Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 800 posts

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#331

Post by pnathan »

stupidcar wrote: post #283
naravara wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilariously so even. This is basically a subway system, except you have to provide your own seats. All this is succeeding in doing is making Musk look hilariously out of touch.

He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. Even in London, where you have a major, successful transport engineering project (Crossrail) completing, and an entire city de…

paralysis via NIMBY is the key problem in the US. many urbanists would be happy to grid every city with subways. we talk about it, wistfully.

but we don't have the political leverage today, and the little we have is with the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#332

Post by zaphar »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #164
pnathan wrote: post #85

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significan…

edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc Well, which is it? Solved, or difficult/expensive/slow?

It's all four, They aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#333

Post by OoTheNigerian »

I think there is nothing more boring than reading a bunch of people who never propose anything point out flaws.

You all sound like Balmer.

This is a CONCEPT!!

Elon is THINKING you all are pointing, laughing and adding no value to the conversation of "What comes next?"

If your idea is "the metro works", a 150 year old system, then this video is not for you.

To the video, I like the concept of combining public and private transportation in the same path.

It also makes sense as a way to directly link far distances. To me, this is a modification of the hyperloop concept. Something more feasible in the shorter term and definitely less risky.

Of course all this depends on the economics and physics of boring becoming cheap and 10x faster. keep thinking Elon.

Earth needs more of your "fantasies". Let the pointers keep pointing.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#334

Post by leoh »

pnathan wrote: post #85

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significan…

> If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network.

Agree, except that while many ridiculously wealthy people would be willing to help pay for private access to some tunnels — _perhaps_ subsidizing a system that is later available to others — many fewer wealthy people would help pay for a subway.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#335

Post by bb88 »

geofft wrote: post #320
bb88 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

64 LA subway cars cost $176 million [1]. That seems really high to me, at about $3 million per subway car. Also people per hour is not really the metric the average person cares about. It's travel time to destination. [1] http://www.lamag.com/driver/l-s-subway-cars-will-definitely-...

Those subway cars are used at all hours that the system is in operation. If you're trying to compare costs with Boring, note first that a personal car is used much less and second that Boring involves these weird platform things which will also cost money, so the equivalent is more than just the price of the Tesla that sits on the platform. Also, each LA subway car can fit over 50 people seated and probably three tim…

> If you're trying to compare costs with Boring,

Actually I'm not. I just want to point out that public trains cost huge amounts of money for investment, they need special infrastructure which many US cities don't have, and the only way they work feasibly is if the population density is high enough so the taxes will support them.

In other words, there's a huge upfront cost to even considering building a system that most cities/governments will choose roads over rail.

A bus on the other hand is $300,000, holds around 60 passengers, and uses the same infrastructure the city already has, and doesn't incur the need to have right of way fights with land owners.

What would you realistically do given the choice?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#336

Post by chrismealy »

tptacek wrote: post #151

Since this is a thread about Elon Musk, transportation infrastructure, public transportation, and urban design, and because HN has a sort of affinity for the Robert Moses story (The Power Broker was one of 'aaronsw's favorite books), this seems like a particularly on-point Twitter thread to read after the video: https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/858022699112824832 You might not agree with all/any of it but I…

Every self-driving car video I've seen is set in a place built for cars, not people. Not a coincidence.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#337

Post by ceejayoz »

Spivak wrote: post #287
accountyaccount wrote: post #10

This is the dumbest thing I've seen him produce. Reliable rapid public transit is better in dozens of ways.

And worse in others. This at least has the advantage that people might actually want to use it since it's zero latency and you have your car for local driving.

Europe and Japan seem to have solved that problem with public transit.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#338

Post by Caprinicus »

bb88 wrote: post #321
hk__2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. The subway system transports 5M people every single day. That’s twice the city population. That’s also 1.9B per year. During the peak hours you can have up to one train every 90 seconds for a capacity of 700 people each.

> Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. That's actually pretty awesome, but you may have noticed that Americans don't really care about efficiency. Once the tunnel is built, you can put anything you want into it. But I suspect we would still choose cars over tr…

People in general don't care about efficiency, and it's not even irrational. Transportation planning tends to treat people as little AI zergs that are going to take the most collectively efficient route to their individual destination. It's best to have a system that's as agnostic to how people want to get where they're going as possible, but I have no idea whether tesla's idea is good.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#339

Post by HiroshiSan »

shouldbworking wrote: post #40

Did anyone else notice that cars being lowered leaves a giant fucking hole in the middle of the street?! This is a marketing fluff video untouched by engineers

uh duh??? Ever heard of a concept? How many concept cars actually get released as the "marketing fluff" that you see in auto shows?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#340

Post by astrodust »

Spivak wrote: post #314
astrodust wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the sort of thing a guy who owns a car company would do, not someone who's actually trying to solve a transportation problem.

Or a person who actually understands what people want in a transportation solution. Nobody outside of city planners and environmentalists take the train/bus solution seriously because it's such a lifestyle downgrade from cars.

If you're in a city that's not explicitly designed around cars, a car is a total hassle. America's gone all-in on cars, but even then the current generation is abandoning them and instead doing something crazy: Living close to where they work.

A car is a massive investment of time, money, and emotional capital that an increasing number of people are simply unwilling to make.

Post reply on HN