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

431–440 of 800 posts

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#431

Post by imesh »

chejazi wrote: post #376
distances wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Europe has many countries with at least the same wish for personal space as the US, and public transport works just fine. I'd suspect a big reason is the car-centric culture, which also gives rise to the image of public transport being only for those who can't afford a car. It's a cultural problem that'll be hard to straighten.

> Europe has many countries with at least the same wish for personal space as the US Maybe this is me being ethnocentric, but it seems the American way of embracing diversity (through political correctness, affirmative action, etc) has come at the cost of craving for isolation and independence from each other.

You think people in Iowa are driving because of the huge amounts of minorities?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#433

Post by [deleted] »

geofft wrote: post #307
petra wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One weakness of all public transportation is the lack of personal space. Maybe if someone would have solved that either by more space or some deep psychological insights, it would become more popular among Americans?

I find that I have plenty of personal space on mass transit as long as there's enough transit. If I'm taking the 2/3 subway (in New York) or the 27-Bryant bus (in SF) at 9 AM on a weekday, it's totally fine. If I'm taking Caltrain southbound at 9 AM on a weekday or the 4/5 towards the Upper West Side at 5:30 PM, it's miserable. That is to say, there's a known solution already: funding.

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#434

Post by closeparen »

distances wrote: post #272
petra wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One weakness of all public transportation is the lack of personal space. Maybe if someone would have solved that either by more space or some deep psychological insights, it would become more popular among Americans?

I disagree. Europe has many countries with at least the same wish for personal space as the US, and public transport works just fine. I'd suspect a big reason is the car-centric culture, which also gives rise to the image of public transport being only for those who can't afford a car. It's a cultural problem that'll be hard to straighten.

Try any "excellent" public transportation system during commute hours. The lack of personal space isn't misperception. Systems are explicitly planned to have standees, and lots of them, in close quarters. We've gotten acclimated to something much more comfortable, and we get to vote.

It's not clear how public transit advocates will convince us to vote to downgrade our lives. Maybe the bicyclists and pedestrians in cities will be able to block suburban drivers from entering.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#435

Post by kgu »

adjkant wrote: post #370
kgu wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the thread interesting and informative up until she drew her conclusion: Elon Musk doesn't strike me as an innovator when he talks about building tunnels and subways. He strikes me as Robert Moses. Who are these tunnels going to serve? The Latino communities in LA? Or are we just running them straight to the rich neighborhoods? It's hard for me to believe someone doesn't have an axe to grind when they make st…

I don't see this as baseless to be honest. As someone in the camp of "technology always has political implications", one of the interesting trends I've seen with tech is that most of the benefits go to the rich first. In some ways yes, that makes sense. The problem is when they never transition to the whole population effectively. Take subways, a well-defined technology at this point. Pretty much every city you look…

I hear what you're saying and actually agree. The somewhat pedantic point I was making earlier was just that the author could've more conservatively written, "here are some possible dangers down this path which we should think carefully about."

(Sorry for replying to a long, substantive comment with a short one; I just don't have anything to add.)

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#436

Post by dnautics »

jaredklewis wrote: post #410
whack wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asking the wrong question. There are over a hundred million Americans who commute long distances in their car. Mostly because they live/work in areas that aren't dense enough to have good last-mile public transit, and they don't want to deal with transfers. You can lecture them all you want, but ultimately, these people aren't going to downgrade their lifestyle just to fit your ideas of engineering efficiency.…

If places aren't dense enough to support mass transit, they are certainly not dense enough to financially support car-trains tunnels. The depicted tunnels have the same costs as building subways, and I imagine similar maintenance costs. On the other hand, they can only serve a fraction of the riders a traditional subway can, which means the cost per rider is huge. Not to mention it still requires owning a car, so the…

This solves the last Mile problem

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#437

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#438

Post by thucydides »

talamown wrote: post #405
Xcelerate wrote: post #377

It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack…

'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' are so important and useful not only for the development but for other possible innovations. They should be welcomed. And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company.

99% of popular critical feedback on ideas like this is nonsense so ill-informed it would take days to intelligibly refute to an objective third party - and the only way to convince the original negative Nancy would be to succeed.

It would be interesting to hear what experts think, though

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#439

Post by tinym »

scionaura wrote: post #294
Strom wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth. What is this in reference to? That our current methods are unsustainable? There are plenty of ideas for solutions. That the current state of human cooperation is below the necessary threshold to achieve a self-sustaining society on Mars? Maybe, but I'm optimistic that we'll find the inspirational leaders that are required.

Why the hell would you be optimistic about that.

Would pessimism help?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#440

Post by theptip »

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…

> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem

As rockets were before Space X?

It costs a billion dollars per mile to dig a subway tunnel. If the costs could be brought down, it would change a lot about the way we build mass transit systems.

Post reply on HN