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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#501

Post by cstejerean »

closeparen wrote: post #434
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.

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 ci…

I will gladly vote for trains because it takes people off the roads and reduces traffic which makes it easier for me to drive to and from work.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#502

Post by Retric »

osdiab wrote: post #473
jv22222 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A well managed train system can manage 1 car per line per 5 minutes. 2000 * 60 / 5 = 24,000 people per hour. Highways can handle 2,000 - 2200 vehicles per lane or so at the low end 1/12 but that's very much an edge case. Most lines are closer to one train every 20 minutes and you can average 3 people per car which makes them equivalent.

The real issue is not highways, but what happens when people try and get off or onto them. It's possible but rare to do this well.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#503

Post by floatingatoll »

rpedela wrote: post #401
melling wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY

What about waiting time between transfers? You need a certain population density to have almost continuous trains. In Bay Area, you have to wait an hour between Caltrains unless it is rush hour. Caltrains could go 500mph, I would still drive to avoid the wait between trains.

Demand for Caltrain is standing room only during rush hour, with 33% of traffic living in Palo Alto and working in SF.

Caltrain has two primary constraints, neither population-linked: diesel trains accelerate badly, and freight track scheduling.

Diesel trains are theoretically being swapped for electric, which will permit the trains to stop and start more efficiently. They predict one additional train during peak rush hour per day for this improvement, iirc.

Freight traffic consumes a fixed amount of rail time, focused primarily on the "one hour between" segments of the schedule. Increasing frequency can only occur within existing scheduled route times, and cannot disrupt that freight traffic.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#504

Post by closeparen »

stale2002 wrote: post #489
closeparen wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ci…

OK, but that's like saying "nobody goes to Times Square anymore. It's too crowded". If there was more public transportation, the problems you bring up about personal space would go away.

The problem stated here isn't "public transit has insufficient ridership," it's "some people don't want to use public transit."

When the problem you're trying to solve is "some people aren't in Times Square right now," you might need to engage with the fact that it's crowded.

More public transportation, sure, and I'll vote for it every time.

Less car infrastructure, and there is no pressure for public transportation to be comfortable or effective because the only way to opt out of it is to move away.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#505

Post by termie »

I wonder if you could make a big drill out of hundreds of hot swappable high torque Tesla motors that were intelligently geared and well mounted. Hot swapping battery packs from the underside of a car via automation was demonstrated years back by Tesla so learnings there could be used. Tesla uses a bunch of widely available 18650s for their packs and benefit from that same modularity, and I imagine big cost savings there for a drill that size even with a great deal of breakage in the array of motors.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#506

Post by chrismealy »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #333

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 priv…

This is just FUD to crowd out practical solutions that compete with his magical car bullshit.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#507

Post by jws »

gregpilling wrote: post #499

If I recall, this whole idea started as a result of traffic on the 405 or something. This idea is only useful if it could deliver traffic volumes at meaninful percentage of the current 405 throughput. wikipedia says "The freeway's annual average daily traffic between exits 21 and 22 in Seal Beach reached 374,000 in 2008" . So how many car elevators to do 10% of that? How many car elevators to move 37,000 vehicles per…

Looking from the other direction, say an elevator can handle 60 cars an hour, so given staggered commutes it might serve the needs of 100 drivers. If having elevator access let you cover most of your commute at 100mph, what would that be worth? Multiply by 100 drivers, and 10 more to get from annual revenue to capital expense and I'd say million dollar elevators are no impediment at all.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#508

Post by cbhl »

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 think it's more nuanced than that.

You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing.

That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail.

The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days later handed the professor solutions to some famous open problems in statistics), and Jack Kilby (who, seeing computer performance limited by the number of wires soldered by hand, demonstrated -- against the protests of his "we-know-better" co-workers -- that you could get rid of the wires, resulting in the integrated circuit).

It's important to remember the 99% of the 1%. There are probably people on HN who have tried and failed. But rather than simply saying that it is impossible, we should encourage people to share share how and why the problem is difficult, so that hopefully the next person to try won't waste their time retracing the failures of the previous generation.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#509

Post by [deleted] »

melling wrote: post #390
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 you'd create 124mph transportation from 20-60 miles outside and through the city into the city, you wouldn't need to drive into the city. Most commuter trains average less than 50 so it's worth trying to drive. The average speed of the NYC subway is less than 35 mph. Light Rail? Low-speed maglev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8SqDVUdMtY

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