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

631–640 of 800 posts

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#631

Post by robocat »

hk__2 wrote: post #243
bb88 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. In the same way a road offers private and public transportation, a tunnel can do both. Why can't the car be a bus, say?

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.

Paris isn't on top of the San Andreas faultline!

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#632

Post by jimmijazz »

timClicks wrote: post #617
Veratyr wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what if busses operated on their own dedicated network? But if you're building a dedicated network in a major city, why on earth would you limit it to buses? Even with a dedicated network, I don't believe buses can be as fast, comfortable or quiet as rail. I spent a lot of time in Melbourne, Australia and the trams there are fantastic. You can barely hear them when they're operating so they do a lot to decrease…

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

We have tunnels and a couple of seperate motorways designed soecifically for buses. Which is great for getting from southern suburbs to the city. But anything off the main line can take an extra half hour.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#633

Post by puranjay »

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.

Isn't Musk's track record simply to shoot for the moon (or heck, Mars), then temper things down?

He misses all his deadlines for precisely this reason.

Right now, it's just a video mocked together over two days. It's just a very, very broad "idea".

Things will change over time. Why knock something so early in the development phase?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#634

Post by taway_1212 »

terryf wrote: post #611
mozumder wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are now more dependent on private cars for transport. 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…

> 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 t…

> I can get in it right now, without any planning or waiting

That's how a proper public transport network works too. For example in London, when I want to go somewhere, I just whip out an app that plans for me the best combination of busses/subway/train/walking to accomplish that and I'm immediately on the go. The wait times are minimal (under 2-5 minutes) most of the time.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#635

Post by soufron »

david927 wrote: post #614
soufron wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is trying to invent shit and make things better. It's true from your waiter at your restaurant who will try to find a way to be more amiable to you, or it's true from the public researchers who just invented the artificial utero when they're being paid nips and wont become billionaires out of their invention. This is not Atlas Shrugged. This is the real world.

You're missing the point: This isn't simply about those who are trying to make things better, which is truly many people and is wonderful. This is that subset that go down road others have abandoned or won't go down because the solution is "known to definitely not be down that road." Those people get flack -- they really do. Despite the inundation of aphorisms all over Facebook and LinkedIn belaboring the concept of…

I have to point of out that over-criticizing stuff is an important part of the human psyche. People "who follow the rules" get as much flack as people who don't. Example in mind: your tax administration officer that you will probably criticize once a year for following the rules.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#636

Post by jpkeisala »

Veratyr wrote: post #600
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,…

> But what if busses operated on their own dedicated network? But if you're building a dedicated network in a major city, why on earth would you limit it to buses? Even with a dedicated network, I don't believe buses can be as fast, comfortable or quiet as rail. I spent a lot of time in Melbourne, Australia and the trams there are fantastic. You can barely hear them when they're operating so they do a lot to decrease…

Trams are more expensive than buses. They have removed tram networks on many cities in Europe in favour of cheap diesel buses but slowly now some are getting back.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#637

Post by jpkeisala »

pitaj wrote: post #462
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,…

> boring through rock is the most expensive way to connect 2 places While this is true, getting very good at boring underground could be helpful for building underground habitats on mars.

...and mining asteroids.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#638

Post by unityByFreedom »

i386 wrote: post #621
tinym wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll know how to make a home on Earth.

That kind of attitude gets you nowhere very quickly. Why do _anything_ better?

What makes you feel moving to Mars will solve issues inherent in humanity?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#639

Post by JepZ »

The funny thing about Elon is, that the lower the general chances for a successful undertaking are, the higher are the chances that he will succeed.

I'm just not sure if the entrance to the boring market is a high-risk venture. But at least the idea of building an underground network under existing cities is a very ambitious project.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#640

Post by tmalsburg2 »

hackuser wrote: post #128
jrockway wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure the poor state of existing infrastructure precludes someone from building their own new infrastructure. Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money. Even in the US, passenger rail is typically run by the government or government-like bodies, while freight rail is just private companies. I don't think there's an intrinsic reason for that, it's…

> Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money. It would be interesting to learn details: How often? Who is making how much? And in what circumstances does it tend to work and not work?

In Europe there are plenty of private companies offering public transportation and they are almost always subsidized by the government in one way or another.
Post reply on HN