Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com)
Elon Musk's Boring Company has settled a lawsuit preventing the company from building a tunnel beneath the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. "[T]he cancellation of the Westside tunnel project is a major blow to Musk's grand plan in the City of Angels," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Los Angeles Times reports that the project's demise began shortly after the Boring Company obtained a preliminary exemption to skip California's environmental review process and start digging. The city's authorities have been friendly to Musk's plans, but a group of residents in the Westside area filed an environmental suit in May alleging that the tunnel violates state law. The crux of the group's argument was that the Westside tunnel is part of a larger project that the company outlined with a map late last year. According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project, stating that a full environmental review can't "be evaded by chopping large projects into smaller pieces that taken individually appear to have no significant environmental impacts."
The Westside group did not get a ruling on its lawsuit; instead, it seems the two parties settled. The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, but it sent a statement to NBC News that reads: "The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter of Brentwood Residents Coalition et al. v. City of Los Angeles (TBC -- The Boring Company). The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium."
The Westside group did not get a ruling on its lawsuit; instead, it seems the two parties settled. The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, but it sent a statement to NBC News that reads: "The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter of Brentwood Residents Coalition et al. v. City of Los Angeles (TBC -- The Boring Company). The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium."
Are we worried about the disruption of the natural habitat of Lumbricus terrestris?
This is why we can't have nice things. If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole. If the whole has an impact, then if none of the other parts had any impact, then whatever part happens to be last must, by definition, have the same impact as the whole. This is basic logic.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And if it truly doesn't have an impact, dig then. Like everyone else with a project, there are rules for a reason.
Oh no, Elon Musk is such a genius he can't do basic paperwork
That's... not true. Things have nonlinear effects. It's sorites paradox.
Or, put it another way, no given xray (or cigarette) is likely to give you cancer. But getting 100 xrays a day (or smoking 5 packs a day) is likely to cause you to get cancer. That's why it's illegal to split a project into smaller pieces.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
He got the publicity he wanted. Job done
If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole.
Well, no. "No environmental impact" really just means "an acceptably low degree of environmental impact".
One cow grazing in a ten-acre field is sustainable, in terms of plant life; but that doesn't mean you can put ten thousand cows on the field without destroying the biosystem.
You can drill one hole in a rafter and it'll still support the roof just fine - that doesn't mean you can drill a thousand holes in that rafter.
#DeleteChrome
I can't imagine why Musk does California the favor of doing anything in California, or any other company for that matter.
He should just let LA slide into the Fallout like destiny it seeks, a complete wasteland of fire and traffic where you can only move via blimp or scooter.
A land where someone blocks an obviously useful thing like a tunnel to protect the spotted long-tufted earthworm or some other imaginary underground dweller, is a land not worth saving.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You get this, why can't everyone? It's so simple. It's LITERALLY standard operating procedure, and TBC was skirting it on a sweet deal, and now it's back to SOP. BFD, amirite? But let's get our Libertarian feathers ruffled... it's CA!
and strong regulations help keep it that way.
That is such bullshit. How do regulations prop up the vast tech industry there?
In a world where people constantly prattle on about privilege, what California has that has kept is so prosperous is pretty much the privilege of good weather + ocean. It has kept a lot of tech people there, and film people, and creative people of all kinds in California because they like living there.
Regulations have not helped at all. The state parks in other states for example are WAY BETTER managed than CA state parks. There are lots of other places that are nicer environmentally than California, so it's not like the absurd California environmental regulations have done anything except jack up housing prices since you cannot build a home anywhere useful now. Which has driven people to have 2-3 hour commutes, how does that help the environment exactly? Or perhaps you meant they prosper because they force cable makers to say every single thing you touch causes cancer.
If Apple/Google/Facebook alone left California tomorrow, how prosperous would California be? If a lot of other companies followed them, how long before the entire state collapsed under crushing debt (pension liability alone) with no-one able to pay for it?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thats exactly why the law is in place - how stupid would it be to do 2/3 (or pick any signicitant amount) of a project and then STOP and not be allowed to complete it? If the project is paid for by the government it would be a complete waste of money, and if it's private like this one, and the company sues the state, that will happen? Having a law that says you need to start with the end in mind is a good idea.
Oh no, Elon Musk is such a genius he can't do basic paperwork
Musk's mistake was attempting any major project in Californiastan, full stop. I could have told him that this sort of thing would happen.
There are reasons why people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves. This is but one of countless others.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Also, we should consider the environmental impact of NOT building the tunnels, and everyone continuing to commute with SUVs on the freeway.
NIMBYism is destroying America.
Here is an outrageous statement: The real purpose of these laws is to force people who want to get things done to make political donations. Whether it actually achieves any reasonable goal is beside the point.
In this it is no different from a corrupt country where you are expected to pay 10% of the cost of a new building to the building approver, or an immediate fee to the officer who pulled you over, or a few hundred to the DMV person so you don't need to mysteriously wait 5 years for a license.
I reiterate: "valid" regulations, even if granted as good, end up being misused this way.
Working as designed -- getting in the way of people who get things done. It has taken longer to clear regulatory hurdles to dredge a bay 5 feet deeper to handle superpanamax ships than it took to dig the original Panama canal.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Gorgeous strawman you've erected there, and you tore it down beautifully.
Where did the post you responded to say anything about CA failing? It said that people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves which is absolutely true and factual.
Perhaps the fumes from all the human shit on the streets has affected your reading comprehension.
Right, because the people in the Los Angeles Weststide are somehow Republicans? Did you notice even Orange County went Democrat this election?
-Styopa
The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.
The way to test this assertion is by actually trying to get one working.
the whole point of a tunnel is to reduce traffic. It's like a freeway, it lets you by pass the surface streets.
I think they're more worried about sink holes, damage to the ground water and pipes and maybe even a gas explosion or two. Musk was pretty obviously trying to break down his project into smaller projects to get around a proper impact study. That is more than a bit suspicious.
As for why these things only come up in wealthy neighborhoods, it's because poor people don't have time and money to fight it when a big company wants to do something shitty in their neighborhood. It's why about half of poor rural communities don't have drinkable water right now. A rich neighborhood has stay at home moms who can spend 8 hours at city council meetings and hire lawyers to file paper work they otherwise would have got wrong and missed deadlines for. It's one of the many, many advantages of being rich.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/