Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk Shows Off The Boring Company's LA Tunnel (theverge.com)
Elon Musk is keeping to his promise of opening the Boring Company's proof-of-concept tunnel to the public on December 10th. The two-mile-long Los Angeles tunnel takes 30 seconds to get through via a sped-up video. The Verge reports: Construction on the tunnel began over a year ago, and extends from SpaceX's Hawthorne, California headquarters, to an LA suburb. Since then, the Boring Company has been selected to build tunnels for Chicago and Washington DC, and has sketched out plans to build a larger network of tunnels under LA, with the aim of reducing congestion. The tunnels will theoretically use autonomous, electric skates to move anywhere from 8 to 16 people along the system's rails at speeds anywhere from 124 mph to 155mph.
The two-mile-long Los Angeles tunnel takes 30 seconds to get through via a sped-up video.
Musk is reported to be working on a version where it only takes 15 seconds, by speeding up the video to ludicrous levels.
This place looks like such a hole in the ground.
Obviously just round numbers, but US media still can't bring themselves to use the quoted numbers. Instead they leave them out and do their best to convert to specific imperial numbers. Duh!
SNL predicted this idea, and its flaws, decades ago:
https://youtu.be/F42qmFHNM-M
In many cases unless its the only reasonable option, most will generally avoid a paid transportation system. Bridges, tollways, spurs are the exception.
"So, it's only of use if you want to go to SpaceX." - Or if you want to leave SpaceX for *anywhere* else!
Booooooring!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a test tunnel. Most companies wouldn't open a test tunnel to anyone.
You don't just jump into a major commercial project as your first endeavour.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
So, it's only of use if you want to go to SpaceX.
Got it.
Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head.... Tunnels are way too expensive and are even more limited than roads. They only go from point A to B and there is no choice about exiting them in between.
Tunnels are great when everybody wants to get from point A to point B and no place else, like from England to France under water or though a mountain. But in an urban environment, they are kind of useless, especially the high speed kind, because a significant number of folks only want to go part way between A and B, and the tunnel is worthless for them..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Skates ?!
Who called them that ? SpaceX or an idiot "journalist"?
Tunnels are great when everybody wants
Wants? Needs! Like for instance if there's a safety incident. I was trying to spot the safety exit points in that video.
Once he's built his personally-useful tunnel, with free right-of-way, he'll have divided the western LA basin in half north-south. For anyone, including the current light rail/subway authority, to cross that right-of-way, is going to make him a lot more money than the cost of the tunnels.
The tunnels, themselves, are highly unlikely to ever be a useful part of of any useful mass transit system. The load-unload times, low throughput (despite the burst speed), and potential backups of the loading areas into public thoroughfares are all negatives of his system, and I cannot think of a single rationally-explained positive.
It's a test tunnel. Most companies wouldn't open a test tunnel to anyone.
Maybe they're concerned about people getting hurt, insurance issues, trade secrets .... there are plenty of reasons not have the public poking around.
However, when Brunel was building the Thames tunnel in the early 19th century, he would have dinner parties down there for all the big shots in the city to show that it was safe and to raise money.
They should add a track to it and put connected vehicles on them. The vehicles could be powered by electricity and people could ride inside the vehicles.
YOU NEVER SERVED FAGGOT, do not pretend otherwise Dopey-you-Bitch
Tunnels are great for people who have no interest in either A or B: people trying to get from A to B are the problem.
The city I live in is bisected by a river, and there is only one bridge across the river. The road to that bridge also bisects the city, and has many on and off ramps. People getting on and off the road to the bridge slow the travel across the bridge massively. Once you get past the final exit before the bridge, the speed picks up dramatically.
The choke points are easy to point in retrospect, and without human greed the entire system would work a lot better, but people interested in saving themselves 1 minute slow everything to a standstill every single day.
A tunnel for either the people looking to only get across the bridge, or a tunnel for the people looking only to cross the city would help everyone.
His holiness has innovated away 300 years of mine safety and tunnel safety regulations.
"Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head."
Ah the extra apostrophe rears IT IS? ugly head?
Alas, with SpaceX's 80 hour work weeks nobody ever actually leaves.
This space intentionally left blank
So, it's only of use if you want to go to SpaceX.
Got it.
Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head.... Tunnels are way too expensive and are even more limited than roads. They only go from point A to B and there is no choice about exiting them in between.
Tunnels are great when everybody wants to get from point A to point B and no place else, like from England to France under water or though a mountain. But in an urban environment, they are kind of useless, especially the high speed kind, because a significant number of folks only want to go part way between A and B, and the tunnel is worthless for them..
I'm not an accountant working for the boring company so I have no idea about their finances. However, I can see how building a tunnel in certain urban environments might be cheaper than buying land at elevated downtown prices from existing developers- going through legal processes to force them to sell (which usually involves giving the owner of every building you have to demolish above market value) and then clearing away the rubble and debris and then building the road. If there is need for more roads in a high density urban area, underground might just be cheaper.
I think IF there is a financial case for the type of tunnels he wants: urban areas are much more likely to work than rural areas. In fact, it is only in urban areas that it makes any sense at all.
Now, as for whether his plans will work, I couldn't tell you. I know he envisions a whole network of tunnels spidering all throughout the land below cities going more than just one or too places. I couldn't guess if this will work financially or not, or whether cities will pay him. Chances are- he signs a contract to make the tunnels at a price that works for him- and then the cities foot the bill for maintaining those underground tunnels for eternity after that. He will be protected from the maintenance costs and get his pay cheque and leave happy.
I suspect the cost to build the tunnels may be cheaper than ploughing through high rises and commercial districts in some places... but I'm sure they won't be cheap to maintain.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The idea about these tunnels (IIRC) is that they can have lots of exits. Wasn't this test tunnel also getting a proof-of-concept lift right into a residential garage? Probably too expensive for most people, but feasible for public access points. The main thing with these lifts (especially for cars) is that they usually are slow. Sloooooooooow. For public access points, speeding up the lifts would be an important improvement.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
IT'S A TEST TUNNEL DOHZER MORON. Obviously they can get away with test scenarios rather than full on public access, dipshit!
Musk proposes that each vehicle carry only 8 to 16 passengers. A full subway train, in contrast, carries over 1000 passengers. Musk plans for a vehicle every 30 seconds, compared to every 90 seconds for a modern subway line. So Musk's system will be able to carry 16-32 people per minute, compared to a subway which carries around 700 people per minute.
Construction costs would also be higher for Musk's system. He plans for tunnels to have 14' diameter. However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter. Musk claims to be lowering the cost of tunneling, but those cheap tunnels could be used for any purpose, including a subway.
At higher costs for a tiny fraction of the capacity, why would a city ever choose Musk's system?
Never ridden a subway, have you?
I'll preface this by saying that I've made a number of critical comments about Elon Musk's ideas and actions in the past, and more often then not, they are modded down. I don't understand why, as I see Musk to be a good idea-man and a brilliant marketer, but he spends too much time inflating the brilliancy of his ideas before anything even gets off the drawing board.
So, I'll try a different approach. I read the article, and I watched the tweeted tunnel video. And I saw an accelerated recording of passing through a tunnel. Nothing looks at all like what I saw here. It looks like a tunnel, a boring tunnel constructed by The Boring Company. So allow me to pose a question instead. What makes this short tunnel so worthy of praise?
And how long out are we until cars can get transported through it, like in the YouTube video?
Actually, I've never lived in a town which didn't have tunnels. And I've moved often.
(And don't get me started about tunnels which are not for street traffic, but for utilities and other infrastructure.)
The problem here is that any "network" of tunnels that intersect or have lots of stops are NOT fast do to simple physics and passenger comfort. There are a limited amount of acceleration you can use and if you have to stop every four to eight blocks that's going to significantly limit your speed. Subways have this very limitation now, Musk hasn't fixed that or has any novel ideas about addressing any of this.
My observation here is simply that Musk banding about with his hyper loop idea AND trying to demonstrate it in urban areas is cute, but hardly useful to anybody. As a technology demonstrator? Maybe that's useful, but it's a huge expense for little benefit beyond that.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head.... Tunnels are great when everybody wants to get from point A to point B and no place else, . But in an urban environment, they are kind of useless ....
That explains why tunelling urban metros like the London Underground railway are always empty.
"It's a test tunnel."
We know it's possible to bore tunnels, there's lots of them in use all over the world, so I'm not sure what he's testing.
Apparently you miss my point. I'm saying that this isn't new, that the limitations of tunnels remain, even when Musk builds them. Urban environments are poor places for his Hyper loop idea do to the short distances involved and Tunnels are *very* expensive to build at least for passenger and freight traffic.
The ONLY possible advantage tunnels have is that they can ignore densely spaced urban property boundaries, at least in some cases, as they connect point to point, but this is NOT universally true and depends on the structures above and the nature of the ground they are being built under.
How do I know tunnels are expensive? Ever been to Boston? The "Big Dig" is a prime example of shoving major amounts of traffic below ground in an urban area. It was HUGELY expensive and justified only because of the historical and market value of the ground it would have taken to do this above ground. Usually it's a whole lot cheaper to build elevated roads at multiple levels in such situations. Especially in earthquake zones. They look like crap, but they are cheaper.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We also knew it was possible to make rockets. The concept isn't new. He just thinks he can make a better version.
Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head.... Tunnels are great when everybody wants to get from point A to point B and no place else, . But in an urban environment, they are kind of useless ....
That explains why tunelling urban metros like the London Underground railway are always empty.
Sorry I didn't make it clear. I was talking about Hyper-loop transport where physics limit your speed due to passenger comfort and the practicality of having to have multiple access points you have to stop at along the way. Subways have their place, but Hyper-Loop doesn't replace them.
Tunnels have their place for passengers, but they are hugely expensive and usually too limiting to actually use, except in the densest urban environments (going slow) or situations where getting to point B from point A is all anybody really wants to do, such as from England to France under the Channel or going though a mountain instead of around or over it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm not arguing that the Big Dig wasn't a boondoggle (it was), or that it didn't miss opportunities (it did). But it was most decidedly not "just... a tunnel." It includes a tunnel under the city, another tunnel through the harbor, a massive bridge, a major parks project, significant surface roads and highway. Much of the tunnels were through landfill, had to snake around two subway lines, under at least seven commuter rail lines, and of course had to deal with 100 years of pre-existing underground infrastructure, plenty of it functioning, not-disruptable, and not appearing on any maps or plans. One of the tunnels was built below an elevated highway that couldn't be shut down during construction. They found glacial debris, entire houses, and sunken ships during construction for Pete's sake.
Don't get me wrong -- the 1000s of leaks, the ginsu guardrails, the roof collapse, the substandard materials -- all solid examples of incompetence and corruption.
But "just... a tunnel?" Hell no. The Central Artery project is way more than just a tunnel.
But in an urban environment, they are kind of useless
Are you serious? Urban environment are filled with tunnels. From subways to bypasses to getting to the other side of a river, to anything that needs to from A to B with lots of houses in between, or specifically needs to be underneath those houses (sewers maybe?). Tunnels are primarily useful in urban environments because there's a shortage of space there.
I don't know how good or cheap the Boring Company's tunnels are, but cheaper tunnels would be incredibly useful. (I'm less convinced about Musk's vision of underground cars on moving platforms, but who knows how that works out.)
Yes just like you do not sell autopilot beta software to the public.
Oh wait....
Urban environments are poor places for his Hyper loop idea do to the short distances involved
That makes urban environment poor places for high speed traffic. It has nothing to do with tunnels.
Tunnels are *very* expensive to build at least for passenger and freight traffic.
That makes tunnels primarily useful for urban environments. Nobody is going to build an expensive tunnel in a place where ground is cheap.
Oh Rei... poor Rei. Do you never tire of supporting this media whore look-at-me narcissist?
Does it terminate in the garage at Musks house? Are you saying it’s his personal tunnel?
As I understand, the concept is to use high-speed tunnels to further destinations (like LA to San Diego), then slower vehicles inside the urban areas. With enough computerized control and sensors, it's possible to know precisely when a vehicle will pass through an intersection, and from that to compute how other vehicles can adjust their speed or route to ensure smooth traffic and maximum throughput.
In comparison, existing subways have very minimal sensing, with central controllers only knowing what block reports a train, and its last reported speed. Planning capabilities are limited to setting a schedule and hoping for the best. Upgrades are mostly stalled with a chicken-and-egg problem, because cities won't invest in control systems with minimal functionality, and they won't invest in sensor and train upgrades without any improvement in control.
Musk is a hype man. His standard business model is to take an existing platform, upgrade it all at once with the latest technology, and market it as a revolution. The Hyperloop is just a subway, designed and built from the ground up with modern capabilities, instead of bolting on to the systems built throughout the last century.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
As I understand, the concept is to use high-speed tunnels to further destinations (like LA to San Diego), then slower vehicles inside the urban areas.
That's silly, verging on stupid. You don't need a tunnel between cities. You only need a tunnel to get out of a city. Once you do that, there's plenty of open land which could be used to build a cheaper surface-based system. The big benefit of the tunnels is that you can go under urban areas.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Be careful of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
The problem here is that any "network" of ROADS that intersect or have lots of stops are NOT fast do to simple physics and passenger comfort
This article is not about Hyper-loop moron.
There are a limited amount of acceleration you can use and if you have to stop every four to eight blocks that's going to significantly limit your speed.
The ignorance of people who don't live in a large metropolitan area is cute, but stunning too. Eight blocks in Los Angeles at rush hour can easily take 40 minutes in the car. EASILY. So, unless the tunnel concept limits your speed to under 2.25 mph, it's a net win.
That's why you aren't Musk. You have to test everything, and if you don't do something, you can't get good at it. Basic engineering and good lessons in life.
We also knew it was possible to make rockets. The concept isn't new. He just thinks he can make a better version.
Of a tunnel?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Depends on the tunnel. The idea Musk is selling is a network of tunnels with frequent access points, and no human control within. You drive your car to an access point, it gets loaded on an electric flatbed "skate", and unloads you at your destination, without ever facing any of the congestion created by people driving exactly wrong way for promoting throughput.
Even with relatively uncommon access points, such a system could accelerate traffic throughput dramatically - put an access point every few miles and you can get pretty much anywhere the tunnels service while driving an average of only a couple miles, while reducing the burden of through traffic on the streets in between. And when you reduce the congestion on streets, traffic flows disproportionately better.
Granted, the initial tunnels probably won't deliver on that promise, any more than the early Falcon 9s delivered on the promise of reusable rockets. But you have to start somewhere.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have the same problem with flying. It's only of use if I want to fly from Kill Devil Hills and no more than 800 feet. The most over-hyped thing ever! Hope those boys kept their day job.
You might want to ask California's High Speed Rail project about the "ease" of traversing "open land" full of angry/litigious people (property owners, "environmentalists", speculators, etc). There are distinct advantages to going underground. It's a lot harder for people to make the argument that they're being harmed (eminent domain, noise/unsightliness issues), it's mostly an unused/unwanted space anyways so its not expensive and its a lot harder for environmental groups to throw up roadblocks (literally and figuratively).
I could see it working in the US. In the US the rails are owned by companies. In Europe, not so much. So where in Europe they van add a train on the rails anywhere they already exist, in the US the rails-owning company can easily ask higher prices if they think they can get away with it.
In Europe the high-speed trains will have right of way, after that the intercities and then the local trains. At the end their is cargo. That way the more expensive trains with humans on them will be more on time. In the US, a company can easily give advantage over their slower freight trains. And thet is just right of way. You can not force a company to renew their rails.
So where in the US you need to build a new infrastructure, in Europe you can build on the existing one.
e.g. many high speed trains where operational on standard speed rails and high speed zones where added as they where finished.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All they did was prove they can dig a medium length tunnel, which isn't exactly news.
Sure, it's only a standard tunnel. Boring, right?
You're completely missing/ignoring the important bits about *how* they dug that boring tunnel. Maybe the technical bits about being able to swap cutting heads while in operation rather than shutting everything down, or finding a more efficient solution to tailings removal, or not needing the exhaust/power umbilical. There's a lot of cool stuff that no end-user is ever going to see or care about.
That would be Interesting. "Boring Company" would then be guilty of false advertising.
Actually, yes, Musk *has* addressed those issues, and the solutions are fairly easy - eliminate the intersections and minimize stops.
Your tunnels are after all located in three-dimensional space - unlike on the mostly 2D ground surface there is negligible added cost for going higher or lower. So if you want a high-throughput "intersection" you do it the same way as for highways - an overpass with transfer ramps. It adds the cost of some extra tunnels length for the ramps, but that's about it.
And eliminating the stops is easy with small automated skates, since unlike a train you have relatively few passengers per vehicle (which are either a small "bus" or single-car "ferry") and you only need to stop when loading or unloading. And if you have lots of skates simultaneously serving the same basic route it's relatively simple to optimize the passenger loadout - maybe you wait an extra couple minutes for the "right" skate to arrive as others pass by, but you make up the time in high speeds and making very few stops.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Now calculate how much it would cost to build enough tunnel for bidirectional rail which would serve the same corridor. We won't even worry about any additional costs, like stations becoming more expensive and the like...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The plan for the tunnels is Loop, NOT Hyperloop - the physics are completely different when you're talking autonomous flatbeds and mini-busses, and no vacuum.
Depending on how cheaply the tunnels can be dug, they may eventually be well suited for Hyperloop partial-vacuum tunnels, but that's not part of the current plan. Hyperloop (arguably) makes sense for medium-to-long-range transportation(several 10s to 100s of miles), it definitely *doesn't* make sense for short-range transportation, which is what the Loop is trying to address.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
After all of the people comparing him to Iron Man, he's decided that he'd much prefer to be Batman
If it takes you 40 minutes to travel 1.5 miles in a car, why don't you just walk or bike? This is why public transport is never going to work in the US, because everyone is too fucking dumb to think for more than 2 seconds.
The whole purpose behind the Boring Company is to shift the economics around tunnel building.
And besides, tunnels are entirely capable of branching and splitting you know. I could see a computer controlled network routing shuttles through an interconnecting series of tunnels that run in paralle, join and diverge, load balancing the traffic to maximize throughout. Who knows what it would end up like eventually but it has to start somewhere.
Are you fucking retarded? Wtf do you think the tube is in London, or the metro in France or NY. A bunch of tunnels .... in an urban environment.
Tunnels certainly have limitations, but the biggest one is cost. And that is EXACTLY what The Boring Company is focused on - reducing the cost and construction time of tunnels. Tunnels currently cost ~10x what a comparable elevated road would cost to build - if they can make the construction costs roughly equivalent, as they're hoping, then you can get all the benefits of an elevated road, without any of the the eyesore or right-of-way issues, and much greater earthquake safety.
After all, they're not replacing roads, they're complementing them. Got a road that's heavily congested by through traffic? Replace it with a tunnel with very few on-off ramps, so that the surface streets can be used primarily by local traffic, and the underground throughfare doesn't get congested with cross-traffic.
Then there's all the Loop automated transportation network stuff, but that's a secondary / marketing goal.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Tunnels would have the same arguments -- vibration, subsidience, electric fields, just coupled with the cost of building underground. We should build on the surface, just reform laws to make it easier to take land for useful construction projects, as the French and Chinese did for their high-speed trains.
It's a reusable tunnel. Shut up!
Yes.
Exactly this. Many cities have a desire to build or further their tunnel infrastructure. The biggest issues with this? First, it's hugely expensive. Second, it's slow. Third, it requires the movement of massive amounts of earth that must be deposited somewhere (often many many miles away).
What Musk is trying to do is demonstrate how modern tech and some creative thinking can make tunnel building both time and cost effective (something I'm sure Boston would have liked during their "big dig" and Seattle could surely use today). Further, as I understand it, the Boring company aims to transform tunnel waste into bricks that can be used in other construction projects - limiting waste and it's transportation while generating income that can be used to help reduce the overall cost of the project.
All these "tunnels aren't new" comments completely miss the point. That's like watching someone 3D print a figurine and saying "figurines aren't new." The point isn't the figurine, but the process used to create it.
Because you're not going 1.5 miles, stupid. You're probably going 50+ miles, out of which 1.5 is severely congested, 5 is moderately contested, 15 is lightly congested and the rest is smooth sailing. You want to walk 50 miles? Have at 'er. I'm taking the car.
Cars boarding can be usefull if there is no other way for the cars to get there. e.g. Between France and the UK, cars go in a train and then drive on when they get out. However it is not like driving up to it, get on it and get of.
There is a waiting time. The same happens between e,g, Hamburg/Husum and Westerland. There is no other way for the cars to get to Westerland, so they will have to take the train. Yet they will have to be there a certain amopunt of time in advance, as the space is limited.
Boarding such a platform would take time. And while it takes time, the car takes up space. And space is something that is not available, otherwise a tunnel would not be a good option.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The electric moving platforms eliminates car exhaust, and therefore, greatly reduces the ventilation requirements of the tunnels. Which, helps allow them to be smaller in diameter. And it all feeds into a cheaper tunnel. Or so goes the theory.
I wish Kurzgesagt would do a video on queues because it would be something good for people to understand (compared with their usual futuristic crap).
Yes, if the load time is less than the average arrival time then everything is efficient. But we all know there is always a line at the bank, because even with random arrivals any cluster of too closely spaced arrivals ruins the efficiency. Once you have someone waiting in line, the odds are good that the next person will arrive before the queue is cleared. This is one of the reason why I jokingly suggested this project should use a last-in-first-out queue, so only a few people will be extremely unlucky with their wait times.
Adding Musk's loop to an existing commute pattern will also result in the behaviors getting balanced as a Nash equilibrium. Some people would follow their old patterns, but others would choose to use the loop, and at the end there is a chance that the overall commute times will INCREASE as a result.
He is trying to reduce the cost of tunnel building. Subway tunnels cost $150m+ per mile. He is trying to get it down by improving drilling speed and other facets of tunnel creation. So the tunnel itself may end up being not so much to look at besides different techniques used to build it.
I haven't looked into this too much, but I thought that the idea behind the boring company was that costs would be lower through first, making smaller tunnels and second, automating the boring/concrete lining process. I guess we'll see if there are enough areas where any cost savings gets them into a competitive position.
Certainly when you see the projected costs of something like a new Chesapeake Bay bridge, a tunnel would seem to be able to compete on cost.
This one one of the specific items that he has thought about. The plan is for each "skate" to be express - from start to destination with no stops in between. Each station will be in a side tunnel to allow for comfortable acceleration and deceleration without impacting other skates using common tracks.
At the moment such a method is probably too expensive. Musk plans to reduce the cost of tunneling enough to make it feasible. Whether or not he can make it viable remains to be seen.
A merging of SpaceX and Boring company technology...
Horizontal rockets!
In what metropolitan area is 8 blocks 50 miles?
Musk talked about this project in an interview last week. He talks about how surprisingly little innovation has occurred in tunneling technology lately. Everything is still running on diesel power, requiring massive infrastructure to feed fresh air to the operation. In early talks with experts, he asked if they were limited by power or by heat, and they didn't have an answer.
So that's a big part of the reason why he started the Boring Company in the first place. He not only had the selfish motivation to alleviate his own commuting woes, he also found an industry ripe for disruption. Just switching from diesel to electric (an area in which he has some expertise) they can greatly reduce the cost, and that's just the first step in a longer plan.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The problem with that line of reasoning is that the "additional costs" are where tunnels actually take the advantage.
Yes, their stations are more expensive, but they don't have to lay out tracks around mountains, avoid residential areas, or consider (much) the impact on wildlife. Tunnels don't need reinforced-embankment bridges over every waterway. They're (mostly) deep enough that their noise and vibration isn't significant. They aren't going to make any new barriers to existing traffic, human or otherwise.
What makes railway expensive isn't the labor. It's the logistics of complying with the demands of everyone and everything who might be impacted by the project. With a tunnel, much of that complexity disappears, making everything about the project more direct, including the actual route.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Why would we want to fuckup our freight rail (which is better than Europe's, basically for the reasons you say) in order to build passenger rail nobody will use?
Hint: The USA has lower population density than Europe.
The USA should just secure rights of way in the places where populations are growing rapidly. So when it makes sense, we won't go broke buying the land.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Huh. I guess the literally millions of people that use the tunnel system under Manhattan and get off at points in between the far ends of a route don't exist? I completely forgot that the New York Subway system was "kind of useless"...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I don't want to go 150 MPH on electric skates. I'm too old!
I'd *love* to see environmental groups literally throwing up roadblocks, choking in the act.
IT'S A TEST TUNNEL DOHZER MORON. Obviously they can get away with test scenarios rather than full on public access, dipshit!
Even in a tunnel not designed for continuous human occupation you still need escape routes in case of a fire or other accident.
You are still thinking of massive multi-hundred passenger trains. Smaller vehicles with sidetracks at "stations" allow for more through traffic on the main tunnel lines. If the vehicle size is smaller, building a sidetrack to get the vehicle off the main line becomes cheaper, and allows vehicles that don't need to stop at that station to bypass it easily. Much like cars on a freeway. If you don't need to exit, you don't.
Yes, this will take some sophisticated traffic management in order to make it happen safely.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You must not own land if you are advocating to make it easier for a government entity to take it away.
Making laws that only affect "other people" is a brilliantly short-sighted way to fuck yourself over when you become "other people" to someone else who wants shitty laws passed.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
She's platonically in love with Elon.
Your reading comprehension needs work.
Consider a 10 mile commute, not horribly long and ridiculous, but still beyond reasonable walking distance. If 1 mile of that commute is severely congested and takes 30 minutes to get through, and the remaining 9 miles are at full freeway speed, it still takes you ~45 minutes for that 10 miles.
Literally nobody except you came to the conclusion that he was talking about an 8-block 50-mile anything.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Ah, but you make my point for me. Subways exist. Musk hasn't solved any novel problem there, nor will he..
But you also realize that building Subways under ground is HUGELY expensive. Only viable where the real-estate is just not available. For instance, in Dallas, we have our DART light rail system, it rarely goes underground, only where it was just too expensive to obtain the right of way. Even though down town it just took over a series of allies and roads and runs at street level. Then there is the Chicago way, where the majority of their light rail system runs ABOVE the streets... Or even Boston where a significant amount of their "subway" system runs above ground. Atlanta and Denver have similar mix of tunnels, street level and elevated tracks. And this is just the mass transit systems I've actually been on.
Tunnels are TOO expensive to be used except in exceptional circumstances, where the city planners didn't leave sufficient space on the map. Musk has made no novel or unique advances here.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Tunnels are largely safer during earthquakes than being on an elevated structure where it can sway and fall over, and have multiple pre-cast highway segments moving at different rates / directions.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The whole purpose behind the Boring Company is to shift the economics around tunnel building.
Well, then.. Good luck to Musk. The issue he faces is the same issue that has faced miners forever, the method that works for you today at the current location, is unlikely to work in another location, even in the same tunneling project. Packed soil mines totally different from fractured granite, which may vary from foot to foot based on how much ground water is flowing around the tunnel bore. Digging in the LA basin is but one kind of solution and developing solutions that work well there won't amount to much trying to go through the Alps.
Tunnel boring machines vary wildly in their design construction and operation and are usually specific builds for the expected conditions. I don't see how Musk can alter the economics all that much, even if he was to create a erector set version of off the shelf components to build them from. Seems that there just won't be enough demand for these systems.
But hey, if he want's to dig expensive holes... Let m.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Once you have a 100% electric self driving fleet of personal automobiles you can divert surface traffic underground with no problems related to air quality (no exhaust) or safety and accidents. Given parallel development of all three technologies the boring company may be very timely in allowing municipalities to dig underground road networks that serve exclusively self driving electric vehicles and don't allow other types entry.
As I understand, the concept is to use high-speed tunnels to further destinations (like LA to San Diego), then slower vehicles inside the urban areas.
That's silly, verging on stupid. You don't need a tunnel between cities. You only need a tunnel to get out of a city. Once you do that, there's plenty of open land which could be used to build a cheaper surface-based system. The big benefit of the tunnels is that you can go under urban areas.
And except for where I-5 passes through Camp Pendelton, LA to San Diego is urban all the way
First, your assumption that a tunnel cannot have multiple entrances and exits is wrong. I've been in several underground tunnels in which I had to make an exit decision while underground if I wanted to end up in the right place. (This tents to wreak havoc with GPS, but that's a solvable and somewhat orthogonal problem.)
Second, even if you were correct, the tunnel still wouldn't be worthless for people who only need to go part of that distance. All of the cars that are going from anywhere near A to anywhere near B are likely to take the tunnel because it is much faster. Every car that does so represents a reduction in traffic on the main surface highways and streets for the entire stretch of highway that they bypassed, which means those roads also get faster because of the reduced traffic volume.
The key is to choose endpoints that cover stretches in which a significant percentage of traffic is going all the way. For example, a bypass under CA-101 that skips all of Palo Alto and Mountain View would be a huge win even for the Google employees getting on at Mountain View, because of all the traffic that they wouldn't have to merge into at 5 MPH.
An ideal implementation would likely involve running tunnels in parallel with existing surface highways, with the surface highways retaining all of their existing exits, and the tunnels allowing entrance and exit every several exits, thus reducing the frequency of merges that currently cause slowdowns for vehicles traveling long distances, and making the merges faster for people who just going a short distance. (Incidentally, this is also how you improve the speed of mass transit.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm guessing that you have the issue backwards. Since most land is already owned by people, you cannot easily build a road (rail or otherwise) straight between two arbitrary destinations. Due to various geological features and the owners' whims you would have to have lots of curves, build bridges, make overpasses/crossings, and so forth. These curves not only increase the length of your road but they decrease the maximum speed, both of which make the route take longer to travel.
If you make a tunnel instead then you can just bore a hole straight through from one place to another, giving you the shortest route and allowing the highest speed. Furthermore, you already have an enclosed space where you can make a vaccuum to reduce air resistance. Making an enclosed tunnel hundreds of miles long is not at all viable above ground.
dom
Once you have a 100% electric self driving fleet of personal automobiles you can divert surface traffic underground.... Given parallel development of all three technologies the boring company may be very timely in allowing municipalities to dig underground road networks that serve exclusively self driving electric vehicles and don't allow other types entry.
What is the "development of technology" with regard to the Boring company's tunnels? We've been digging major tunnels for about the last 200 years and the tech is now very developed. We have not been waiting for Musk to come along.
In fact the development of electric SD cars would make Musk's proposed sled and lift paraphernalia redundant. You just need ramps down from the surface roads to plain tunnels with a road surface floor that anybody could build. There would not be, nor need to be, anything special about Boring's tunnels.
I used to own land, a decent bit of it, and THE BANKS took it away. Your argument is invalid.
Elon musk was talking out of his ass. He's a know nothing retard.
The discussion here seems to be focused on the feasibility and usefulness of tunnels under cities, here on earth. Why? That's just for training. Getting an idea of how to do it. If it can be marketed and sold, fine, all the better.
Think about it, whom are we talking about? Elon Musk. Therefore he is likely preparing for a much bigger picture: he has the rockets to bring stuff to space. He has the expertise to create, store and harness electricity (electric roof tiles, solar panels, batteries/power walls, electric cars and other vehicles). Now he has the expertise and capability to create tunnels, and already works on electrifying the equipment. What do you do with all that? Next stop: asteroid mining. Or a moon base. And the required tunnels are drilled by machines of the Boring Company hoisted into space by SpaceX (think BFR), powered by electricity created by solar panels built by Solar City, stored in batteries built by Panasonic. Um. Ok, the last one is missing still, but otherwise he has most of the vertical (ha!) stack ready to go.
Prediction: he's going to turn the moon (or any other celestial body) into a kind of Swiss cheese eventually.
Captcha: electric
What a load of bullshit. News to me that tunnelling machines are diesel powered, although in a remote aea without electric power there can be diesel generators on the surface supplying the cutter motors by cable. In fact tunelling technology is doing fine without Musk - there have been a lot of big tunnelling projects in Europe recently, with the Crossrail project and the Northern Underground Line extension to Battersea in London alone.
I know things are a bit behind in the USA regarding railways, but even so, Musk deluding himself and his fans that he is the pioneer in railways (so he calls them by another name) and tunnels is a bit rich.
What makes railway expensive isn't the labor. It's the logistics of complying with the demands of everyone and everything who might be impacted by the project.
Yes, that is an issue, but not an insurmountable one.
Yes, their stations are more expensive, but they don't have to lay out tracks around mountains, avoid residential areas, or consider (much) the impact on wildlife.
Given the actual rail plan, these issues are accounted for already in general. But that's not to say that the rail plan couldn't be improved with some big tunnels through certain problematic areas. Tunnels do solve the problem of how to get through highly populated areas, and I think it absolutely makes sense to employ them there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You do know that the point of this venture is to bring down the cost of tunnels, right?
"Tunnels are too expensive" is a pretty useless argument against a company who's stated goal is to bring down the cost of tunneling.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No. A digging tool.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"That's why you aren't Musk. You have to test everything"
I'm also not John, Mary, and Bob.
The expensive and hard parts aren't the boring, it's all the rest.
+4
I suspect he is testing the economics due to construction time and operating cost. He needs people with direct experience in making the tunnel and how the equipment operates so the procedures and equipment can be improved to make it more economical.