The Boring Company's leader is called Steve Davis. Musk is obviously a keen student of Snooker lore.
Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
41–50 of 278 posts
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#42I 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 w…
The premise of what hes doing is "lets do it faster and cheaper"... If you could improve the boring process 10x, maybe people would look at digging tunnels in a completely new light!!!
For example, the real problem with rail is getting right-of-way. With a cheap boring machine - your plans wouldn't be as difficult. As Musk put it, you got to think in 3D....
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#43I'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've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time.
There's your problem: being enchanted in the first place. The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them and then huff when reality—inevitably—fails to keep up with the myth.
Flawed human accomplishes great things is the story of most of history's pioneers.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#44I 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
A tunnel doesn't have to specifically be for cars. Could run busses, trains, etc.. More electric cars on the road though wouldn't output more pollution around the road.
Electric cars are a good match for tunnels: ventilating the tunnel enough for a whole lot of combustion engines to use is a real cost.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Induced demand often happens, but certainly not always. It just depends on latent demand and network effects. More importantly, the appearance of induced demand is not a general argument against building roads! People get value out of getting to places. If we build road B intending to relieve congestion on road A, but road A stays just as congested, we nevertheless have enabled people to get places with road B that t…
Do you happen to have any examples of where induced demand has not happened? My understanding is that it is pretty much guaranteed, especially in larger cities. I think New York's bridges and tunnels are the canonical examples of this. I say pretty much because I assume there must be cases where it didn't happen, but I am unaware of them.
City's tend to have a lot of latent demand. There are some highway segments outside of city's that get minimal usage after they where built but which then grew over time instead of the sudden surge due to latent demand ex: 81 in southern VA which now sees heavy use, but was fairly empty right after construction.
However, in the city case new roads with high latent demand you may see a shorted rush hour which is a very useful side effect.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. The reason for wanting a tunnel at SpaceX headquarters specifically is to help the employees access their parking structures without being run over crossing the street: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/12/30/video-3-spacex-employ... "A news report about three SpaceX employees who were hit by a car on Dec. 17 after leaving work. The incident occurred at 2:15 a.m. About three hours later, SpaceX CEO Elon Mu…
Meh. He probably could have had a pedestrian bridge approved and installed by now for the same cost as the exploratory hole. Or even built over a weekend, then deal with the consequences and approval process after. You can get a way with a lot when it comes to personal safety.
Couldn't have built it over the weekend. You'd have to block traffic on the street to do it. It's a busy street. Also, building a bridge reduces the height of things you can transport down the street. This sounds like a minor issue, but it's a major constraint for SpaceX as they start moving larger and larger rocket vehicles, even for short trips at night through LA to a sea port or the airport.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you happen to have any examples of where induced demand has not happened? My understanding is that it is pretty much guaranteed, especially in larger cities. I think New York's bridges and tunnels are the canonical examples of this. I say pretty much because I assume there must be cases where it didn't happen, but I am unaware of them.
City's tend to have a lot of latent demand. There are some highway segments outside of city's that get minimal usage after they where built but which then grew over time instead of the sudden surge due to latent demand ex: 81 in southern VA which now sees heavy use, but was fairly empty right after construction. However, in the city case new roads with high latent demand you may see a shorted rush hour which is a ver…
It seems to me that an urban car tunnel would be the most likely thing to induce demand: it's useless for local traffic, and is so expensive that it's only going to built in places with lots of latent demand.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#48I 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
The idea that we shouldn't build infrastructure because it will get used is one of the more silly talking points out there right now.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
City's tend to have a lot of latent demand. There are some highway segments outside of city's that get minimal usage after they where built but which then grew over time instead of the sudden surge due to latent demand ex: 81 in southern VA which now sees heavy use, but was fairly empty right after construction. However, in the city case new roads with high latent demand you may see a shorted rush hour which is a ver…
It seems to me that an urban car tunnel would be the most likely thing to induce demand: it's useless for local traffic, and is so expensive that it's only going to built in places with lots of latent demand.
Build one and I agree with you, build 10 and that's no longer true. So, the question becomes can you make it 10 times cheaper.
Remember, congestion lowers throughput and surface traffic scales really poorly.
Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you happen to have any examples of where induced demand has not happened? My understanding is that it is pretty much guaranteed, especially in larger cities. I think New York's bridges and tunnels are the canonical examples of this. I say pretty much because I assume there must be cases where it didn't happen, but I am unaware of them.
Maybe induced demand has always happened, in the sense of demand increasing when the product is more available. But it's plenty common for the amount that demand increases to be less than the amount of extra capacity available. Furthermore, is induced demand that bad? If you double the capacity and it again gets filled to the point of gridlock, well then at least twice as many people are now able to be in gridlock, w…
The example of when induced demand is bad is when it causes increased pollution. In many parts of the world, there is a deliberate movement towards avoiding building too many roads, in order to decrease road use and therefore pollution levels.
However, a car sitting in traffic will produce much more pollution per mile than one travelling at 70mph on a clear road, so the thinking behind this may be flawed.