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.

Comments

sped up video

[religionofpeas]

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.

Re:sped up video

[Anonymous Coward]

Computational tunnel driving is apparently all the rage these days. Speaking of tunnels and mass transportation, this sound like the start of the realization of the Asimov's Caves of Steel.

Re: sped up video

[Anonymous Coward]

He has to speed up the video because it's so boring.

Re:sped up video

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm looking forward to running the strips!

Re:sped up video

[Anonymous Coward]

ya gotta take a lot of motion sickness pills to go at that speed

Re:sped up video

[MouseR]

The ultimate Darwin filter.

Re:sped up video

[EETech1]

I hope they're not going to be running on those crooked ass rails!

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/upload...

Why LA??

[Anonymous Coward]

What a waste.
It's just a city of thugs and illegals. Better to just use it as a pipe to pump the illegal caravans into Baldwin and Weinstein's (an all the other nazi left paedos) mansions.

Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's only of use if you want to go to SpaceX.

Got it.

Re:Elitst

[colinwb]

"So, it's only of use if you want to go to SpaceX." - Or if you want to leave SpaceX for *anywhere* else!

Re:Elitst

[Rei]

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.

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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..

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most companies wouldn't open a test tunnel to anyone.

Is that in case they hold it wrong or something?

Re:Elitst

[dohzer]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ah the real issue raises it's ugly head."

Ah the extra apostrophe rears IT IS? ugly head?

Re:Elitst

[Gavagai80]

Alas, with SpaceX's 80 hour work weeks nobody ever actually leaves.

Re:Elitst

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

Re:Elitst

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

IT'S A TEST TUNNEL DOHZER MORON. Obviously they can get away with test scenarios rather than full on public access, dipshit!

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

Never ridden a subway, have you?

Re:Elitst

[Sique]

You've never been in an urban environment, as it seems. Otherwise you would notice how many tunnels an urban environment has. And if they are all useless, why they have been built in the first place?

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.)

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Elitst

[nukenerd]

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.

Re:Elitst

[mrclevesque]

"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.

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Elitst

[religionofpeas]

We also knew it was possible to make rockets. The concept isn't new. He just thinks he can make a better version.

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Elitst

[mcvos]

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.)

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes just like you do not sell autopilot beta software to the public.

Oh wait....

Re:Elitst

[mcvos]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it terminate in the garage at Musks house? Are you saying it’s his personal tunnel?

Re:Elitst

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:Elitst

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is not about Hyper-loop moron.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[stealth_finger]

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?

Re:Elitst

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Elitst

[houghi]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Elitst

[drinkypoo]

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...

Re:Elitst

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Elitst

[kellymcdonald78]

After all of the people comparing him to Iron Man, he's decided that he'd much prefer to be Batman

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[kellymcdonald78]

The whole purpose behind the Boring Company is to shift the economics around tunnel building.

Re:Elitst

[DrXym]

There are lots of scenarios where point A to point B is perfectly fine. Many metro lines work exactly that way, going back and forth between two terminals with stops along the way. So to many shuttle / airport express type services. I expect that A to B would be fine too for other kinds transportation, between warehouse / distribution depots, parking lots & themeparks and so on.

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Elitst

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re: Elitst

[c6gunner]

It's a reusable tunnel. Shut up!

Re:Elitst

[religionofpeas]

Yes.

Re:Elitst

[ravenscar]

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.

Re: Elitst

[c6gunner]

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.

Re:Elitst

[houghi]

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.

Re:Elitst

[WoTG]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Spencer Drager]

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.

Re:Elitst

[b0bby]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MattskEE]

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.

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.

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

In what metropolitan area is 8 blocks 50 miles?

Re:Elitst

[taiwanjohn]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:Elitst

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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"...

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd *love* to see environmental groups literally throwing up roadblocks, choking in the act.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re: Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re:Elitst

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Elitst

[dgatwood]

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.

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.)

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Elitst

[nukenerd]

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.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to own land, a decent bit of it, and THE BANKS took it away. Your argument is invalid.

Re: Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon musk was talking out of his ass. He's a know nothing retard.

Re:Elitst

[nukenerd]

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.

Re:Elitst

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Elitst

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re: Elitst

[WindBourne]

No. A digging tool.

Re:Elitst

[Anonymous Coward]

U mad bro?

Re: Elitst

[mrclevesque]

"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.

Re:Elitst

[mrclevesque]

+4

Re:Elitst

[Agripa]

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.

This place

[nowwith25percentmore]

This place looks like such a hole in the ground.

greed fear & ego based manstrocities

[Anonymous Coward]

starvation & deception remain as the leading killers of all of us. a delusion of illusions? cease fire stand down.. help put an end to corepirate nazi sponsored wmd on credit cabalism while we still have life.. in the moms we trust.. looks like we're failing them badly? if i can change, anybody can..

200 to 250 km/h

[evanh]

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!

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[AmiMoJo]

Looking at the video the track is nowhere near straight enough to support those kinds of speeds.

At that speed the track has to conform to extremely tight tolerances to avoid derailing the train or throwing the passengers around. I suppose they would argue that this is a test tunnel but surely one of the most important things to test is the ability to lay the track within those tolerances and maintain it at those levels during operation.

Japanese high speed rail inspects the track every night using a laser measurement system. The trains themselves are inspected from the outside after every run, and then more extensively every 36 hours. I guess they think that the sledges will need much less maintenance to safely maintain those speeds.

I'm unimpressed, so far all they did was dig a bog standard rail tunnel.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's almost as if they have style guides that tell them to use units that their audiences will understand! OMG that's so weird!

Do you have anything useful to contribute, or are you just going to keep leeching off the US Navy's free protection for your exports, completely lopsided trade agreements that you profit highly from and Americans lose from, and the US military's highly subsidized free service whereby we put our own young men in harm's way so you can sit back and take potshots at them? You are entitled to our unflinching protection, we are entitled to your unending scorn.

USA out of NATO.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously those tracks are temporary ones for construction purposes, and not ones designed for 100+ mph rail traffic.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Rei]

1) The curves are at the start and end (accel / decel). The trip will be purely accel and then decel.

2) This is just a 3km test tunnel. I seriously doubt the top speeds will be anywhere near those of Loop.

3) It's not even clear that Loop is going to use rails at all. As of the last discussions, it was still under investigation as to which option would be best.

4) Boring Company's goal isn't to make some sort of uber-sepecial-fancy tunnels. Their goal is to make tunnels cheaply and quickly.

5) The test tunnel's TBM (Godot) is only the first phase of that. They still have two more generations of TBMs to go through (Linestorm, and ultimately Prufrock). Godot is still pretty standard, although they modified the means to remove tailings, switching from diesel to battery-powered locomotives. Linestorm will make tunnels with passing zones so inbound and outbound trains can pass each other, and the TBM will run on battery packs delivered by the inbound locomotives. These two changes will save them from having to lay A) the powerful ventilation systems normally used to clear locomotive exhaust, and
B) the expensive power cables. I'm not sure if Linestorm is going to take the first steps toward automatic continuous casing or whether that's going to wait for Prufrock (same with the hot-swappable chilled cutting discs). Continuous casing and hot-swappable discs would on their own double tunneling speeds. But ultimately their goal is to additionally push cutting head speeds up to several times higher than they are today, since they're nowhere near physical limits.

You walk before you run.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[peppepz]

Do you like black coffee?

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[religionofpeas]

It's almost as if they have style guides that tell them to use units that their audiences will understand! OMG that's so weird!

That's not a problem. They just should have used 125 - 150 mph. We're dealing with a rough estimate here, throwing in numbers like 124 suggests a precision that doesn't exist in the source.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your running commentary on what is obviously a textbook case of blowing up perfectly good soil

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. This is just a basic tunnel, nothing special or interesting, doesn't demonstrate anything new or innovative. All they did was prove they can dig a medium length tunnel, which isn't exactly news.

I get the walk before you can run thing, but why is this news, why is Musk tweeting triumphantly that he built a bog standard tunnel that's not even state of the art, and why are they bothering to let people ride through it? I think most people have seen a tunnel before, maybe even had their car driven through one on a sled.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[cascadingstylesheet]

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!

What's wrong with converting units to those that your audience uses?

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[q_e_t]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. This is just a basic tunnel, nothing special or interesting, doesn't demonstrate anything new or innovative.

It depends on the cost to dig it. It might be innovative it was cheaper than would otherwise be expected, by a significant margin.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Oswald McWeany]

Looking at the video the track is nowhere near straight enough to support those kinds of speeds.

At that speed the track has to conform to extremely tight tolerances to avoid derailing the train or throwing the passengers around. I suppose they would argue that this is a test tunnel but surely one of the most important things to test is the ability to lay the track within those tolerances and maintain it at those levels during operation.

Japanese high speed rail inspects the track every night using a laser measurement system. The trains themselves are inspected from the outside after every run, and then more extensively every 36 hours. I guess they think that the sledges will need much less maintenance to safely maintain those speeds.

I'm unimpressed, so far all they did was dig a bog standard rail tunnel.

I haven't watched the video yet, but would like to point out that it should be possible to build embankments in a curved tunnel. Underground in a curved tunnel intended only to be run at speed you could angle the embankment of the rail on curves and the vehicle could take corners at higher speeds. Be incredibly uncomfortable to passengers if taken slowly, but could be used for faster vehicles.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Expensive Power Cables? Are you kidding?

Compared to the cost of battery packs plus the cost of all of electronics to manage the packs (inverters, etc), the cost of power cables is noise.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

It isnâ(TM)t. Itâ(TM)s shorter than they initially wanted. They were going to leave the head sunk and had to dig it up for reuse because the company is out of cash. This is a tunnel. Like every other one. Vancouver dug one for their fucking Canada Line skytrain. This is nothing special.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The net effect is, like SpaceX, reducing the cost so much that people start asking "why haven't we been doing it this way all along?" If you want to see what a sick joke public works can be, look up Boston's "Big Dig" for a textbook example of incompetence and corruption, just to build a tunnel.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[nukenerd]

I ... would like to point out that it should be possible to build embankments in a curved tunnel. Underground in a curved tunnel intended only to be run at speed you could angle the embankment of the rail on curves and the vehicle could take corners at higher speeds.

First of all you don't mean "embankments", which are raised earthworks in the open. You mean "banking" or "cant" (the latter is used in the UK railway world).

Secondly, I don't know about USA regulations, but in the UK the railway construction regulations do not permit more than a cetain modest amount of cant; AFAIR is is about 6 degrees. The reason is to avoid standing passengers falling over or merely being discomforted if the train has to stop at those places for signals or any other reason. You might think that rule is too cautious, but that is how it is and I have no doubt there are similar regulations concerning roads, although not for fairground rides.

It is another matter whether Musk considers himself above any such regulations - his denials (and those of his aides such as Rei here) that the Hyperloop is a railway (and hence he hopes he can duck established railway safety requirements even though the principle is the same) could be a clue. Perhaps he will claim that the Boring tunnels and Hyperloop are fairground rides.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Oswald McWeany]

I ... would like to point out that it should be possible to build embankments in a curved tunnel. Underground in a curved tunnel intended only to be run at speed you could angle the embankment of the rail on curves and the vehicle could take corners at higher speeds.

First of all you don't mean "embankments", which are raised earthworks in the open. You mean "banking" or "cant" (the latter is used in the UK railway world).

Secondly, I don't know about USA regulations, but in the UK the railway construction regulations do not permit more than a cetain modest amount of cant; AFAIR is is about 6 degrees. The reason is to avoid standing passengers falling over or merely being discomforted if the train has to stop at those places for signals or any other reason. You might think that rule is too cautious, but that is how it is and I have no doubt there are similar regulations concerning roads, although not for fairground rides.

It is another matter whether Musk considers himself above any such regulations - his denials (and those of his aides such as Rei here) that the Hyperloop is a railway (and hence he hopes he can duck established railway safety requirements even though the principle is the same) could be a clue. Perhaps he will claim that the Boring tunnels and Hyperloop are fairground rides.

He has two different proposed uses for the tunnels. One is Hyperloop, where a passenger is strapped into a seat. The other is sledges that cars park on and are pulled along through the tunnel at high speeds on. In both scenarios the passengers will be seated, and presumably, strapped down. Unlike the train, you won't get people getting up and heading for a quick poo. I think a different set of regulations could be employed for a different technology. The concerns for above ground trains wouldn't really apply to Hyperloop or a car on a Sledge.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nah, double milk & double sugar for me. Drown that shit.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[squiggleslash]

Because it shows "progress". It doesn't matter that it doesn't actually demonstrate any of the things that are critical to the project, from cheap boring to high speed automated safe skates, what matters is that he's obviously "serious" because he created a tunnel.

The cost, even at his supposed estimate of $100M/mile, is going to be prohibitive, so to a certain extent proving the technical feasibility of the project isn't going to sway critics. But he's not trying to sway critics. This is smoke and mirrors for the fans, and ammunition for anti-transit politicians, who can keep delaying building real transit using the "Musk has a solution that's just around the corner" argument. And delaying building real transit, and dealing with planning issues, helps Musk's long term game.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. This is just a basic tunnel, nothing special or interesting, doesn't demonstrate anything new or innovative.

Yup, just a Boring Tunnel(TM).

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Immerman]

Right. The Boring Company isn't focussed on making transportation systems, innovative or otherwise - they're focussed on digging tunnels, which Musk believes can be done at least an order of magnitude faster and cheaper than it currently is.

Musk's dream, once cheap tunnels are available, is to build Loop transportation networks with them - but that's a long-term goal.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[AmiMoJo]

Strange that they didn't mention he cost then. If it was radically cheaper then showing the numbers would have been more impressive than giving people a ride through a completely ordinary tunnel.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

AmiMoJo is SO TRIGGERED right now, you guys...

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Immerman]

Two words: Banked curve.

Here's the thing, tunnels are round, and it doesn't much matter if you put the tracks (road bed, etc) on the floor or at 90* on the wall, so long as you don't have inexperienced human drivers trying to navigate them, and you can rely on traffic traveling at an appropriate speed for the amount of banking. Think roller coasters, which can be designed to give a very smooth ride at high speeds through hairpin turns (but usually aren't, since getting thrown around is part of the fun of the coaster)

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

The innovative part is the apparent lack of any surface access midway through the tunnel. Perhaps I missed it due to the footage being sped up, but it's troubling that there doesn't appear to be any provision for escaping from the middle of the tunnel should there be a fire or other mechanical problem.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

"completely lopsided trade agreements that you profit highly from and Americans lose from"

You should take that up with your people who negotiated such deals, that is clearly a you problem if your people cant negotiate fair deals.

"and the US military's highly subsidized free service whereby we put our own young men in harm's way so you can sit back and take potshots at them?"

You mean the multiple wars that your government has started? that harms way? like the funding your government provided for terrorist organizations like Al Queda or ISIS? you know those "moderate rebels" you were helping to fight the current terrorist organizations which then just turned into the next terrorist organizations.

"You are entitled to our unflinching protection, we are entitled to your unending scorn. "

No one has needed the united states protection since world war 2, even in the cold war there was no protection, only a stale mate due to mutually assured destruction. All of the wars since then have been because the US keeps messing about in other countries where they fully do not understand the dynamic and keep creating instability which then creates terrorists. So in conclusion, the US has done more to put everyone else in the world at risk rather than protect them. It doesn't matter whether the justification is Oil, proxy wars with old cold war enemies, backing "allies" like the saudi's (where the major funding for 9/11 came from) or the simple fact that your fighting forces need to use their budgets so that they don't get cut (like most bureaucratic waste). So yeah the US gets the scorn because it deserves it! no matter what your self imposed blinders tell you.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[AmiMoJo]

It's not just the tight curve radius, it's the much smaller "wiggles" in the track. When travelling at 250kph they are going to throw the car around really hard, possibly even off the rails.

I can't find the reference now but I seem to recall that Japanese high speed lines had a tolerance of 10mm/10m, travelling at similar speeds. The track is inspected every single night with a laser measurement system.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Immerman]

Ah, yes, that's an issue. But as other's have pointed out, that rail is almost certainly left over from constructing the tunnel, and would NOT be used for high-speed trains.

After all, this is a test tunnel, for testing their refinements of the tunnel-boring machines and processes. NOT a prototype high-speed rail system. In fact, it's not even a sure thing they'd use rail for their proposed eventual Loop system at all - traveling at those speeds on pavement is no big deal. At least not for cars. Which brings up the other big difference - high speed trains are *trains* - you're moving huge amounts of mass all at once, which means the forces involved to guide it at a given speed are similarly huge, and the tolerances far tighter. If instead you're only looking to move individual flatbeds and minibuses things are a lot simpler.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was a hell of a lot cheaper and/or a hell of a lot faster (which I believe is was both), then yeah it was a massive breakthrough for tunnel tech.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Rei]

It really isn't. These aren't household extension cords we're talking about. They're on the order 1-2 thousand kVA, sometimes more. These are not cheap to lay.

Batteries running on a 2-hour swap cycle, however, are 2-4 megawatt hours in capacity. Just going with an unimpressive $200/kWh, that's only about half a million dollars worth of batteries, give or take.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[HornWumpus]

Prototypes are never cheap. Costs will be 'arm wavey' projections, like solar roads. 99% self serving bullshit.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

2000 kVA ? That's nothing.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is he building a prototype for a standard tunnel? Haven't we been building tunnels for a long time? No one has answers what is special about this tunnel other than one of musk companies built it.

Sounds like a bunch of hot air.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

It was neither of those.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Because standard boring technology was not used to dig it. This is a proof of concept.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than change the numbers given, they should have just given both sets:

200 km/h (124mph) to 250 km/h (155mph)

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[HornWumpus]

Tunnel boring machines are not a perfected technology.

IMHO Musk thinks he will be living in a warren of tunnels on Mars.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the interesting metric here is the time it took to complete the tunnel. If you chop up a 100 km tunnel into 3km sections and complete the entire tunnel in two years that's pretty darn good and if you recover all your tunneling machines you can immediately start another 100 km tunnel with the same manpower an equipment. Cost seems pretty easy to project. You have to purchase land for entry and exit points, deal with red tape, amortize your equipment, pay for material and pay for labor. At that point you have half of a business plan. Subways and surface passenger rail tend to be money losing propositions in all but a very few cases so we have to assume that not having government in charge and not having unions involved will greatly improve the efficiency of operating and maintaining it.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this? Stop unfairly subsidizing your farmers and get your fucking soldiers out of our countries. The day American Imperialism dies will be a great one for all of us.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[HornWumpus]

All down to geology. Dirt and rocks are not a uniform thing.

1.5 km/year isn't a fast boring machine. That's about 4 meters/day.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Thelasko]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. This is just a basic tunnel, nothing special or interesting, doesn't demonstrate anything new or innovative. All they did was prove they can dig a medium length tunnel, which isn't exactly news.

The tunnel serves a variety of purposes:

Musk gets a lot of criticism for projects that are behind schedule or never completed. It's very important for him to show status updates like this.

He needs to keep posting updates in order to keep the interest up in the project. If public interest wanes, funding may go with it.

This serves as a proof of concept for tunnel design. Lessons learned in the construction of this tunnel can be used to improve future tunnels.

This serves as an experimental control by which future improvements can be measured.

Re: 200 to 250 km/h

[Rei]

Hey, if you think you can lay (and then remove) dozens of miles of 2000kVA line for less half a million dollars, go for it. Contracts must be piling up on your desk.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[MachineShedFred]

Well, one thing that is somewhat remarkable is that it didn't take them 4 years to do it, like most tunnels that are dug by governmental departments.

That doesn't really necessitate all the fanfare and public exhibition though.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

No one has needed the united states protection since world war 2

And you don't think there may have been something preventing the USSR from continuing to roll their tanks west into Europe? Like, maybe, the NATO alliance being equipped and backed by the United States?

Pull your head out of your ass. You aren't eating borscht right now and having lessons on the Communist dialectic right now because of the NATO alliance, and specifically the United States being a member.

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[Anonymous Coward]

musk is going to run afoul of the largest racket in this country, government construction. anyone want to make bets that he is found dead from a suicide where he stabbed himself in the back 8 times and threw himself off a building?

Re:200 to 250 km/h

[swillden]

Secondly, I don't know about USA regulations, but in the UK the railway construction regulations do not permit more than a cetain modest amount of cant; AFAIR is is about 6 degrees. The reason is to avoid standing passengers falling over or merely being discomforted if the train has to stop at those places for signals or any other reason. You might think that rule is too cautious, but that is how it is and I have no doubt there are similar regulations concerning roads, although not for fairground rides.

If you get rid of the rails and use wheeled skates, then you don't have to have a fixed cant at all. Just have the skates ride as far up the side as necessary at the given speed so the passengers don't feel any side acceleration. They'll experience an increase in "downward" acceleration during turns, of course, so it will make sense to set an upper limit on allowable gee force.

Johnny Canal redux

[spywhere]

SNL predicted this idea, and its flaws, decades ago:
https://youtu.be/F42qmFHNM-M

best ideas/inventions in centuries

[Anonymous Coward]

kept from us. will the real mr. tesla please roll over in your cosmosian lightshow? thank you sir we're still trying..

Cost to use it a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

In many cases unless its the only reasonable option, most will generally avoid a paid transportation system. Bridges, tollways, spurs are the exception.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[Rei]

People pay to use transportation infrastructure to save them money (or if they don't have a vehicle) all the time. The former group includes things like toll roads, toll bridges, ferries, etc. The latter group includes... well, all public transportation.

Loop is designed for both (vehicle capsules and passenger capsules). Are you saying that you wouldn't use a system that could cut, say, an hour commute down to a 15 minute commute? And even if you didn't, the fact that others would would directly benefit you on the surface.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop shilling Rei. You aren't Elon Musk, you're just his wanna be.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that you wouldn't use a system that could cut, say, an hour commute down to a 15 minute commute?.

What's the cost? Because potentially yes, potentially no. If I can commute an hour, but catch up on reading for $10 a day, $100 a day would not be worth it to cut it down to 15 minutes. It's barely worth getting into a book in that time.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Rei just wants to be Musk's cock holster.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[nukenerd]

Stop shilling Rei. You aren't Elon Musk, you're just his wanna be.

Are we sure he isn't Musk?

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[nukenerd]

Are you saying that you wouldn't use a system that could cut, say, an hour commute down to a 15 minute commute? And even if you didn't, the fact that others would would directly benefit you on the surface.

I was going to reply with something like your second sentence, then saw you had already written it. People will expect others to pay the toll to go via Boring and thus free up the roads for themselves without paying anything.

This happened with the SF Bart system. Everyone was in favour of it being built, saying things such as "it will be like adding another couple of lanes of freeway". But when it opened most of them expected to benefit from it by other people using BART, not themselves.

Re:Cost to use it a factor

[q4Fry]

Are we sure he isn't Musk?

Yes. Musk wants to go to Mars. Rei wants to go to Venus.

...smoking a doobie and swigging a bottle of booze

[Anonymous Coward]

all while walking AND talking! HE!DA!MAN! He is Danger Man! And we love you, because we too smoke doobies and swig bottles of booze. WE!DA!MAN! We is Danger Man!

Allow me to be the one to say it

[Opportunist]

Booooooring!

"Skates" ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Skates ?!

Who called them that ? SpaceX or an idiot "journalist"?

Re:"Skates" ?!

[plopez]

They're made by Acme and happen to be rocket powered. You insensitive clod...

it's a real estate scam

[dltaylor]

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.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking two-dimensionally. Stop it.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the safety hazards from accidents, explosions, toxic fumes from burning plastic, etc. Or even just natural disasters like flood and earthquakes which are rather common.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Anonymous Coward]

"The load-unload times, low throughput (despite the burst speed), and potential backups of the loading areas into public thoroughfares" - are you high? Train stations exist already, it's pretty standard tech to add a tunnel.

Queuing requires parallel scaling, it's not rocket science. Nobody needs to make "this" tunnel "the" tunnel, it's a demonstration. I hope you just woke up after eating too many pot treats or something, your rant is silly.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Oswald McWeany]

Not to mention the safety hazards from accidents, explosions, toxic fumes from burning plastic, etc. Or even just natural disasters like flood and earthquakes which are rather common.

Yes, terrorists will love these tunnels.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[JaredOfEuropa]

And what about spice worm attacks or zombie infestations? No, tunnels are a reckless and dangerous concept that we should stay far away from.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine creimer takes a Hyperloop back home and farts on the train? Do they have fans big enough to handle that?

Re:it's a real estate scam

[nukenerd]

His "rant" is not at all silly. It has touched a major weakness of the system. Having worked as an engineer for London Underground I can assure you that loading and unloading passengers from trains, and moving them up and down from street level, is a very major part of the system and involves extensive engineering in itself. The idea of queueing and loading cars takes things to an even greater level. Have you ever watched how slow it is to load/unload cars onto a river or sea ferry? And the parking/queuing areas for those ferries is enormous.

The Boring system will either end up as a conventional underground railway (which I would welcome) or a car-moving system for a wealthy few that will make little difference to street congestion and any differnce will be negative - only encouraging those wealthy few to bring their cars into the city instead of getting a train there.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Anonymous Coward]

The real innovation is the plan to use a last-in-first-out queue for passenger loading, which, as we all know, provides the minimal waiting time for the maximal number of people. Only the people at the "front" of the line will have to wait for long periods, so we'll have a system where one or two people get really angry, instead of everyone getting slightly annoyed.

Re:it's a real estate scam

[Immerman]

One of the big issues with ferry and train queues is that they're large-batch endeavours. A bunch of people queue up as the loading time approaches, then the ferry arrives and has to wait for all the vehicles to be loaded (not helped by the fact that passengers generally don't ride in their car), and then they all get transported at once.

If instead you have a single vehicle arrives at any time and immediately gets loaded onto a 1-car ferry(skate) and departs, as is planned for Loop, then the queue depth is determined by the average frequency at which new cars arrive versus the time to load them on a 1-car ferry. If the load time is less than the average time it takes for the next vehicle to arrive, then you only get a queue when cars are arriving at above-average speeds. Which probably includes rush-hours, but if you're planning to take the Loop and don't want to deal with rush-hour queues you can likely adjust your plans to avoid the most congested times. After all, unlike with a train there's no waiting time except in the queue (or at least much less, you may have to wait for the next available skate to arrive, but not for a ore-scheduled departure time).

Needs upgrades

[110010001000]

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.

DNS-and-Whining never served

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU NEVER SERVED FAGGOT, do not pretend otherwise Dopey-you-Bitch

Innovative

[Anonymous Coward]

His holiness has innovated away 300 years of mine safety and tunnel safety regulations.

Subways

[bluegutang]

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?

Re:Subways

[religionofpeas]

However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter

Can you give an example ? A quick search showed that most are closer to 20'

Re:Subways

[Mouldy]

Some london underground lines are 11'8

But those tunnels shouldn't be the benchmark. They're small because they're old. Their small diameter prevents the tube getting higher-capacity double-decker trains (a la, Paris' RER). London's newest tunnels (crossrail) are using RER sizes nearer 20'.

Re:Subways

[bluegutang]

Double deckers are usually used for suburban and intercity rail, which need more space per passenger, because passengers expect to sit most of the way. Whereas for subways, whose trips are shorter and quicker, it is considered more acceptable for some of the passengers to stand. So trains are single level, decreasing construction (and rolling stock) costs.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Montreal and Paris. Cars are 2.4 - 2.5 meters wide, and a double tunnel is 7.1 meters wide, thus a single should be about 3.7 meters wide.

Re:Subways

[nukenerd]

However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter

Can you give an example ? A quick search showed that most are closer to 20'

The London Underground tube tunnels - nominal 12' diameter. The Glasgow underground tunnels are 11'.

Re:Subways

[110010001000]

You don't understand. The purpose of this is to extract public money from stupid local governments, not to solve a problem. The entire idea of putting a tunnel with small electric skates that hold small amounts of people is really really stupid. But Musk is good at selling stuff to stupid people at a premium.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of this is to extract public money from stupid local governments, not to solve a problem. [snip] Musk is good at selling stuff to stupid people at a premium.

Exactly.

Los Angeles has enjoyed a bigger and busy metro subway for over 20 years. Musk's company cannot do any better than what is already working in LA.

Re:Subways

[Immerman]

Where are you getting 90 seconds from? From what I can find subway trains generally run every 2-10 minutes during rush hours, or 120-600 seconds between trains. Your basic passenger throughput comparison still holds, just not quite as dramatically.

Construction costs though I must disagree with - the primary purpose of The Boring Company is to revolutionize tunnel-boring technology, which has pretty much stagnated in terms of cost and speed for many, many decades. I believe they're targetting an eventual order of magnitude reduction in time and cost to build a tunnel. At which point yes, absolutely, forget the Loop nonsense, they would make great sense for tiny 12' subway tunnels as well. My sense is that the Loop system plan is still under-baked. If you forgot the outrageous speeds, and just figured your automated skate would take you wherever you wanted to go at highway speeds with bumper-to-bumper traffic but no congestion, then maybe it makes sense - highways have a pretty respectable throughput when running well.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you'll be able to choose where you're going instead of transferring trains. Plus the Boring company intends to keep reducing the costs, and improving the speed of the tunneling.

Re:Subways

[R3d M3rcury]

Musk proposes that each vehicle carry only 8 to 16 passengers. A full subway train, in contrast, carries over 1000 passengers.

I think that your numbers might be a bit off or confused between a vehicle and a train. While a train may carry over 1000 passengers, that train consists of a number of cars. But your basic point is correct--a typical subway car has a capacity of far more than 8 to 16 people.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

90 seconds: some lines during rush hour in Tokyo and Paris ( doesn't work so well there - frequent delays ) -- maybe elsewhere.

Re:Subways

[Immerman]

Generally speaking using the best-case scenario in any comparison is useless.

Re: Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

But they haven't reduced the cost at all yet. How many tunnels does he have to build to lower the cost?

Re: Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why he said a full subway train.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little food for thought. The question as you asked it makes me wonder about operating and upkeep costs for a 1000-head capacity car vs a dozen for offpeak times. Even running at very-reduced frequency in the middle of the night seems pretty wasteful. Moreover, it sounds like this type of solution can completely remove scheduling issues entirely and just run on demand for almost 24hrs and furthermore have a cascading effect on general public-facing businesses' operating hours.

No expert here, just a guy in the middle of dropping the kids off at the pool.

Most my life I've fantasized about living in a time where many cities don't sleep; i feel like this could be a giant step in that direction. And for example, if you work nights and sleep during the day, it's exceedingly difficult to do something besides eat at the same 24-hour diner/Mexican food on the daily.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to defend the Boring company, I think it will largely fizzle, but the difference is method of operation. A subway provides bulk transport with a linear operation. I think the idea of the boring company is to have a single journey close to point-to-point, more like a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) model. It's hard to say though, Musk is making this stuff up on the fly so it keeps changing. For linear operation you want maximum throughput and efficiency, for PRT you trade off efficiency with convenience and speed for the consumer. It's the same trade-off as cars; cars are extremely inefficient in almost all metrics, but very convenient.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Subways stop at every station. Musk's plan is to have direct routes vastly increasing the average speed. Neither is right or wrong. A subway (train) is preferable with a limited number of tracks, while a large number of available routes will make a direct to destination system possible.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

A less optimal case then: Each of the 3 subway lines (excluding the rack railway) of Lyon have peak periodicities of 2min, 2min57 and 3min30 at commercial speeds of ~30km/h. Lyon is the 3rd most populated French city (urban density: 10700 inhabitants/km^2, roughly 3 times that of LA).

Re:Subways

[Wolfrider]

--And riding a "modern" subway car in a big city can be a giant pain (WHAT is that SMELL) - not to mention overcrowded cars. Musk is at least trying to get away from the design mistakes of the past.

Re:Subways

[Anonymous Coward]

Double decker trains are less efficient to exit and board than a (longer) single deck train. For a subway that requires high peak capacity it's probably much cheaper to use longer trains and stations with narrower tunnels.

Re:Subways

[swillden]

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.

You're assuming Musk's system uses the same layout as subway tunnels, which it wouldn't.

In Musk's system, cars would not generally accelerate or decelerate in a transit tunnel (there may be a tiny bit as the control system accelerates or decelerates cars a bit to make room for a merging car), so you could have an almost continuous stream of cars going by. Cars would enter or leave a transit tunnel through an entrance or exit ramp tunnel. Think of a divided highway with entrance and exit ramps and overpasses... but with all vehicles centrally-controlled.

If we assume a 60 mph tunnel speed (88 fps), and individual cars that are 20 feet in length (that's generous), then we have 4.4 car lengths passing a fixed point each second. With precise control of the cars, it should be feasible to get inter-car gaps down to only a few feet, or even to zero, locking them together into an ad-hoc, very temporary train. If we assume only one car per second, that's 480-960 people per minute, in the same ballpark as a subway. At 4.4 cars per second it could carry 2100 to 4200 people per minute.

For that matter, if you reach the maximum throughput of a single transit tunnel, based on the minimum inter-car gaps and maximum speed dictated by safety, turn sharpness, etc., you can always do what highways do to increase capacity: add another lane by digging a parallel tunnel.

The other limiting point for throughput is stations. Stations would have to be sized appropriately. Suppose a subway station has a 1000-passenger train every 90 seconds, and that each train loads/unloads at most 100 people. With Musk's system the station would therefore have to load/unload, say, 12 cars every 90 seconds, or one every 7.5 seconds. Assuming it takes people 30 seconds to get on or off (that's generous, I think, except for disabled people), that means you need to have four cars unloading and four cars loading at once, so you'd need a loading/unloading bay of perhaps 10 car lengths, or maybe two bays of five car lengths. Or maybe you'd need a bit more because there would also be a sorting process going on; people going to the same destination would be assigned to the same car. I'm imagining that people would be informed by their phones which bay they should to go and which car they should get on. So you might want to have more bays to allow same-destination groups to "accumulate".

Actually, for routing of foot traffic, it might make more sense to separate loading and unloading entirely, since people exiting a car would be at their destination and exiting the system (transfers don't make sense in Musk's system). Street entrances/exits should probably be separated so all foot traffic is always moving the same direction. You might end up with station designs where each station is split into a pair of disjoint stations, one for people entering and another for people leaving.

And, of course, with a subway the 900 people who don't get on or off at the station still have to stop and wait for those who do. In Musk's system they'd just whiz right past the station.

Re:Subways

[bluegutang]

With precise control of the cars, it should be feasible to get inter-car gaps down to only a few feet, or even to zero, locking them together into an ad-hoc, very temporary train. If we assume only one car per second, that's 480-960 people per minute, in the same ballpark as a subway. At 4.4 cars per second it could carry 2100 to 4200 people per minute.

Ah, but this is science fiction. Currently we don't know how to do this in a safe manner. Musk himself only projects 30 second headways, a far cry from 1 second or 0.23 second headways like you suggest.

Re:Subways

[swillden]

With precise control of the cars, it should be feasible to get inter-car gaps down to only a few feet, or even to zero, locking them together into an ad-hoc, very temporary train. If we assume only one car per second, that's 480-960 people per minute, in the same ballpark as a subway. At 4.4 cars per second it could carry 2100 to 4200 people per minute.

Ah, but this is science fiction. Currently we don't know how to do this in a safe manner.

Actually, quite a lot of research has already gone into doing this for highway vehicles. One company (Peloton Technology) even has a system on the market for "platooning" pairs of semi trucks. NIST and US DOT both have active research programs, as do several organizations in the EU. Demonstrations of safe and effective platooning have been done with inter-vehicle distances as small as 0.6 seconds at speeds up to 70 mph, including automatic handling of unexpected merges from vehicles not part of the system. Nearly all of the safety issues in such systems arise from the presence of human-operated vehicles on the road. Those wouldn't be present in Musk's system, allowing the tolerances to be closed considerably, but even with a very conservative 0.6 second gap, that's still 72 cars per minute.

Musk himself only projects 30 second headways , a far cry from 1 second or 0.23 second headways like you suggest.

That was specific to the Chicago project, where only ~2000 passengers per hour were thought to be needed. The article said nothing about "30 second headways", it said a car would leave every 30 seconds... that's technically the same thing, but the focus is on passenger departure rates, not safe vehicle packing rates. There's no indication that anyone thinks those 30-second gaps are necessary for safety. Indeed that would be ridiculous, equivalent to maintaining half-mile separations between cars on a highway. If an uncontrolled environment like a highway doesn't need 30-second gaps, a controlled tunnel certainly does not.

A genuine question

[Pollux]

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?

Re:A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

>And how long out are we until cars can get transported through it, like in the YouTube video?

I figure once we invent force fields, we should be able to implement that idea. Otherwise there's a massive hole in the ground during operation that people will die from falling into. So about 2147 based on Star Trek (lol).

Re: A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop asking serious questions about Our High Lord Nerd God Elon if you are concerned with your moderation scores.

His naive and ignorant fan bois mod down anyone who doesnt worship his cock with them three times a day. They all own the official Nerd God Penis Locator so they always pray in the right direction.

Re:A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes this short tunnel so worthy of praise?

Indeed... especially considering that Los Angeles has had a well engineered metro subway for over 20 years that is significantly bigger (wider) and longer than Musk's tunnel.

Re:A genuine question

[dj245]

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?

The tunnel itself is not exciting. But we live in the Golden Era of Marketing and Musk seems to be a marketing master.

Re:A genuine question

[iggymanz]

Musk is losing his marbles and can't make an electric car profitably, and get all pissy when analysts ask him what the plan is to get profitable. How dare they ask a company that went public such questions! And then he lies about getting investment, which is illegal.

So that's why he gets downvoted.

So now he's going to put an electric train on the most expensive kind of rail there is... in a tunnel. whoop de do. Where I live we have them elevated which is cheaper but hey in a tunnel makes people think its a hyper-something

Re: A genuine question

[c6gunner]

What makes this short tunnel so worthy of praise?

Nothing. Musk has said from day one that tunnels are boring. Maybe if you would pay attention and stop asking stupid questions you wouldn't get modded down.

Re:A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't followed it closely, but I think the key points are that it's built more quickly than other tunnel projects, and at less cost.

Re:A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, his car is the most profitable in its class? His company is in the black as of this quarter? I'm not going to even bother reading the rest of your sour grapes post. Your first two points weren't even correct.

Just say you don't like him for whatever reason, don't bother lying. It's fine to not like someone. Making up reasons why is useless however.

Re:A genuine question

[iggymanz]

"his car is most profitable in it's class"???!!!

Hahaha, no Tesla is not making a profit, they are losing money. There is precise definition of "profit" in accounting, and Tesla is not doing it.

Not liking a criminal failure is common among normal people.

Re: A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

"In its class" "this quarter"

Nice weasel words lol.

Re:A genuine question

[Anonymous Coward]

The tunnel itself was never going to be all that "new"/impressive. The real question (and something that remains unanswered) is if they can build said tunnels significantly cheaper and faster than traditional methods. Given Musks track record I think it is safe to say that TBC can build them faster and cheaper than pretty much any company out there, but whether they can do so fast/cheap enough to replace traditional transport systems (trains, buses, cars) will take a few real world construction projects to verify.

Re:A genuine question

[swillden]

What makes this short tunnel so worthy of praise?

What made SpaceX's first test launch worthy of praise? The first Falcon 1 flew for 41 seconds and landed (impacted is more accurate) 250 feet from the launch site.

You've got to start somewhere. Musk is excited about getting started, that's all. Clearly there's nothing particularly special about this tunnel, other than it's the beginning of what he has planned. Yes, that means any praiseworthiness is based entirely on the assumption that more is to come. But that seems like a reasonable expectation to me.

Re:A genuine question

[swillden]

There is precise definition of "profit" in accounting, and Tesla is not doing it.

The precise definition is embodied in GAAP. Tesla turned a >20% GAAP profit in the third quarter. It remains to be seen if Tesla can sustain that, but teardowns show Tesla's vehicles to all have healthy per-unit profit margins and they seem to have turned the corner on their production issues, so it's reasonable.

1fucker

[Anonymous Coward]

where it was When would you like to goodbye...she had In addition, locating #GNAA, there are only when IDC recently most. Look at the

"Just" a tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: walk before you can run

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Rei... poor Rei. Do you never tire of supporting this media whore look-at-me narcissist?

False Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

load times and rush hours

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:load times and rush hours

[Immerman]

It's fine if the next person arrives before the queue is clear, so long as at least one person is served before they arrive the queue will continue to shorten. But yes, sometimes queues build up - that's why queues were invented instead of just random mobs of people standing around waiting. Helps minimize the worst-case wait times, and perhaps more importantly enforce a certain amount of fairness, as primates like us appear to be hardwired to rebel against perceived unfairness. (Also, LIFO and FIFO queues actually have exactly the same average waiting time, they simply trade off between minimizing best-case and worst-case waiting times. Either way you've still served X total people in Y total time, so Y/X is the same.)

I fail to see how you could end up in a Nash equilibrium state though - that implies nothing individual actors do unilaterally can improve their situation. Whereas if some people take the Loop, they improve the situation of non-Loopers, since traffic congestion slowdown generally increases faster than the traffic level, AND they improve the situation for themselves, unless the expected wait time is longer than the time they would save on the Loop *and* time is more important to them than the free time they gain as a passenger.

Plus, if the expected wait time is greater than the expected benefit, they are free to simply decide not to take the Loop today and drive normally instead - this is after all visualized as primarily an "underground car ferry" service. That alone should help optimize the usage patterns.

Re:load times and rush hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, according to Braess's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox) adding a new path to an existing network can redistribute traffic in a way that actually increases average travel time. This is what happens in Southern California, where increasing freeway lanes doesn't always improve the traffic flow. So while adding a new Loop as an option for Los Angeles drivers sounds like a good idea in theory, you could flip a coin to predict whether it will be good or bad for traffic.

Re:load times and rush hours

[Immerman]

It seems likely that their are two major contributing factors to Braes paradox:

- First is congestion cost - too many driver choosing a "shortcut" increases traffic beyond the level that the shortcut (or its outlet) can handle, and flow is reduced. That's a problem with human drivers though - a fully automated roadway will see minimal congestion issues, because the cars can all be operated according to congestion-minimization parameters rather then selfish time-minimizing ones. The primary congestion will be at loading points, giving potential users plenty of warning to avoid the problem.

- The second is opportunity cost, and that's a lot less tractable. If the expected cost is low to get from A to B, then many people will make the journey that would otherwise avoid it and go elsewhere - as presumably happened in the bridge fire example on that page, where accidentally disabling a bridge ended up halving the total number of daily river crossings.

It's a non-trivial problem, but hardly intractable - competent traffic flow experts with enough data can make good predictions - as several examples on that page refer to.

Next stop....

[ZoomieDood]

A merging of SpaceX and Boring company technology...

Horizontal rockets!

Re:Next stop....

[HornWumpus]

Strapped to the back of a Tesla shell.

I'm too old for this

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to go 150 MPH on electric skates. I'm too old!

Re: walk before you can run

[Anonymous Coward]

She's platonically in love with Elon.

Why is everyone so focused on tunnels on earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

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