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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!
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.
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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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Still 5th. Not taking your fact-free word for it either.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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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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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=-
Source: https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/...