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Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

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11–20 of 278 posts

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#11
I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. I used to be a huge fan and cheerleader, and enthusiastically pointed to him as inspiration.

But slowly I started to realize that I was buying a lot into carefully crafted propaganda. The way SpaceX used lawyers to keep PSLV at bay, all the while Musk gassed on about free markets and competition made me a bit mad. Then he had that quip where he said he was "nauseatingly pro American" and that America was the biggest force for good the world had ever seen. Then he said he was a proud centrist and donated money to anti-environment republicans. And so on and so on. Accusing employees of shilling for unions. Misleading people about his level of technical expertise. Calling lane-assist "auto-pilot" for profit.

At some point I realized that his "brilliant" approach to tech was essentially promising elite people that they could be ultra-green, better than vegetarians and hippies, while keeping the luxuries of sports cars, mansions with solar shingles, and rockets to mars. You don't have to do anything other than express support for him, and you're already better than people making personal sacrifices for the environment. Amazing!

I now think of his "luxury-first" approach as "trickle-down environmentalism". And I think it will be about as successful as its economic counterpart.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's reason why the US stopped investing in light rail. >The social and physical construction of suburban America really was quite complex. It was a very elaborate system, and clearly a massive social engineering project that has changed US society enormously. [27] Incidentally, I don’t have a personal objection to suburbs, in fact I live in one, but suburbanization is a different question. [28] It starts back in…

The DFW area has built 90+ miles of light rail in the last 20 years (that's just under the total amount for the Bay Area which had older systems), and it is still expanding. It's not my impression that light rail is done having regularly used the system

Chomsky complains that catching a train from Boston to New York is not any faster than it was for him in the 50's; I'm not expert on US rail but it does seem to be behind if you compare to Europe and Asia's high speed rail networks.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#17
post #2

I thought the current thinking was that building more roads means that there will be more roads to use, and therefore more cars on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

Presumably the tunnels could also be used for transit, or maybe even walking/biking in some cases.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#18

I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. I used to be a huge fan and cheerleader, and enthusiastically pointed to him as inspiration. But slowly I started to realize that I was buying a lot into carefully crafted propaganda. The way SpaceX used lawyers to keep PSLV at bay, all the while Musk gassed on about free markets and competition made me a bit mad. Then he had that quip where he said he was…

I had a similar epiphany about Apple. Basically corporations are all profit seeking entities and we shouldn't look to them to be our saviour. It's not really their agenda.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#19
post #8

This is a good idea, and I like to watch Elon be ambitious, but it's probably pretty annoying to work at SpaceX right now. One day you show up to work and, where you used to park your car, there is a giant hole in the ground. It's there because the CEO of the company you work for, who is already splitting his time between two companies, wants to put some of his energy towards a third unrelated company. You are spendi…

> You are spending your time getting things into space and your CEO is literally heading in the opposite direction. On the other hand, boring technology is almost certainly going to play a key role in the colonisation of Mars.

Yes, I'm sure that's at least part of the reason why he's doing this. He's trying to "learn" about digging (and reaching 5x, 10x higher efficiency) by doing a (hopefully) profitable business around it first.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#20
I consider this as one of his least bright thoughts.

I really hoped he would come with a light rail with shuttles carrying (electrical) cars, containers etc.. This is a thought I had some 16 years ago in an attempt to solve traffic jams. I truly believe cars shouldn't drive on highroads. Unfortunately I don't have the contacts and financial power to even get close to the people who can accomplish this.

If we have a world wide network of light rail, carrying electrical cars etc.. at a speed of about 500 mph it would really be more environmental friendly, as it would be a serious competition for polluting aircrafts.

Imagine: Los Angeles -> San Fransisco in less than 1 hour, in your own car!

I think Elon is one of the single few people in the world capable to make a start with this.

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