241–250 of 472 posts
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Tokyo is a much bigger city. They solved the problem by building elevated toll highways. Much simpler solution than digging new holes everywhere and keeping those silly carts running.
Isn't that still taking roads 3D?
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> But then for some reason the solution has to involve putting cars into these tunnels. If what he thinks he is on to is viable with cars in those tunnels, it's even more viable with trains carrying 1,000 passengers each coming every 3 minutes. So why aren't we building these subways with trains? Because with trains you never build just a tunnel - there are train stations, escalators leading in and out, ticketing boo…
But even with the stations, escalators and everything else, you're talking about orders of magnitude between trains and cars. London during peak hour has trains arriving less than 1 min 30 sec apart. They move an absolutely insane amount of people. Singapore's trains are entirely automated and arrive at Everything about Musk's idea seems absolutely terrible. If America had better trains and subways, it could move mas…
In most European cities, if you get off at train station, you're in the midst of (or very close to) the city center, office locations, touristy walking sites and plenty of choices for retail or food.
In the US once you get off at the train station, well, you're at the train station, and now need a car to go anywhere you actually need to go. NYC and SF are likely to be the only exception - train stations as close as LA or San Jose are fairly sparse and have limited connections.
You can run the fastest most frequent train you can handle, and California in fact is building one between Borden and Corcoran, but the "step 2" in US cities generally involves getting a car.
So, the key ideas are: - Smaller diameter tunnels. 14' is suggested. This is slightly larger than the deep London Tube lines. - Electrically powered TBMs. Those exist. However, often the business end of the machine is hydraulically powered. Musk is probably thinking of going all electric, at least for the cutter head. After all, he has lots of experience with high-torque electric motors. - Do cutting and tunnel ring…
Yeah this is all very odd and everyone is lapping it up. He claims to want to reduce tunneling costs by a factor of 10, but starts by quoting a very high benchmark of $1 billion per mile which is quite easy to beat. Then he reduces diameters to something much smaller than all the expensive mega projects, into the range of something where technology is well established and costs are already 1/10th of his quoted $1 bil…
I think it's move polivalent to transport vehicles (personal or mpv) that way the last 1-5 miles can be resumed by the vehicle and they don't have to stop everywhere (which is the main crutch of trains), you want to cover as much area and not have "why don't you stop near my house" syndrome.
there's also nothing stopping bicycle riders from using the system provided there are seats to strap into and goggles to wear.
>A large network of road tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). A large network of highways many lanes wide would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding lanes).
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But even with the stations, escalators and everything else, you're talking about orders of magnitude between trains and cars. London during peak hour has trains arriving less than 1 min 30 sec apart. They move an absolutely insane amount of people. Singapore's trains are entirely automated and arrive at Everything about Musk's idea seems absolutely terrible. If America had better trains and subways, it could move mas…
> Everything about Musk's idea seems absolutely terrible. Depends what his goal is. Currently getting from A to B in a car at a certain time involves traffic jams. If his goal is to get from A to B most efficiently in a car then it's one of the best ideas. If his goal is get people from A to B via any mode of transport, perhaps trains. But he owns a car company, so that's not exactly in his interest. Also with cars i…
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One of the reasons that subways are built only in very large cities is that you need a very high population density to make it worthwhile because of the cost of digging the tunnels. But what if the cost were a tenth as much? I posit that for a city of 500,000 - 1,000,000 it might become practical to have subways and that radically changes the transit equation. So I am very bullish on Musk bringing down the cost of tu…
I've got confidence in them too. I think internet commenters are far too quick to overlook the fact that Musk is not going to push forward a venture like this without loads of research from a team of really smart people. It's not like it's just the one Elon with a fantasy about tunnels. It'd start with a bunch of talented people brainstorming and then, early in the process, they'd surely be speaking with really knowl…
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Yeah this is all very odd and everyone is lapping it up. He claims to want to reduce tunneling costs by a factor of 10, but starts by quoting a very high benchmark of $1 billion per mile which is quite easy to beat. Then he reduces diameters to something much smaller than all the expensive mega projects, into the range of something where technology is well established and costs are already 1/10th of his quoted $1 bil…
> But then for some reason the solution has to involve putting cars into these tunnels. If what he thinks he is on to is viable with cars in those tunnels, it's even more viable with trains carrying 1,000 passengers each coming every 3 minutes. So why aren't we building these subways with trains? Because with trains you never build just a tunnel - there are train stations, escalators leading in and out, ticketing boo…
The tunnels themselves are very unassuming
Ventilation, as a very critical entity, comes to mind. Also safety features are extremely critical. I live in a country with lots of tunnels and essentially every longer auto tunnel has additional tubes that are under pressure, for example. That's required if you suddenly have a burning vehicle in the middle of a narrow tube.
While car tunnels don't need to be sexy from an optical perspective there's a ton of necessary infrastructure and safety features, which aren't immediately obvious.
Maybe this changes when we all go electric, but I really don't see that happening anytime soon.
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Your solutions are proportional reductions, a % reduction in the number of drivers. The problem of traffic rises with the ~2nd power of population because not only are there more people, there are more intersections. Intersections can only be solved with 3d roads, by eliminating overlaps. The bigger the city, the more artery roads you need with uninterrupted flow, and they eventually choke each other. Build tunnels a…
Public transport is at least an order of magnitude more efficient: http://p5.focus.de/img/fotos/origs3844236/5854568718-w630-h2... (note that car sizes have increased significantly since then) Every point you brought forward is also true for subways, but it's again at least an order of magnitude more space-efficient than sending cars through tunnels.
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He's trying to hit a price point. We're not completely allergic to the $20M freeway bridge that's about 100ft long, and comes with heavy upkeep costs over the long term. So, $100M per mile with Upkeep Lite™ sounds good when making conversation about the topic. Also the $1B/mile is the cost of the Purple Line extension in Los Angeles. Worst case cost no doubt. A real figure nevertheless.
> So, $100M per mile with Upkeep Lite™ sounds good when making conversation about the topic. Also the $1B/mile is the cost of the Purple Line extension in Los Angeles. Worst case cost no doubt. A real figure nevertheless. The figure is way out. Crossrail in London has a $20 billion total budget (£15b GBP), with 26 miles of tunnel[1]. But the tunnel is only part of the project, several billion is being spent on new re…