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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.
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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.
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It's probably not an issue with wildlife, but an issue with digging under people's property. There have to be checks done to make sure that digging won't cause subsidence of buildings on the surface, or affect things like wells. There can also be issues with drainage and underground waterways that get diverted by the tunnel, which can have knock on effects.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's probably not an issue with wildlife, but an issue with digging under people's property.
*shakes fist*
Not Under My Back Yard!
Always disrupting the disruptor's disruptions.
He got the publicity he wanted. Job done
Not entirely and that doesn't change the need for an EIR either way. They got a sweetheart speedy deal from the cities, but that doesn't skirt CA or Fed law. The lawsuit just enforced that fact.
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
*shakes a 3 inch stack of papers* - "Just do the EIR, if you're serious about your multi-billion mega-project!"
More correctly, it's not that they have an impact that is the question. It's WHAT their impact is going to be and how the infrastructure company is going to mitigate that impact. You have to prove that you can build this thing safely BEFORE you start digging.
It's called ethics. I know this is a new concept for most programmers reading this on /., but it's a thing civil guys have been dealing with for decades. It's not a new problem for us.
See here for an example:
http://www.hudsontunnelproject...
No one said the individual parts have no environmental impact. They said "no significant environment impact".
If the bar for "significant" is "10" and your project is deemed to be "20", you're not allowed to complete it in 4 parts, each with "5", to avoid mitigation of the impact.
I'm surprise Rei isn't here blaming it on short cellars.
TY, IHAW.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole.
That's not necessarily true. It's the same reason tic-tacs can represent their product as "sugar free": "Tic Tac® mints do contain sugar as listed in the ingredient statement. However, since the amount of sugar per serving (1 mint) is less than 0.5 grams, FDA labeling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving."
If a given project is only allowed to cause so much of an environmental impact, but the project as a whole will exceed that limit, you're not allowed to split it up into smaller projects in such a way that each sub-project will be under that limit.
Around here there are properties that had to be written off because tunnels or more often mines dug under them caused problems. Water companies occasionally have to pay out because of burst underground pipes.
For this particular project I'd like to know what happens if there is an accident and a fire in the tunnel. Lithium batteries, gasoline, confined but ventilated space... Say the concrete melts, what then? What kind of fire suppression do they have?
I'm sure they have figured all this stuff out, but we have to check.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
All the way down, actually. But the important key here isn't the depth, it's that part of it was going to go underneath rich people's houses.
and strong regulations help keep it that way. I don't know enough about what Musk is proposing to comment on it's relative safety, but I can imagine there's lots of good reasons to control where somebody digs a tunnel. The most obvious ones are having your house collapse under you or a gas explosion.
Now, you might counter that with "We've been digging like this for ages and that never happens". But here's the crux: We've been digging like that for ages under one of two conditions:
a. Relatively little city build up (especially compared to Los Angeles).
b. Strict gov't regulation of the sort Musk just ran into.
See, here's the crazy part. Contrary to what you're being told in mainstream media regulations exist for a reason. Yes, there are cases where zoning is abused (usually old people who don't want the extra traffic from new shops) but there's lots of cases where it's _not_ being abused. Most regulations were created because there was already a problem or disaster and the regulation is a response to that. American laws aren't very proactive.
Again though, watch something like Fox News, CNN or MSNBC and you won't get this. That's their pro-corporate bias showing through.
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Back in reality, it was a test tunnel. They decided the Dodger Stadium one can serve the same purpose with more utility. It changes nothing about their plans.
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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
If you read the first sentence of the summary, it says the tunnel in question was planned to run under the 405 freeway. There are no houses on the freeway.
It was likely either a cynical attempt to slow the project down and get bribes for stepping aside, or some uneducated people imagining that their houses will be shaking constantly from nearby tunneling. The EIR wouldn't turn up anything, but it'd still require time and lawyers to write the nothing.
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But even still, the subsequent parts have nonlinearly increasing effects. The only way you get the whole not equal to the sum of its parts is if you don't evaluate them as you do them, but rather pre-evaluate each part in isolation, which is an entirely different thing.
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While I think this is a silly way to block this project, Los Angeles sits on vast oil reserves. It's the reason the city grew to be the largest on the West coast. The La Brea Tar Pits (located right next to downtown Los Angeles) are a part of this. When they first began digging the tunnel for the Los Angeles subway, they came back the next morning to find that tar had seeped through the tunnel walls dug the previous day. They had to put the project on hold for a year while they figured out how to deal with the tar seepage. A delay which ballooned the construction cost from $400 million to over $1 billion (making it the most expensive public transportation project in U.S. history at the time, until it was eclipsed by Boston's Big Dig).
So yeah, an environmental impact report is most appropriate in this case.
Yeah, but the point is that the second hole has to be evaluated after the first one is done, and the thousandth hole after the 999th one. At some point, the person evaluating it will say, "You know what, we really can't safely add the nth hole."
Even if you divide it into parts, as long as you evaluate the parts as you do them, either you'll reach a tipping point where the environmental impact becomes meaningful enough to trigger a review or you won't. If don't, then the whole project shouldn't have triggered a review, and if you do, then dividing it up had no effect.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"If the individual parts don't have any environmental impact, neither does the whole."
One hunter kills all the deer, and you have no herd next year, or ever.
One hunter kills one deer, and you have no lasting impact. the herd will continue just fine.
Gather up enough hunters, and let them each kill one deer, instead of having no lasting effect by summing up all those 'no effects' you end up with the catastrophic effect where you have no herd next year (or ever).
"This is basic logic."
Even in basic logic this is a phenomena, just look at numerical stability analysis. Where catastrophic errors can accumulate in otherwise innocuous operations if you aren't careful. If you are just dividing a couple numbers the instability isn't relevant, but if you are doing millions of divisions in a connected system you might want to take a closer look to make sure you are not accumulating error effects that will come to dominate the results.
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.
The subway in L.A. was held up for decades because the rich Beverly Hills residents didn't want to be disturbed by the building of it. So the intelligent route couldn't be used, the one the old L.A. Red Line had, so the L.A. subway skirts Beverly Hills. Now Elton want to build his tunnel and the bozos in the rich areas of the Westside get it stopped. Plutarchy in action just like the whole Trump administration is all about.
All the way down, actually.
Not if you don't own the mineral rights. And for quite awhile developers of residential properties have been holding on to mineral rights. And in most states, sellers aren’t legally required to disclose to home buyers whether they are severing the mineral rights to a property, you have to go down to city hall and check separate filings to find out.
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Except that this tunnel had a useful purpose even if none of the rest of the work ever got done; its purpose was to prove that the concept could work.
I mean, say you're building a hotel. It makes no sense to say, "Your design has extra doors intended to let you later add two additional wings, so we can't let you build the first wing without an environmental review that includes the second and third wing that you might or might not ever even build, or might completely change between now and when you build them." That would be borderline absurd.
It may or may not make sense to take the risk of a future expansion getting blocked by an environmental review. But that decision should be in the hands of the entity paying for the work. It isn't the government's responsibility to keep businesses from wasting money.
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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.
Obviously the tunnel is going to cross under a lot that's adjacent to the freeway or it wouldn't be very useful, would it? But then, you would have already considered that if you weren't so busy framing the rest of your obvious jealousy in a series of pointlessly angry exaggerations.
Right. If it was just going under a bunch of corporate-owned apartment complexes, nobody would give a shit. But you'll notice that the law suit is attached to several entities, including one called the "Brentwood Residents Coalition." Now, if you're a non-resident this is a meaningless entry in a meaningless list of organizational names, but if you're a local you only have to see the word "Brentwood" and it all makes sense.
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.
we should consider the environmental impact of NOT building the tunnels
Said more efficiently (fewer words) than I'm generally capable of.
Respect. :)
Your city sucks. People who do cool things don't like it.
Actually you are wrong as Colorado is where a ton of people from California move to when they get tired of bullshit.
Also the weather here is very nearly as good, we just don't have oceans.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or you know, this is LA. What happens to the tunnel in the case of an earthquake? Is it hardened against causing collapse? Would it exacerbate earthquake damage? Would we even know?
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.
If you read the first sentence of the summary, it says the tunnel in question was planned to run under the 405 freeway. There are no houses on the freeway.
But freeway subsidence or collapse can be just as bad. The collapse of the Nimitz Freeway in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was that disaster's single largest death toll; 73% of the earthquake deaths occurred on the freeway rather than in collapsing/damaged homes.
As opposed to commuting to the Hyperloop station with SUVs on the freeway, then getting in the Hyperloop which, despite common misconceptions, still requires dirty power to run, then get out of the Hyperloop and renting a car or calling an Uber/Lyft/etc.?
The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.
That would be absurd, because that's not how hotels get built. You plan the entire thing out. And yes, you would have to get the whole plans signed off on before you start building.
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NIMBY doesn't know state boundaries. This is a wealthy neighborhood concerned about elevated traffic due to the tunnel. This happens everywhere in the US anytime you attempt any construction project near wealthy people.
You'll get this worse in other states east of California where property owners also own the mineral rights. Somewhere like Texas you'd get every single property owner anywhere close to project suing to be paid claiming an impact to their mineral rights. California like many of the states west of Colorado have state laws that separate out mineral and surface rights giving the property owner no challenge to tunnel type projects via mineral rights. Instead these wealthy property owners are using a state environmental law to claim no analysis of impacts like traffic to attack the project.
Honestly the property owners are right, if Musk does want to build this massive private tunnel network he needs to spend a little money and do a real environmental analysis on what the impacts will be. Such a system would likely dramatically change traffic patterns and could cause aquifers to be disrupted along with a bunch of other things that should be analyzed before building it.
Environmental documents aren't a bad thing, they are simply a process that requires planning and a look at the effects the project will have before you build it. This is a good thing, these documents and the process they entail can often make projects run smoother and win public support and once the document is approved many of the avenues for a lawsuit get closed off, which is one of the purposes of the document.
Subsidence is probably a non-issue in this case, he's deep enough it's not going to have an effect at surface level unless the entire tunnel collapses and even then it'd probably bridge a soil arch before it reached the surface.
There are real issues with aquifer disruptions, traffic pattern changes and a bunch of other stuff that should be looked at. Environment documents are required because of stuff like this but the process is also setup to help build public support and in the end environmental documents have the effect of closing off a lot of lawsuits by taking away standing from potential plaintiffs who just want to block the project.
Still 5th. Not taking your fact-free word for it either.
Also the weather here is very nearly as good, we just don't have oceans.
Um. Depends on your definition of "Nearly". A lot of Californians would not find themselves in agreement.
I believe this is a bunch of smoke to hide the fact, Elon's vision of some new tunnel transportation is nothing new at all. It's a fricking subway, dork.
What if it doesn't fall but you put the table in the wood chipper?
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Yes but you could make two tunnel entrances which have no impact because neither of them goes anywhere.
It's only when you build the middle bit between them...
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
You linked to the complete DEIS document, which is a 158 MB zip file.
I'm not ashamed to say: too long, didn't read.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'm going to sidestep the low-effort jokes about "how can a tunnel affect the environment" to point out that they do, in fact, affect the environment.
The tailings, or spoil, that is removed from the tunnel needs proper disposal. This material can be anything from rock to mud to coal and even soil contaminated with chemicals. Some of the rock releases acid when exposed to water, like the pyrite exposed by I-99 construction in PA. The Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland had to have expensive temporary work just to prevent spoil from destroying the local environment.
All tunnels require drainage. For example, the Washington DC Metrorail system pumps out millions of gallons of water every day, most of which requires treatment before being released into the environment. Speaking of Metrorail, tailings were illegally dumped into local waterways that damaged them permanently.
While the air in the Boring Co tunnels aren't intended to be breathable by passengers, serious consideration must be made for combustible gases and it must be documented.
Finally, the affect on the overburden of the tunnel must be considered when digging. Disturbing it can release methane gas, cause contamination of groundwater by sediment, cause water migration, and cause subsidence on the surface.
So, laugh all you want about tunnels and the environment, but tunnels are NOT invisible.
Kriston
How much for one of these fuck tunnels? My sex dungeon is getting a little cramped.
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You remind me of a developer I talked to who wanted to blast a harbor in one of the Hawaiian Islands and couldn't figure out why the locals were opposing him. Exactly that same attitude: why can't I have my harbor? Oh yeah, the island will get trashed, so what.
So if I want to build a 100 mile road thru a nature preserve, and I apply for 528000 waivers to build one foot sections of road, they should all be approved, because each one foot section can't possibly have an impact, right?
An individual 12" diameter vertical log in a 100' wide river has no impact; a string of 100 of them, side by side, across the river. That will have a major impact.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It is entirely under a public road. The only concern is people in Brentwood (ironically where Musk lives when he isn't sleeping on a factory floor somewhere) are concerned that dump truck might be going up and down streets somewhere.
Musk was willing to cancel because he has another idea for a proof-of-concept tunnel (Dodgers), and the Sepulveda tunnel likely only made sense if he could get it moving quickly. He needs a second tunnel to dig to try out his next generation TBM. He might just have to experiment with Chicago instead.
Personally, I am disappointed despite it being a half-baked route map. Anything that can get people off the 405 is a win in LA.
According to the suit, California law forbids the approval of individual facets of a larger project...
If this is how the law actually reads, that is California's way of assuring BANANA (Build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anyone). Segmenting a potential big project into individually testable smaller sections is a perfectly natural way of trying out something new. Small wonder that it can't even install a TGV that can be ordered right out of the Alstom catalog.
Come to Arizona, where experimentation is encouraged, and bore a tunnel here. The automated car companies are testing on the streets above you.
I don't blame you.
The point is that a tunnel has a lot of potential environmental impacts that have to be studied and mitigated.
The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.
The way to test this assertion is by actually trying to get one working.
Damaging aquifers? Contaminating water tables? Subsidence? Sinkholes? Triggering earthquakes? ...Yeah, no need to check for any of that, right?
Ah, yes, the ol' outside the environment argument...
In California, certain trees need to have a Prop. 65 warning sticker:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The facility was expanded with hotel tower additions in 1972, 1975, 1980, 1986, and 1996."
It's possible the 72 and 75 expansions were in the original plans, but you can almost guarantee the 80, 86, and 96 additions weren't
you're putting words in my mouth. Please stop.
Regulations can have a variety of purposes. For example, there are regulations about using your house as a hotel. This can seem like a give away to the hotel industry at first glance. Until you find out that investors used to buy up properties and use them as short term rentals in popular areas, preventing regular folk from buying houses in cities where they worked and resulting in soul crushingly long commutes and a general decline in quality of life all around.
Regulations create an environment where everybody can succeed. Now, it just so happens this tends to maximize over all GDP. What it does _not_ do it maximize profit. That's because making the most money and making a good place for people to live and work aren't compatible. But a good place for people to live and work generates more overall wealth.
That's the trouble with the real world, it's more than a bit counter intuitive. If you study any scientific field you figure this out pretty quick. I wish this country had more education. It would really help.
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> 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.
At the same time it's kinda ridiculous here. Yes, you may have grand plans for what you'd eventually like to do-- tunnels everywhere. But you should still be able to build logical, standalone pieces and not somehow try to get through EIR/permitting for everything you've ever contemplated.
How about just digging under California until it falls into the ocean... it's the only way to be sure.
But individually they dont.
Their whole gated community as a whole is a no go zone, and too nice and perfect, makes rest of CA look like shit.
Tear it down.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
its underground you piece of shit.
Did you do a EIR for the DOD when they used 2500 nukes in Navada ?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
what do you get? 15th?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
By your definition, GPS would never be built and be banned
because it would disrupt so many businesses.
Smart phones affect traffic patterns too.
What time sport is on affects it too
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
https://tunnelbuilder.com/Arch...
Singapore builds, you cant stop them.
CA could learn from them
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I think it's more about a possible infestation of streetgangus criminalis being unintentionally transferred into their neighborhood.
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If they are going to build a big long squiggly tunnel underneath LA, then maybe it makes sense to make sure it will have more than one purpose - capacity for power, fibre-optics and other services.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I think they are concerned about the environmental impact of having a hyperloop station in their neighbourhood where certain undesirables could appear out of nowhere, mug whoever is around in the area and disappear again.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
An EIS is generally wider than the natural environment impacts. It also covers social, & economic impacts.
eg. this is the EIS objectives for a major tunnel near me.
The objectives of the EIS are:
! to identify potential environmental, social and economic impacts and to ensure that adverse impacts are avoided or mitigated where possible; and
! to identify potential community benefits, including environmental, social and economic benefits.
Where unavoidable, the likely impacts (direct, indirect and cumulative) must be examined fully and remedial measures proposed, so that the development of the Project, including the selection of the final project specification, is based on sound economic, social and environmental protection and management criteria.
Consistent with this objective, the EIS should be a stand-alone and comprehensive document containing sufficient information to make an informed decision on the potential impacts. The document should provide:
for interested bodies and persons, a basis for understanding the project, alternatives and preferred solutions, the existing environment that it would affect, both on and off the site, the impacts that may occur and the measures to be taken to mitigate all adverse impacts;
for groups or persons with rights or interests in land, identification of the impacts of the proposed Project on that land including access and measures to mitigate all adverse impacts; and
for the Cg, a framework against which to:
- consider the economic, social and environmental aspects of the project in view of legislative and policy provisions and decide whether the project can proceed or not;
- set conditions for approval, as appropriate, to ensure economic, social and environmentally sound development; and
- where required by legislation, recommend an environmental management and monitoring program.
It is the responsibility of the Proponent to identify and address, as fully as possible, the matters relevant to the Project in complying with the statutory requirements for EIS preparation.
Steve Forbes, Doctor Ben Carson, and Dubya himself heartily endorse the ACSH.
It was likely either a cynical attempt to slow the project down and get bribes for stepping aside, or some uneducated people
Uneducated, like the large company with lots of money who "forgot" to file the right paperwork? The law specifically says that companies aren't allowed to hide the impact by splitting it up into lots of tiny chunks.
Musk just tried to do EXACTLY that.
If there isn't impact then that would have come up in the full report.
Why didn't they file it? The law is entirely clear in this regard and not only that entirely sensible.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you keep reading the summary you can see that their concern is not so much the bit under the 405, but the fact that if they get the go-ahead for that bit it will help their application for the rest of it to get pushed through hastily.
That law preventing companies from splitting large projects up into small sections is there for a reason.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
While true logically, it is not true in the real world.
For example, a single dam may not considerably hinder the ability of certain fish fish to swim from the sea to a lake where they mate. They might still be able to take a detour. But multiple dam building projects could suddenly seriously hinder that ability, as every river leading to the lake now has a dam in it.
But they *are* separate projects! It's pure coincidence that if you look at them all together from a specific angle at the right time of day it (umm, I mean *they*) might, to the untrained eye, superficially resemble a single large one.
And you can't prove otherwise, ner ner ner!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you dig a tunnel, you have some excavated rocks to dump or transport somewhere. That may have some impact. New transportation links can affect traffic patterns in weird ways - even increasing motor traffic in some unrelated places.
And - a major point - making a hole in the ground can have major effects on ground water. It's possible Musk have some super-sure way to avoid that, but the normal way to assure this is with an environmental impact study.
Or you tunneling methods may end up not just depleting, but actually fouling ground water. Like the Hallandsåsen tunnel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's possible the boring tunnels won't have that impact, but that's for a study to find out.
Small projects do not have no impact, they have minimal impact. Multiple minimal impacts can be severe. For example, if you put one teaspoon salt into the water for your noodles, it has minor impact. However, the whole package of salt will make the noodles quite inedible.
Musk tried to avoid the normal way to start the project. Now in a democracy you do not need to accept authoritarian behavior. Musk must follow the rules like anyone else, he is not above the law. He still can build his thing after due process.
Off the top of my head: the Fairmont and St Francis in SF, and the Monteleone and the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, all have had substantial and architecturally dissimilar sections added on. Most large hospitals are even more like this - ten or more segments would not be unusual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I used to work at this hotel as a kid, it had a new wing added to it while i worked there, 4 other wings added over 100 years or so
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
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that's what an environmental impact study _is_. The point of TFA is that Musk tried to break his project into small enough chunks to get out of doing exactly that.
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But this is California! I'm sure they've discovered that underground tunnels cause cancer.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Bullshit. CA pays the federal government. It's states like Tennessee and Alabama and especially Florida that take money from the federal government that comes from CA.
Who do you think pays for hurricane cleanup? It's not Florida; it's CA and NY.
Oh no, Elon Musk is such a genius he can't do basic paperwork
One of the things Musk impresses me the most with, is his ability to cut through red tape. I've never seen projects clear bureaucratic hurdles with such speed.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
> NIMBYism is destroying America.
NUMBYism
Not
Under
My
Back
Yard
=Smidge=
Musk's mistake was attempting any major project in Californiastan, full stop.
No, it was attempting the project in Bel Air specifically. That's where all of the wealthy attorneys live. It's also why other sections of the project haven't been stopped. They are in less expensive neighborhoods, where the residents can't afford the legal fight.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Does it go anywhere then?
Or it's a non-cynical attempt to stop a project that people fear will ultimately be expanded. Look, don't get me wrong, while I can't stand Musk and think this is ultimately a bullshit transportation project, I am nonetheless strongly anti-NIMBY. But the general concept that if you fear a project that ultimately comes to you, you take legal action at the beginning before that even happens, is a well practiced one. The NIMBYs on the Treasure Coast in Florida have been battling every aspect of the All Aboard Florida project for example, and the only reason they've not filed more lawsuits is lack of standing.
Ultimately I'd like a better environmental review process that can cut out NIMBYism (and maybe even make an equivalent of SLAPP for NIMBY lawsuits) but just because NIMBYism is evil doesn't mean they're not behind a lawsuit you don't understand.
Again, fuck Elon Musk. But yes, fuck NIMBYs too. They're even worse. Hopefully Musk will go bust and someone can buy his tunnels and use them for a London Underground Deep Level Tube Tunnel type thing (the trains should fit, they use a very limited loading gauge, but even if they don't you can probably make trains with similar dimensions that do.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
So far, one person has died from automated car driving testing. While it's terrible that they died, when you put that in the context of the 101 people that died on average every day last year from car accidents, it's pretty clear that automated cars will be a net benefit for society.
We've become extremely adverse to risk and death in our society. Progress costs human lives, whether they end suddenly or as a result of years of toil at a job. Google employs 88,100 full time employees. Assuming a 40 hour work-week, and the 78.6 year life expectancy in the US, this means that they burn through 235 human lives each year. If you account for human work-hours, that number exceeds 500.
Even if you only care about sudden, unexpected deaths, we're doing well compared to before. Over 100 people died making the Hoover dam[1]. The pyramids claimed orders of magnitude more.
To make the world better, people will die. This is today's reality. It may occur suddenly, or gradually over time. Maybe with technological improvement in the future, this could change. But I will not support changing public policy to halt progress over the tragic loss of a single life.
Sources:
[1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/589318...
-=Lothsahn=-
The University of Chicago is in the middle of the country.
Guess all existing commuter rail, subways, and surface rail should pack it in. They'll be happy to know that after 150 years of doing this, their mode of operation is all bullshit
It said that people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves which is absolutely true and factual.
Do you have a good source for that?
I'm not American, but when I find stats on this subject, I get the impression that California population growth rate is reducing, which is compatible with what you said but I don't think was what you meant.
If they never get to build it he's right.
The Hyperloop will never happen. It's bullshit.
The way to test this assertion is by actually trying to get one working.
Many years and hundreds of millions of dollars later and we have a few dozen meters of test track/tube, an empty tin can with no propulsion, seats, etc. for the car/pod/coffin, and abandoned starts of tunnels.
I don't understand why driverless cars are so supported in CA but not underground tunnels.
Source: https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/...
Guess all existing commuter rail, subways, and surface rail should pack it in. They'll be happy to know that after 150 years of doing this, their mode of operation is all bullshit
Guess you're a retard.
The Hyperloop is a train in a vacuum tube. It's worse than a plane and worse than a train in just about every way. The only good thing it promises is speed, but you'll never get the speeds they promise because you'd need a very long, very straight run with no stops. No such run is even planned.
There are three Holy Grail routes in US travel:
LA to Las Vegas
LA to San Francisco
LA to New York City
The "easiest" to do is LA to San Francisco. Every city along the way demands a stop at their city. If there's no stop, the city gets no benefit from the tunnels. If you want an express line, you have to shut down huge sections of the tunnels at a time, or build multiple, parallel tunnels for each major destination (in pairs). If there is a stop, then you spend time accelerating, traveling, decelerating, waiting for passengers to get off, waiting for passengers to get on / the next departure time, then accelerating again as you travel toward the next stop.
LA to Las Vegas will be worse with regards to getting approvals and crossing state lines, but may have to deal with fewer stops in between. LA to New York won't happen unless the feds eminent domain the whole damn thing.
And if such routes ever prove viable (i.e., popular enough to build and operate), they'll have to deal with all the security theater bullshit airports have. Meaning you have to get to the station well in advance to deal with that.
The whole thing is a farce.
Plus a tunnel is pretty useless if it doesn't have entrances and exits. At some point the vehicles at the surface level are going to go down and come back up from the tunnel. Where you put those points there can be what most people think of as environmental damage.
There's also underground rivers. In many cities smaller rivers were just covered and life went on.
And the review of that part of the project says, "There's too much of an impact", and the middle part doesn't get built.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Many years and hundreds of millions of dollars later and we have a few dozen meters of test track/tube, an empty tin can with no propulsion, seats, etc. for the car/pod/coffin, and abandoned starts of tunnels.
But the government isn't going to build this. Elon Musk will.
CA public schools suck. They can't afford to live here with the default education they get here.
But good news, they're still way above average in Texas, and they make room for people who paid attention in school.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Bullshit back at ya.
That analysis ignores federal money paid directly to people that live in the states. CA has 25% of the US population on the federal tit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1 Step Forward and 3 Steps Backward...
So sayeth the Trump shill. Here's a fact for you: over 90% of forest areas in California are federally owned and federally responsible. Let's say you are correct that forest lands were poorly managed, congratulations, you've won in pointing out crippled, incompetent federal agency under Trump.
So you're saying I can eat as many tictacs as. I want without ruining my diet? Awesome!
Yes. That's exactly what he's saying.
That's why I keep coming to /., for the insightful comments.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
So you're fine with TBC coming and not following your construction laws. Do they just need to know who to buy off? That is much simpler, I guess.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
What is this ignorant crapflood? Why do people waste their time, or their cycles running the script that spews it out?
Nice change of goalposts. Your argument was "As opposed to commuting to the Hyperloop station with SUVs on the freeway, then getting in the Hyperloop which, despite common misconceptions, still requires dirty power to run, then get out of the Hyperloop and renting a car or calling an Uber/Lyft/etc.?" This is not an argument against Hyperloop, as its exactly the same model that millions of people follow every single day. People commute to a Long Island Railroad station with SUVs on the freeway, they get on the train which, despite common misconceptions, still requires dirty power to run, they get out at Penn station and call an Uber/Lyft/etc?. Ultimately it will come down to cost to build and operate 1 mile of high speed rail, vs 1 mile of Hyperloop. Jury is still out on that