The Boring Company's First Tunnel Is All Dug Up (arstechnica.com)

Elon Musk has tweeted images of his tunnel-boring machine with the caption "Congratulations @BoringCompany on completing the LA/Hawthorne tunnel! Cutting edge technology!" The update comes a couple weeks after Musk showed off the Boring Company's LA tunnel and said it was "on track" for an opening party on December 10th. Ars Technica reports: The tunnel appears to end at what The Boring Company calls "O'Leary Station," which is located on a piece of commercial property that The Boring Company purchased in Hawthorne. This location is close to, but not the same as, the location for which The Boring Company recently received approval to build a tunnel entrance within a residential garage. "O'Leary Station" references a SpaceX/Boring Company employee who recently passed away. The Hawthorne tunnel is just a test tunnel for The Boring Company, which also plans to complete a second, 3.6-mile, one-way tunnel from Los Angeles Metro to Dodger Stadium. Eventually, the company wants to dig a tunnel in Chicago between O'Hare International Airport and the city's downtown.

Comments

Not sure what is new here.

[SuricouRaven]

It's a standard TBM. Making a tunnel. Cool, yes, but what's the advancement here? Is is any faster or cheaper than existing tunnel-making machines? Can it make smaller tunnels, which could be quite valuable in urban areas? Why all the excitement?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, it is an existing TBM. Elon simply bought one.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You have to start with existing equipment before you find out what's wrong with it. Isn't that how it usually works?

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

Indeed. They're not magically jumping straight to Prufrock. Godot is mostly (but not entirely) standard. Prufrock is their target, which involves continuous casing, hot swappable cutting discs, and much faster head speeds. Linestorm is intermediary between them.

Godot is operational now. Linestorm is under construction. Prufrock is in design.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[JaredOfEuropa]

The company is banking on several advancements. Using "self driving" pods instead of a long train of cars, allowing point to point transport without having to change lines. Using modular pods that allow for a variety of cargo: passengers, a single passenger in his car, goods, whatever. Having these things travel at a higher speed to further reduce travel time. Access points with a low footprint and fast lifts, meaning you can afford to have many smaller points of ingress instead of just a couple of large (and in urban settings hugely expensive) subway stations. Technically it can be done, though I have my doubts about the economics of the whole thing. In any case it'll be interesting to see how this develops.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Joce640k]

Nope, it's because they can do it much faster/cheaper than before.

If you can make holes cheaply then it opens up a lot of possibilities.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

Meanwhile in the real world, Tesla consumes more EV batteries than everyone else in the world combined, with Giga alone making about half of the world's total (~20GWh/yr out of ~40GWh/yr). Tesla's US sales make everyone else's look like a rounding error.

As for Boring Company, their goals are low-cost PRT. That's the whole point of Loop and Hyperloop. But maybe you'd feel better if the rich were banned from riding? Even their first non-demonstration-scale project (the Chicago Loop) is to charge half as much as an Uber ride. By the time they're up to Prufrock, fares are supposed to be cheaper than bus tickets (but go straight to your destination at high speeds).

It's one thing to be dubious about their probability of success. But it's an entirely different thing to misrepresent their goals.

As for your comments about turning "this tunnel"... "this tunnel" is simply a demonstrator. Little more than an amusement park ride for the general public. It's neither meant as a transportation solution nor to make money; it's meant to inform their engineering for their subsequent tunneling activities. Heck, they're outright planning to have it end at a watchtower made from compressed tailings bricks, manned by a knight who shouts insults at passers-by in a bad French accent.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

Subways are like underground trains. Loop is like underground SkyTran.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[MrMr]

Well, there will be a lot of dirt trickling down those tunnels to clean up. That was the economic model, wasn't it?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[bn-7bc]

Well if they can make tunnel booring quicker and cheaper it can ave a lot of projects a lot of money and time down the line. I'm sort if fine thet the demo/dev project ends up beeing somthing rather exspensive. If musg licenses his improved tbm design to others it is allso a nice revenue stream to but into his other project

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Joce640k]

Yes but think of the next steps. You could use the tunnel as an underground passage for transportation of persons. And then give it a name, like, uhm, subway or metro. Think of the advancements.

If you can connect cities at high speed, then, yes, it's a huge step forwards.

(even if it's only goods, not passengers, for safety reasons).

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Gavagai80]

The fact that it makes much smaller tunnels than standard boring machines is a large part of the cost-saving strategy (although not the only part). The Loop going into it on which people will travel up to 150 MPH is notable for being optimized to work in small spaces, as opposed to subway trains.

Basically, Elon found that small tunnels have drastic cost savings which can make them economical to build many more of... if they have a use. So he got some engineers to design a transport system (Loop, not Hyperloop) which can fit into what we can afford to tunnel. And that's how The Boring Company was born, although they also have a bunch of other theoretical cost reduction ideas largely drawn from SpaceX strategies.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[bluegutang]

Nope, it's because they promise that someday they will be able to do it much faster/cheaper than before, but not yet.

FTFY

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[SuricouRaven]

Forget about the loop aspect - smaller tunnels alone could be very useful indeed in urban areas. They can transport people on foot from A to a nearby B in a mostly-straight line, without having to weave around buildings or wait to cross traffic - and if A happens to be a subway station, you've just found a way to make subways substantially more attractive. The trick is getting the cost of drilling tunnels down low enough that it becomes practical for a subway station to have a spider-web of pedestrian tunnels radiating out for half a kilometer.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The standard tunnel boring machine uses diesel engines. The boring company is using electric motors and battery packs to power the drill head. That is where the innovation and technology comes in. Tesla cars have the same four wheels and the body and the steering. Is it same as an gasoline car?

The diesel engine in confined space will asphyxiate the workers. Supplying air and taking away the exhaust is a very complex operation, adding to the costs. Especially on long tunnels.

Having said that, competition will catch up quickly. They can house the diesel engines at the entrance or tap into the grid and send power by cables to the drill head. Not sure how feasible it would be though. Also looks like the boring company is planning on autonomous self driving tubs to take the tilings away and to bring fresh batteries. This too could reduce the cost of tunneling. Again, other can easily copy.

Tunneling has changed for ever. Whether The Boring Company will get a big slice of the market and windfall, I am not sure. But 20 years from now, all tunnel boring ops will be like what the boring company is doing now.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[SuricouRaven]

We can do that already. It's called a train. I'm more interested in innovations in tunneling for urban transport.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[SuricouRaven]

We'll see. SpaceX is certainly delivering on their technological promises, and they have the serious contracts to prove it. If nothing else, Musk is able to hire people who can make stuff work. I just think we should save some of the hype until he actually shows they can do something new and better, even if it's only a contract for someone relatively mundane, like construction of a fairly contentional tunnel but at lower cost than is currently achievable.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Rei, glad you are back. You seemed to be missing for a while, vacation perhaps?

Anyway, please do some reading up on the reports about battery pack + electric motors replacing the diesel engines in the boring head. Saves on fuel costs, and ventilation costs. Also tiling being carried away in self driving autonomous tubs, saving conveyor belt costs.

People are thinking of the skates and fast urban commuting over several miles. But If the cost savings come through tunnels become competitive to over pass building, so we might see a few stacks of the over passes buried underground.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Ogive17]

Well - I'm assuming it is cheaper as it's not some government contracted project.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's exactly where the innovation is. Many small scale end points instead of a single huge one (the train station). Moving things by train or subway is not a new concept, but the sucky part isn't the train itself but getting your stuff on there. That's why large companies have their own train yards. What if medium size companies that have a lot of logistics to deal with in an urban setting (big box stores, supermarkets, local Amazon / UPS depots), could afford their own hookup to the underground Loop?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Joce640k]

We can do that already. It's called a train.

Freight Trains don't generally go right into the heart of cities or directly to the center of big retail areas. Trucks can often be prohibited from entering cities during the day.

With trains/trucks there's a whole extra unloading/transport step that could be eliminated.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[c6gunner]

No, you're thinking of All Gore.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Hognoxious]

The fact that it makes much smaller tunnels than standard boring machines is a large part of the cost-saving strategy

It might be - if it actually was a fact.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[c6gunner]

the upright-landing thing goes wrong quite a lot they just don't show you

Your entire post is completely wrong and very stupid, but this conspiracy-mongering is egregiously stupid. The history of every booster ever built by SpaceX is completely public, and wikipedia has a good breakdown of them. There are hundreds of people tracking every launch and recovery, and even an android app with all the relevant details. You're just making up complete nonsense.

For the record, spacex has attempts to land 37 boosters and has succeeded 31 times. The first 5 failures all occurred between 2014 and 2016. In 2017 every recovery attempt was a success. The single failure in 2018 happened while attempting to recover all 3 segments of the Falcon Heavy; 2 were recovered on land while the third crashed near the drone ship after running out of ignition fluid.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[tepples]

As I understand the claim: Freight trains go through city centers, be it at level crossings or overpasses, but they don't stop in city centers.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Memnos]

Wow. I know it's impolite to call out typos and misspellings on the internet, but Jesus!

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

No cutting edge tools were used to build this tunnel. The boring machines were purchased from other projects, was even more expensive than other tunnels in a dollars per mile routine.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And he hasn't done that yet- this came in over budget and about twice the cost of a conventional tunnel.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I find bus tickets to be significantly more expensive than owning a used Prius.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[LordHighExecutioner]

probably not new, but for sure it is boring...

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[DerekLyons]

The fact that it makes much smaller tunnels than standard boring machines is a large part of the cost-saving strategy (although not the only part). The Loop going into it on which people will travel up to 150 MPH is notable for being optimized to work in small spaces, as opposed to subway trains.

While the speed sounds impressive - previous articles have indicated that the Loop can only carry a fraction of the passengers per hour that a conventional subway can carry.

So, to do what you didn't do (answer the grandparent's question): The excitement is basically Because Elon.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Meanwhile in the real world, Tesla consumes more EV batteries than everyone else in the world combined, with Giga alone making about half of the world's total (~20GWh/yr out of ~40GWh/yr). Tesla's US sales make everyone else's look like a rounding error.

US vehicle sales in Q3 were around 1.5 million; Tesla's 83,000 is a rounding error.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[drinkypoo]

Damn. You really are a Musk fanboy. Who the hell knows the NAMES of the machines? For chrissake.

Damn. You really are a whiner. Who complains about people knowing the NAMES of the machines? For chrissake.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[drinkypoo]

I find bus tickets to be significantly more expensive than owning a used Prius.

Buses are crap and the only reason we use them is that drivers are expensive and it's hard to get rail into places these days. As they are replaced by self-driving vehicles which are smaller and electric then the costs will go down. AV tech is too expensive to make that cheaper yet, though.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Columbus, OH was using electric boring machines in 2010. Electric power for underground operations is hardly a new concept...

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

Ignoring the troll above me.

Continuous casing - I'm assuming by this you mean concrete. This method can only be used when the ground is pretty strong and self supporting.

No. I mean exactly what I said: the TBM does not stop for casing. They're designing for casing of new segments - regardless of the type of casing - to be conducted while the TBM is still pushing off the previous casing segment(s), and without it having to stop to advance the segments that it pushes off of. In-situ concrete casting - what you suggested as an alternative - has never been publicly discussed by TBC.

Hot swappable discs - as by definition the discs installed are all required to excavate the complete face area, if any are withdrawn from service you have incomplete excavation. You could only possibly do this by having overlapping cutter heads, which would duplicate costs for negligible gain

Correct on everything but "negligible gain". The cost of extra cutter heads is far smaller than the cost savings of not having to stop the TBM.

considering typical downtime for cutter heads is a few hours every 3 days or so

Where are you getting "a few hours every 3 days or so"? That's in no way normal. The average TBM only spends about 40% of its time actually boring (see Figure 5).

Even if you did only have a 24:1 operation:downtime ratio, that would still justify the use of extra cutter discs and hot swapping. Tunneling costs are linearly proportional to tunneling speeds. Cutting disc costs are a small fraction thereof. And the more discs you have, the more the wear is spread out.

Faster head speeds - the cutting ability of a cutting disc is dictated by the rotational head speed and pressure applied at the cutting edge. Too much pressure/speed and you get accelerated wear and too much heat generated which also leads to accelerated disc wear.

Precisely. Which is why TBC's plan to increase head speeds is to use highly cooled, advanced alloy cutting discs. Because - to reiterate - disc costs are a small fraction of the total project costs, so increasing their costs to dramatically increase tunneling speeds is a no-brainer.

The best material we have is tungsten carbide mounted in a ceramic matrix

Carbide bits (not very commonly used on TBMs) are used for abrasion resistance, not for overcoming thermal limitations. Generally TBM cutting discs are simple martensitic steel alloys, and wear is by tribocorrosion. The limited use of carbide bits on TBMs has generally been in soft ground, to avoid slip-related wear on the discs. Cutting discs cut via pressure-induced fracture of the rock, and tungsten carbide is a more brittle material than steel. When you use carbide bits on hard rock, they tend to fracture, and then the uneven load quickly causes the rest of the bits to fracture.

There are few companies in the US that have more experience with advanced heat-and-corrosion-resistant alloys - and keeping them cool under extreme conditions - than SpaceX. You don't get more hostile conditions than rocket engines, and SpaceX has been pushing the bounds on them to extremes (check out the sort of conditions that Raptor operates in, it's nuts). TBC's goal is to apply that knowledge to cutting discs.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

You seemed to be missing for a while, vacation perhaps?

Whistles innocently ;)

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

There's some confusion here. As a general rule, TBMs are powered by high voltage lines carrying a couple megawatts of power. Diesel-powered trains carry the spoils away, where conveyors are not used. Powering a TBM with HV lines requires laying the lines, a quite expensive affair that TBC is replacing with hot-swapped battery packs (simple calculations show that it should only take about half a million dollars in batteries), carried in and out by the spoils trains. Diesel trains require powerful ventilation systems, for obvious reasons, which are also another significant capital cost which is eliminated by the use of battery-powered electric trains.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Rei]

As a point of comparison, compare half a million dollars in batteries vs. what your article cites for the power line work:

Royal Electric arrived on-site in November 2010, with an $8 million contract, as sub for general contractor Kenny Construction (acquired by Granite Construction in December 2012), according to Rodger Dalton, Royal’s project superintendent. Royal has already done similar projects in the past and has a crew specialized and trained to manage the TBM-related tasks.

“There is a great deal of high-voltage and data work being done, and they are handling all aspects of the job,” said Bob Rautenberg, Kenny Construction project manager.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[serviscope_minor]

Damn. You really are a whiner. Who complains about people knowing the NAMES of the machines? For chrissake.

Quite. He basically comes here and shit talks everything. It's a way some people use to try and sounds smart when they actually know very little at all.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[apoc.famine]

No, no we can't.

Surface trains already kill a lot of people (and animals) every year, and to add more surface lines requires eminent domain and the destruction of existing buildings and habitats. People die on the order of daily at at-grade railroad crossings. We simply can't improve our rail connections between cities at the surface level. Sure, we could elevate all of the tracks, but that's expensive and really shitty to live near.

Train tracks are a significant barrier for everyone, and the more trains you have, the more of a barrier they become.

Going underground gets rid of all of these problems. If The Boring Company can really get tunnel costs down as far as they think they can, it will indeed revolutionize transport. And if it turns out that people aren't interested in traveling in a high-speed coffin underground, that's fine. We can still replace a lot of our trucking and train shipments, which will free up a lot more space on the surface for the humans.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[apoc.famine]

You got half the advancement. The other half is incredibly deep expertise with alloy performance in extreme environments from the work done by SpaceX. While going electric and buying Tesla battery packs will indeed allow the competition to catch up to that part of the boring quickly, the potential for them to redesign the cutting heads and cooling system drawing on SpaceX's rocket engine research is something that nobody is going to catch up to quickly, if The Boring Company can make a real advance in that area.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[apoc.famine]

Damn, that sucks. If only they were working on a technology to cheaply bore tunnels, so they could make up for a lack of serial performance by making a lot of parallel lines.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[serviscope_minor]

Buses are crap and the only reason we use them is that drivers are expensive and it's hard to get rail into places these days.

Depends where you live. There's an excellent bus network in London. Expense of drivers is not by a long way the reason we use buses. They're also a much higher density form of transport than cars. A double decker in rush hour can hold nearly a hundred people and takes up less space than two cars when you take stopping distance into account. It's only a little over 2 when everything's stacked up.

If you visit a major transport hub at rush hour, the number of people arriving by bus is huge. Regardles of the price of drivers, a 6 lane motorway would not be able to deliver people that fast if it was one commuter per car (or even 4) and you don't even hav a dual carriage way available.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[HornWumpus]

What's the matter? Only know one way to spell a word and jelous?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[drinkypoo]

Expense of drivers is not by a long way the reason we use buses. They're also a much higher density form of transport than cars.

They're much higher than cars, but they're not much higher than vans. And they have the problem that they require high-quality roadways, which they do lots of damage to. We bought a '99 transit bus and it weighs over 20k pounds empty, some 1500 of that is the engine alone. The rear axle gross is 19k by itself. Where roadways are not ideal (with lots of room for bus stops and the like) they cause all kinds of traffic problems. Since they're huge, they require special service tools and infrastructure. Literally the only reason we use them over vans in spite of all of these problems is that they reduce the ratio of drivers to passengers.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Memnos]

I'm spelling-option challenged, you insensitive clod!

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Spent a week this September in Iceland. Conducted tour. Say hi to Gisli, our tour guide, if you know him. Very knowledgeable and had very wide knowledge of Iceland, history, geology, glaciers, fishing, sociology ...

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Who the hell knows the NAMES of the machines?

Uh...presumably anyone who bothered to watch one of the company's presentations?

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm pretty sure he wants to take credit for being a part of pushing it further still.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[Type44Q]

If you can make holes cheaply then it opens up a lot of possibilities.

"Front holes for everyone?"

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[fustakrakich]

Why all the excitement?

Finally got some good drainage... oh wait, is this thing below sea level?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[HornWumpus]

EV batteries...which are basically the same as other Lithium batteries but are a small fraction of the total market.

'How to Lie with Statistics' is a good book.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[drsquare]

What's the point in making more tunnels if you slow them down by inefficient pod systems?

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[nukenerd]

Surface trains already kill a lot of people (and animals) every year,... daily at at-grade railroad crossings.

You quote USA statistics, where at-grade crossings and car drivers seeking Darwin awards seem to be the norm. OTOH, in the UK for example the numbers killed at crossings (or elsewhere or anyhow on the railway) are tiny compared with eg general road accidents, although when they occur they get bigger headlines just for their rarity. Even so, that does not stop more road building.

Unlike in the USA, UK railways are fenced, even in remote areas, and fencing is orders of magnitude less expensive than tunnels or tracks on stilts (like Hyperloop). In any case, no new railway would be built in the UK with any at-grade crossings. As for making a "barrier", you are just not conscious of railways as barriers in the UK, and I believe that half the population are scarcely aware that the railways even exist.

We simply can't improve our rail connections between cities at the surface level.

USA outlook again. Funny that the rest of the world is improving rail connections all the time, even from a starting point well in advance of the USA's present position. The UK's High Speed 2. for example.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[nukenerd]

Elon found that small tunnels have drastic cost savings which can make them economical to build many more of...

So Musk found it cheaper to bore smaller tunnels. What a genius.

That gem of wisdom was also followed by the early London Underground railways, until they discovered what a mistake it was. Today there are abandoned tunnels under London that have been replaced by larger ones. The new Crossrail London underground line is being bored for full-sized trains.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[nukenerd]

Damn, that sucks. If only they were working on a technology to cheaply bore tunnels, so they could make up for a lack of serial performance by making a lot of parallel lines.

Good luck with finding the space for lots of parallel lines. I have been involved with building new London Underground lines, and a big problem is avoiding the existing network of underground railway tunnels, sewers, electric cable tunnels, deep foundation buildings, and ducted underground rivers; plus geological issues. A single larger bore tunnel takes up less footprint than several smaller bore tunnels of the same total capacity.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's an interesting detail... It's early days (they only dug a small single section of tunnel yet), but given their long term plans, I wonder if this is something they've addressed in upcoming designs, since it sounds like a key issue if accurate.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[DerekLyons]

If only they were working on a technology to cheaply bore tunnels, so they could make up for a lack of serial performance by making a lot of parallel lines.

One of those things that sound impressive to the generally clueless "because Elon!" crowd... But which makes very little sense when you do the math. (Hint: When you have to drill twenty plus tunnels and ten times the surface infrastructure - you aren't going to end up saving much money.)

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[quanminoan]

I'm very impressed with what SpaceX has done, but keep in mind before them rockets were things governments made with little regard for cost savings or drastic advances. For example if there was a commercial driver for particle accelerators you'd see these things become a lot simpler, more effective, etc. with time.

OTOH "digging" is about as competitive as it gets. Brilliant engineers and billions of dollars go into digging. There may be some intransigence with adoption of new materials and technologies but huge leaps in the same manner as SpaceX seem very unlikely to me. If he pulls it off I'll be more impressed than the double landing of the Falcon heavy...

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I have no idea. Likewise, though, I have no idea what it has to do with those presentations.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You must be a really powerful telepath to read his mind like that.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[omnichad]

Plugging it in with a thousands of feet long cord, which has to be handled as well. It's about being cordless as much as anything else driving the efficiency.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[omnichad]

Pods are efficient because it can get rid of manual transfers. They can go the whole way to whatever destination.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[drinkypoo]

When I lived in Oxford, there were two rival bus companies, Thames Transit and the Oxford Bus Company, the latter using traditional double deckers, the former using what I suppose you would call "vans". They were considered buses regardless of size, they're communal vehicles running along a semi-fixed route picking up and dropping off passengers at designated stops.

Vans and buses are completely different things. Buses are built with heavy truck parts. Vans are built with light truck parts. There are sort-of hybrid things which are commonly called short buses, they have wide passenger bodies on light truck chassis. They avoid most of the problems with buses.

Personally I don't see how large buses are worse than small buses from a consumer point of view.

If you rethink the way they are used slightly, vans are much more convenient for everyone. They're small enough to send to pick people up Uber-style, but big enough to spread the costs of the self-driving system across more passengers than a car.

The sole advantage of the latter would be that you have to run more of them to move the same number of people, so theoretically headways could be better, but with more vehicles comes more maintenance and higher costs.

Except EVs have reduced maintenance costs, and smaller vehicles are cheaper and easier to service. This doesn't hold true for eensy weensy vehicles, but between buses and vans it's certainly the case.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[serviscope_minor]

They're much higher than cars, but they're not much higher than vans.

Yeah they are. A ford transit is 2.9 metres high. A new routemaster is 4.2m high.

And they have the problem that they require high-quality roadways,

They share the same city roadways as artics, dustbin lorries, tipper lorries and so on. So while techincally true, you need god roadways in busy parts of major cities.

which they do lots of damage to.

Yes; but if you want a high density transport system, you're going to incur cost somewhere.

We bought a '99 transit bus and it weighs over 20k pounds empty, some 1500 of that is the engine alone. The rear axle gross is 19k by itself.

A big double decker is about 12T.

Where roadways are not ideal (with lots of room for bus stops and the like) they cause all kinds of traffic problems.

Depends on what you mean by problems: at busy places they ARE the traffic. Anything that gets in the way of busses is what's causing problems.

Since they're huge, they require special service tools and infrastructure.

So do lorries of all sorts.

Literally the only reason we use them over vans in spite of all of these problems is that they reduce the ratio of drivers to passengers

And fuel efficiency. And so you can fit more people on the roads.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[quanminoan]

I'm sure there are ways of using new materials, but the high temp alloys used in rockets aren't exactly directly applicable to cutting machines. New computational modelling techniques could def be used to generate materials. Used to be years and millions of $ to create a new material but modern CALPHAD / DFT / Diffusion thermo techniques can shrink this to thousands $ and months. There are ceramics that are nearly as hard as diamond that have friction coefficients almost that of teflon. Even nano-polycrystalline diamond NPD would eat through rock like butter. For some reason industries are unbelievably resistant to trying new materials - especially aero.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[drinkypoo]

And fuel efficiency. And so you can fit more people on the roads.

Nah, the difference in density between buses and vans is not so big as to be worth it if not for paying for drivers. Also, buses driving around cities have horrible fuel efficiency. On highway trips the mileage can be OK, but around town they are usually below 4 MPG. Hybrids and EVs improve this, but there's no getting around the fact that they have to spend a lot of energy in acceleration.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Thanks for the clarification. I seem to have misunderstood the technology. I thought the TBM itself was diesel powered. Looks like the tiling removing trucks/trains are diesel powered. Thanks.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[adolf]

When you own the world's largest battery factory, you build things that use batteries.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[Jeremi]

Powering a TBM with HV lines requires laying the lines, a quite expensive affair

I'm sure this has been thought of before, but if the eventual use of your tunnel is going to require high-voltage lines anyway (e.g. to power the sleds that will move the cars around underground), then installing those power lines up-front for your digger to use might be considered a freebie, since you were going to have to install them eventually anyway.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[mikael]

In many cases, tunnel boring machines are custom built and buried in a side channel once construction is complete...

https://untappedcities.com/201...

There are hundreds of such machines buried across the world. They are just written off as part of the construction expense, as no one really wants the cost of extracting them overground.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[dehachel12]

private metro for the rich

now THAT'S a way to make money. NOT.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[serviscope_minor]

Nah, the difference in density between buses and vans is not so big as to be worth it if not for paying for drivers.

It really is. Every morning I commute via a busy station on the London Underground. The station is on a decent sized road by south London standards (single carriage way, one lane either direction with a shirt stretch of dual carriage way). This road intersects a similar one and has a few side roads.

The station is served by about 11 bus stops; the station has about 35 million people passing through the doors per year, according to TFL. Somtimes I get the bus if it's raining though I avoid it before about half past 9 as the rush hour is tailing off. At that time, the traffic is very heavy but moving. The busses are full but not packed. That means most seats occupied with quite a few people standing but I can usually get a seat somewhere if I share.

Those 11 stops are converged upon by about 24 different bus routes.

Under your scheme you propose replacing those nearly full double decker busses with a fleet of much smaller busses. There is no room on the roads for your proposal, though you seem to dismiss that minor point as "nah".

Also, buses driving around cities have horrible fuel efficiency.

Compared to what? Compared to smaller vehicles, the fuel efficiency per passenger is excellent.

On highway trips the mileage can be OK, but around town they are usually below 4 MPG.

More like 6-8 for the modern, large busses, depending on the route. https://www.busandcoachbuyer.c...

Hybrids and EVs improve this

Many of the busses are already hybrids.

but there's no getting around the fact that they have to spend a lot of energy in acceleration.

That's an argument for large busses not against them. All vehicles get poor MPG in towns due to acceleration and braking. Bigger busses are lighter per passenger.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[stealth_finger]

It's a standard TBM. Making a tunnel. Cool, yes, but what's the advancement here? Is is any faster or cheaper than existing tunnel-making machines? Can it make smaller tunnels, which could be quite valuable in urban areas? Why all the excitement?

It's a Hyper-Tunnel!

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GotA_1dIRhs

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[doconnor]

For a subway I understand digging the tunnel is about 25% of the cost. Then 25% for track and signaling and 50% for the stations.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[stealth_finger]

Meanwhile, what happens to the property values of the homes the tunnels pass under? While there may be no noticeable impacts on the properties, the perception of having a train and a big tunnel running beneath your house can only have a negative effect on the price of a home and how easy it will be to sell. The local (state) politicians don't care how much of a waste the tunnel is because they just view it as a way to make jobs.

Unless it puts you close to a convenient station going to a desirable destination, then it's a plus. Not to mention the ground is riddled with tunnels for pipes and sewers and all that fun invisible stuff.

Re: Not sure what is new here.

[Areyoukiddingme]

Being ridiculously large is not an excuse for having crappy infrastructure.

When the cost of said infrastructure scales linearly with distance, being ridiculously large may not be an excuse, but it certainly is a reason.

Re:Not sure what is new here.

[stoborrobots]

What's that in MPG per person?

what is it?

[AndyKron]

Sounds more like a drug runner's tunnel

Cost Savings is the innovation.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The main advancement is in the cost savings .

Most standard TBMs are diesel powered. They need oxygen to run. Supplying oxygen to the machine and ventilation fans is a major cost of the standard tunnel boring operations. If you are planning to dig tunnels several miles long, this is a very serious issue. The boring company is using electric motors and batteries. Savings come from: 1 much smaller ventilation system. 2. diesel is four times more expensive than batteries. [*]

Second innovation comes with autonomous caddies taking away the tilings and bringing replacement batteries to the boring machine. Avoids expensive conveyers and tracks,

For all that talk about Tesla being prodigal air lifting manufacturing machines, and burning the cash, and spending prodigally housing workers in motels to meet production crunches, this boring company seems to be thought up purely by bean counting accountants who calculated the savings on paper.

Such concepts are quite old, you can't go though old issues of Popular Mechanics or Popular Science without seeing such ideas. But, finally, there is an engineer who can get the accountants to do the calculation and persuade a bunch of investors. [*] Tesla model 3, 75 kWh battery, 300 miles, 4 miles/kWh, electricity 12 cents/kWh (min 30 cents, median around 14 cents), electric miles = 3 cents/mile. Gas miles, 3.00$/gallon, 25 mpg, is 12 cents/mile. Electric boring machines, cars and trucks will be four times cheaper in fuel costs.

Re:Cost Savings is the innovation.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Rest of the machine is the same. Swap out diesel engine, transmission, air hose in, exhaust hose out, compressors to feed the engine, fanst to pull the exhaust out, and put in battery and electric motors.

Citation will not be provided. I have no obligation to convince you. If you are curious, you do the research. If you disagree with me, I dont give a rats tail.

Re:Cost Savings is the innovation.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Electric boring machines were in service in 2010, 6 years before The Boring Company was founded. This is nothing new.

Oh my how tedious.

[thadtheman]

Title says it all.

Re:Is This A Tunnel For Ants?

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's about 12 feet in diameter - about the same as a Boeing 717 or other small, regional jet. Figure at its widest you can get about 8 feet or usable width.

How is that not the innovation then

[SuperKendall]

And tunnels arenÃ(TM)t miles long when youÃ(TM)re building a subway, because you have things called Ãoestationsà every few blocks.

Aha, so you admit subway lines have frequent access points - where the Boring Company seems to be able to do longer tunnels without them...

That's easy when you are using battery powered drills, because you can easily drill any length. With a cane powered electric drill you have to keep adding longer and longer lines, where transmission losses over the lengths we are talking about at the power levels a drill needs are significant.

As much as you don't want to admit the Morning Company is doing something new, you sure do a good job of proving that they are!

Re:How is that not the innovation then

[nukenerd]

Aha, so you admit subway lines have frequent access points - where the Boring Company seems to be able to do longer tunnels without them...

Of course subway lines have frequent access points. And I understood that Musk's idea would too; people keep saying that it will have on and off ramps all over the place because it's street footprint is so small - so they have said, but they are changing the story all the time.

Tesla is cooking for sure

[SuperKendall]

The only sense that Tesla's books are "cooked" is from the heat generated by the vast cash flow they now enjoy.

Re:Tesla is cooking for sure

[HornWumpus]

'Vast cash flow' plus negative profit is not a good thing.

Re:Tesla is cooking for sure

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The Solar City acquisition was almost two years ago. The shorts had hoped to make a killing on Solar City and were hugely upset by Tesla bailing it out. They thought solar city will bring down Tesla too and piled on the band wagon. Tesla nearly went under in 2108 Q1. Survived Q2. All the predicted dates of Tesla's demise have come and gone.

Right now all the rumours and bravado is to keep the dumb shorts in the game while the big boys tip toe to the exit. Next week is the last chance for any FUD related to solar city, let us see if they crank out anything.

Sure isn't!

[SuperKendall]

'Vast cash flow' plus negative profit is not a good thing.

Good thing for Tesla then that they have only positive cash flow!

Or maybe you were casting shade on TSLA shorts. Ha ha you are so right, what morons!

Re:Great job Elon!

[nukenerd]

this is a great invention by Elon!

Musk has invented nothing. It's just another subway tunnel being bored by another tunnel boring machine. In the world ourside the USA it happens all the time.

I guess you also believe that Bill Gates invented computers.

Mining company is going all electric.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

https://cleantechnica.com/2018...

Re:Mining company is going all electric.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Converting fleets to electric vehicles directly impact both of these as fleet operators are able to utilize lower cost electricity to power their vehicles, thus eliminating both the overhead expense of diesel and the demand on the ventilation system.