller and whose height and top face kept getting bigger.

Let's see... where was government in this?

It is certainly possible to find prime mortgages among borrowers below the median income, but when half or more of the mortgages the GSEs bought had to be made to people below that income level, it was inevitable that underwriting standards had to decline. And they did. By 2000, Fannie was offering no-downpayment loans. By 2002, Fannie and Freddie had bought well over $1 trillion of subprime and other low quality loans. Fannie and Freddie were by far the largest part of this effort, but the FHA, Federal Home Loan Banks, Veterans Administration and other agencies--all under congressional and HUD pressure--followed suit. This continued through the 1990s and 2000s until the housing bubble--created by all this government-backed spending--collapsed in 2007.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

and

The housing bubble was inflated by federal policies created by President Bill Clinton, then expanded by President George W. Bush. The policies were supported by Senator and then President Barack Obama.

The policies were intended to help low-skilled Americans — especially African-Americans — and Hispanic immigrants gain housing wealth by pushing down mortgage requirements, such as down-payments.

But the government policy had the reverse effect, and the housing collapse after 2007 eliminated much of the wealth held by African-American and Hispanic families.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07...

and

And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. Republican congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.

The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

and

The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20 percent to 3 percent by 1995 and zero down-payments by 2000. What's more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase "subprime" became commonplace. What an understatement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/2...

I covered this one here: http://www.amerika.org/politic...

Re:Aided by government intervention

[eric_harris_76]

Let's see... where was government in this?

Enabling (as you pointed out).

So, what to do to prevent this from happening again?

I know. Have government regulate the financial sector even more!

If some fails a lot, having more will fail less, right?

Regulation always backfires

[alternative_right]

Have government regulate the financial sector even more!

Plz no!

Regulation imposes costs and unintentionally legalizes certain behaviors since anything not on the naughty list is presumed to be nice. In addition, it gives business another few layers of paperwork to hide behind.

I suggest we cease regulating entirely, and go back to good old-fashioned lawsuits. If you catch someone doing something bad, and can prove it, you should be able to sue in the interests of your group as a member of that group. That way, you do not need to have toxic waste on your lawn to sue on behalf of your community.

Re:Regulation always backfires

[eric_harris_76]

Maybe not always. Give me a minute, I'll think of something.

But certainly often enough. It either doesn't work at all, or those being regulated find ways around it, or there develops a revolving door between the industry and the regulatory agency. ("Who else knows the ins and outs of the widget industry? Someone who has never been within a mile of a widget manufacturing or refurbishing plant? Or someone who has has his first widget job straight out of school?"

The alleged beneficiaries of regulation have a diffuse interest in regulators doing their jobs to to benefit them. Those regulated by the agency have an intense interest in the activities and potential activities of those regulators.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+regulatory.capture

Nope. Still haven't thought of one.

Maybe tomorrow. Until then, g'bye!

Re:Regulation always backfires

[eric_harris_76]

I suggest we cease regulating entirely, and go back to good old-fashioned lawsuits.

Criminal charges for criminal actions would be nice, too. And none of this namby-pamby negotiating it down to a fine, either. If somebody got cheated, that means somebody cheated them. Get the dishonest salesperson (or whoever) for the crime, and get the boss who ordered it as an accomplice and for conspiracy.

Figure the odds on that one.

A friend of mine who saw in the Bakke decision a big chunk of hypocrisy figured it like this. With previous cases where racial preferences meant a white person was treated unfairly, it was just blue-collar people. The Supreme Court figured the social cost of social justice was worth it. Or something like that.

But with the Bakke case, it was a real person facing real injustice -- a guy who was going to go to medical school, were it not for affirmative action. Somebody who might have been a friend or neighbor or relative. Someone of their social set. Such injustice must not be tolerated.

And then they managed to find a reason why his case was different from cases involving people who get dirt or grease under their fingernails.

Don't know if that interpretation of events is supported by the details of the Bakke and other "reverse discrimination" cases. I didn't look into it as much as my friend did. It has a degree of plausibility.

I have a hunch that the courts would end up treating the bosses ordering hinky action differently from the employees committing the hinky actions, because the judges would think of the bosses as "one of their own". Cynical of me, isn't it?