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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#471

Post by osdiab »

closeparen wrote: post #429
djsumdog wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still incredibly wasteful compared to a real subway. The amount of people a real mass transit system can move is orders of magnitude above tons if individual little cars: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... ..not to mention all the energy required to move each of those vehicles compared to a train that can move hundreds of more people in a similar space. Americans need to get over all…

>It's still incredibly wasteful compared to a real subway. Because real subways have miserable sardine-can standing room conditions during commute times. Public transit is dead in the water in the US because its advocates use terms like "incredibly wasteful" to describe making systems anywhere near as comfortable as private cars. For most people, the most comfortable chair they own is their driver seat. For many, the…

I personally find trains to be dramatically more comfortable than cars. Feel free to disagree, but a) not having to pay attention, b) not facing any congestion, c) not dealing with the motion sickness and dizziness that comes with doing anything in a car, d) not being stuck in a cramped cage, e) not worrying about getting into an accident, throwing away a boatload of money and potentially hurting randoms strangers or myself for reasons that may be entirely out of my control—all of these things make trains WAY WAY WAY more comfortable to me than cars ever can be.

Have you ridden on systems that are better than our crappy one before? Riding in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong is a wonderful experience.

The real problem is that we have nowhere near to as much capacity as we need, and nowhere near to as much coverage either. And that's 100% a result of political incompetence and a lack of funding for something that almost certainly would improve the livability and productivity of this city.

Coupled with how filthy San Francisco is and how pitifully little we do to address affordability and the resulting, predictable homelessness and mental illness crisis we see here, you get an uncomfortable transit experience.

Our lack of a robust, functional public transit network is a big reason I want to GTFO of the Bay Area.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#472

Post by alejandrogm »

xyos wrote: post #469
athenot wrote: post #445

This looks really cool. However, boring through rock is the most expensive way to connect 2 places. It only makes sense if the land features or purchase value require it. Fundamentally, this is about short-circuiting the regular road network and establishing a managed packet network that can bypass congestion. Interestingly, that's also the value proposition of public transit, though it also runs into issues of cost,…

I'm from Bogotá and I can tell you that the bus experience is ugly, it worked for about 10 years but now the buses can't cope with the amount of people Bogotá has.

Yes, it worked for a couple years, but right now it's a chaos. A subway would definitely solve the problem.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#473

Post by osdiab »

jv22222 wrote: post #373
djsumdog wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still incredibly wasteful compared to a real subway. The amount of people a real mass transit system can move is orders of magnitude above tons if individual little cars: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... ..not to mention all the energy required to move each of those vehicles compared to a train that can move hundreds of more people in a similar space. Americans need to get over all…

Is it really wasteful? It seems like it is an ever moving system. In terms of people capacity it seems it would carry more by being always flowing vs a stopping starting transit system.

The amount of people that can fit in 1 car is roughly maxes out at 4-7 people, depending on the car. There needs to be enough spacing between each car so that in the case of a failure, cars have space to brake to a stop without catapulting the people in it, or causing them to become overly nauseous. So there's going to be a decent amounnt of spacing between each car.

The number of people that can fit on 1 bus can hit in the ballpark of 50 people, so we're getting a roughly 10x capacity boost here. You lose the "ever-moving system" benefit doing this, but I highly doubt some stopping and starting would lead to an order of magnitude slower speed.

Now, the number of people that can fit on 1 SF BART train is in the realm of 10 cars * 200 = 2000 people per train. The spacing is not going to be on the order of 100x longer than in the individual car case, and the starting-stopping speed is going to be not a bit slower than the bus case.

I'll let you work out the math on that, but it's not even orders of magnitude close. Don't need to be a "visionary" to see that.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#474

Post by jblow »

lojack wrote: post #451
Xcelerate wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' [...] should be welcomed. Not really. It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. It requires an insanely small amount of effort compared to finding a way to make something work. "Reasons why not" are a dime a dozen. > And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company. I…

Identifying risk is one of the most valuable things startups can be doing. Ignoring that risk can be one of the most detrimental things. Good entrepreneurs treat that risk as opportunity. Bad entrepreneurs are paralyzed by it. "Reasons why not" are indeed a dime a dozen, but that doesn't mean they are useless. It may be a bit annoying to have to filter through the feedback that identifies the wrong risks, but we shou…

Yeah, identifying risk is important. But thinking one can "identify risk" as some random dude posting on Hacker News, criticizing a guy with a lot of experience running cutting-edge tech companies that make stuff like cars and spaceships (ACTUAL tech, not these lame web sites that people call "tech" these days), is ... well, delusional would be a polite word for it.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#475

Post by osdiab »

komali2 wrote: post #398
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?

For me the main disadvantage is that it takes an hour, comes once an hour, has inaccurate timetables, costs 13$, and stops running at midnight. Hence why I drive from mountain view to San Francisco rather than bother with Caltrain.

It's too bad Caltrain electrification is getting screwed over... But it's even worse that BART was blocked from just going down the peninsula, to the point that we literally went the other way around the bay to get it down to San Jose. Criminally dumb.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#476

Post by dingo_bat »

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

I doubt it. I think he's looking for the same thing as everybody else: mega profits.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#477

Post by bbcbasic »

accountyaccount wrote: post #463
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…

I get what you're saying, but sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. You can't just positive think yourself out of it.

And there is the dilemma. :-)

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#478

Post by closeparen »

naravara wrote: post #121
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…

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.

Getting to provide your own seats might just be what convinces drivers to use a subway system.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#479

Post by nprecup »

I do like the idea of coupling self-driving car technology with taxi service and underground highways. When it comes to urban environments, automobiles and associated infrastructure takes up an enormous amount of the available space. It hurts resident's quality of life in many ways (noise, pollution, traffic, stress, less green space, etc). This is one of the reasons I am totally on board with investing heavily in mass transit underground (super excited that Seattle is finally getting their act together on this, which is my home). If the cost of developing underground transport infrastructure is driven down enough by this venture, we could improve traffic flow and reclaim some of the space on the surface as space for people, not cars. Couple that and a future with clean energy for cars and when using a self driving car service is more convenient than owning a car, we could create a transportation system that can get you anywhere, quickly, efficiently, and without transfers.

Self driving car services would allow us to reclaim huge portions of cities by reducing the need for parking spaces everywhere we go, and make driving safer. Tunnels for highways could replace interstates that cut cities in two, as well as provide more flexible routes. Electric cars could make our cities healthier. I think I see what Elon is trying to do...

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#480

Post by astrodust »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #385
astrodust wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist. The problem is getting approval to build them anywhere near residential areas is problematic. https://www.slashgear.com/japans-new-maglev-bullet-train-is-... That's 600km/h. For 600mph you'd need Hyperloop to prove they can do that speed first.

So...they don't exist. The fastest ones are actually 40% slower.

Show me a working 600mph tube train and then you'll have a case of a superior technology. Until then it's just an idea on a napkin.

China is building new, high-speed maglev trains and there's many lines already open for business.

Maybe one day Hyperloop will get built and will be open for passenger travel. When that day comes it's possible that surface rail may have already achieved the same speed because third or fourth generation maglev trains are in service.

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