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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#701

Post by kartickv »

osdiab wrote: post #467
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,…

While I generally agree with what you're saying about embracing bus rapid transit and the cost effectiveness of that option, it's not 100% just a matter of congestion. Surface rail often reduces the value of the land around it due to noise, poor streetscape, etc. whereas subways typically dramatically increase the value of the land around it and don't disrupt the neighborhood. Same goes for large surface roadways. Al…

I'm not convinced that buses don't have the capacity trains do, when you consider that headway between trains is at least 90 seconds. If headway between buses is three seconds, in those 90 seconds, 30 buses can pass by. Assuming a bus has roughly the same capacity as a coach in a train, and that the train has 8 coaches, buses have roughly 4x the capacity.

Not to mention that buses can serve many routes that don't have enough capacity to merit a train, bus routes can be reconfigured without it taking years, and a bus system doesn't cost billions upon billions of dollars to build. Heck, even a single line of a metro system can cost a billion dollars to build.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#702

Post by blurbleblurble »

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…

It's not about what is or isn't possible. This video participates in an awful kind of ignorance about the ecological impact of tunneling.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#703

Post by jaredklewis »

XorNot wrote: post #607
jaredklewis wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does everyone lack imagination on this topic? Problem: if you drive to the subway, then take the subway, then you have two problems: where do you park your car, and how do you get to your destination once you get off the subway if it's not walking distance? Currently - people just drive. And the surface streets get progressively more crowded. We could drill more regular roadways - but it's notable that one reason…

I understand those benefits, and think they are marvelous, but also very expensive.

American cities are already spending more than they can afford on road maintenance. Are these underground trains going to be cheaper than above ground roads? Public money for this doesn't seem all that likely.

Here in Tokyo, the Yamanote above ground train serves a million riders daily. Costs a couple dollars to go 10km. The boring concept looks much more expensive than that, as it is underground, but those costs are spread out over many fewer people. Private money seems hard, too.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#704

Post by yourapostasy »

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.

I get the impression Musk looked at that expense, brought in some subject matter experts, probed them on why that was the case, and decided there must be a better way. From what I've read of tunnel boring, I can see that happening. Not uncommon for a tunnel boring machine to be custom-built and then abandoned in place at the end of the project. A more general-purpose or modular machine might be what he's thinking about. Unexpected geologic formations come up frequently, a function of the expense of manually-intensive sampling processes today. A robotic sampling crawler that bores hundreds of samples, and automatically classifies as it goes instead of sending to an off-site lab, building a 3D map as it moves, might be what he's looking into.

There might be red tape issues even if these technical challenges are overcome, though. Even if you propose going so deep you avoid all other underground infrastructure altogether, government bureaucracies' permitting and related processes will put a floor on the cost avoidance Musk seeks.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#705

Post by Can_Not »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #641
MattRix wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this crazy tunnel thing Elon just announced looks horrible, but the moment you claim that Tesla and SpaceX aren't doing anything special is where it becomes pretty obvious that you don't know what you're talking about.

Tesla sells high tech luxury vehicles that, as yet, aren't mainstream, and there are several road bumps to overcome before getting there. To laud Musk's success today to the point of proving success on his future products is premature. He hasn't completed his initial goals -- making electric mainstream and space flight an enterprise. Not saying it isn't possible or what he has achieved isn't great. Just saying his ex…

> as yet, aren't mainstream

Maybe it takes more than 5 minutes to make all cities capable of powering electrical cars then competing with the existing car market? He's already built a successful product, has successful competitors, prevented the 2000's era proprietary cell phone charger fiasco from happening again. It's a little too late to be skeptical.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#706

Post by vardump »

tim333 wrote: post #590
rayiner wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers skew rational. They know that most ideas won't work. It's like aspiring actors or singers. Statistically, any given aspiring actors or singers won't become famous. The existence of Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift doesn't change that. Think about the dozen articles you read every day about some promising lab result or prototype that. How many of them do you ever hear about again? Meat-space engineering is hard. I…

NYC-London flights were a lie?

I think he meant supersonic NYC-London flights. Or perhaps even hypersonic.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#708

Post by geofft »

bb88 wrote: post #335
geofft wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those subway cars are used at all hours that the system is in operation. If you're trying to compare costs with Boring, note first that a personal car is used much less and second that Boring involves these weird platform things which will also cost money, so the equivalent is more than just the price of the Tesla that sits on the platform. Also, each LA subway car can fit over 50 people seated and probably three tim…

> If you're trying to compare costs with Boring, Actually I'm not. I just want to point out that public trains cost huge amounts of money for investment, they need special infrastructure which many US cities don't have, and the only way they work feasibly is if the population density is high enough so the taxes will support them. In other words, there's a huge upfront cost to even considering building a system that m…

A bus without special bus lanes is a pretty bad public transit system, the sort of thing that makes people conclude that this whole public transit idea was a mistake in the first place and we should just invest in better car infrastructure. And getting special bus lanes is pretty politically difficult in its own way (although it's a different sort of fight than right-of-way fights).

If I had the choice of spending $3 million to buy 10 buses, or to do nothing at all, I'd save the $3 million and wait until it's feasible to develop something that the city will keep wanting to fund.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#710

Post by nojvek »

kartickv wrote: post #701
osdiab wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree with what you're saying about embracing bus rapid transit and the cost effectiveness of that option, it's not 100% just a matter of congestion. Surface rail often reduces the value of the land around it due to noise, poor streetscape, etc. whereas subways typically dramatically increase the value of the land around it and don't disrupt the neighborhood. Same goes for large surface roadways. Al…

I'm not convinced that buses don't have the capacity trains do, when you consider that headway between trains is at least 90 seconds. If headway between buses is three seconds, in those 90 seconds, 30 buses can pass by. Assuming a bus has roughly the same capacity as a coach in a train, and that the train has 8 coaches, buses have roughly 4x the capacity. Not to mention that buses can serve many routes that don't hav…

If buses have dedicated panes where they don't have to interact with normal traffic they can easily hit 70mph. Australian highways in certain places have this system.

My favorite is Vancouver skytrain. While building highways they built a train track on pillars. It's fast and usually got me in and out of the city quicker than a car.

I imagine train tracks on pillars cost effective than underground tunnels. For a dense city it makes sense. Not for outskirts.

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