The Boring Company [video]

> Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to.

I'll take that one.

Because I love my car - not the car itself, although I really do think it's beautiful - but the freedom that it gives me. I can get in it right now, without any planning or waiting and drive almost anywhere using exactly the route I choose. While sitting behind the wheel, I'm forced to not be able to do anything else than driving. That is a very nice time to think and just be. Some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen was in places where the nearest public transport option was a hour's drive away.

I can leave stuff in the trunk if I buy it one day and then need it the next day. I also do grocery shopping weekly - carrying 5 bags of food by hand gets old really fast.

The car is also where my younger kid's car seat is. I'm pretty sure nobody else would put their kid in there, the shape of the chocolate and cookie crumb mountain is exactly the shape he fits in you know.

So, yes, you can do what you described. In fact, you can do it already today, but having a car? There's a reason people buy and repair and like them.

Those things aren't free, though. You're paying $500-$1000/month for the luxury of doing those things, compared to the $100-$150 cost of a monthly transit pass.

When you consider the costs, cars just don't have the appeal they used to, and you can spend money elsewhere that'll make you just as happy if not happier, especially as more services orient themselves to remove cars from the picture, such as Amazon & grocery delivery services.

Besides, do you want a system that forces the rest of the public to buy cars? The congestion alone should be enough to discourage people from cars.

Not that tunnels are a boring idea, but if you handed me a couple of billion, I think we could solve public transportation using ultralight above ground systems. I would base it on a roller coaster type design using single or dual tracks suspended by high load anchored polls.

The car weights would be kept to a minimum, allowing tracks and supports to be sized much smaller, lowering cost and design requirements. The average car would weight less than a bus, and could travel at very high speeds.

Existing trains and subway systems are based off of hundred-year old freight train systems which were designed to transport thousands of tons of weight. This has a huge cost for subway and commuter train design. A modern subway train costs millions of dollars, weighs multiple tons, and is an immense engineering task.

By engineering a total target track and car weight of a few tons per spacing instead - this system would be far cheaper and easier to maintain.

Passenger cars would be designed to hold only a dozen people, and cars would be linked or unlinked as needed to increase capacity and efficiency. This design also allows the system to maintain extra cars of varying sizes to manage variable rider capacity. Rather than time tables, the system would run based on rider demand, maintaining a slight over-capacity to handle peaks. This is no different than the typical Uber-type demand based system.

On the typical street, such systems would only utilize a few square feet of space per block. They could also utilize existing utilities and would require minimal space for stations. Trains would exit the main track to prevent stalling the main rails while boarding passengers.

This system could also be extended to long-hail service as well into suburbs, or perhaps across states, It wouldn't have nearly the same difficulties of property right of way, environmental impact, and NYMBY - as it essentially has about the same impact as a typical electrical infrastructure. It could also be placed along existing roads and bridges to quickly build out the system.

Anyway - just an idea.

Only a visitor so don't know the details, but plenty of Brisbane's tunnels seem to be for buses only...

I think you left the /s off your comment