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For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

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Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#81

Post by nkoren »

Joeri wrote: post #39
martinald wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume it does cost $1bn, then that's 40million rides to break even (obviously a lot of other costs I'm ignoring here). If only 5% of people using OHare (80million) take it, then that's 10 years before it is paid back. Considering this infrastructure should last 50 years minimum, it could well be profit generating or at least revenue neutral.

Musk always runs over budget by a multiple, it’s how he rolls. Maintenance is probably three times or more the initial outlay over a 10 year period. So, it probably won’t be profitable or revenue neutral. But it shouldn’t be. A brand new transportation mode is going to run at a loss until people figure out how to deploy it at scale. It would be weird for it to be profitable from day one.

Maintenance for a tunnel over ten years is not three times the initial outlay.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#82

Post by gowld »

njarboe wrote: post #62
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is only benefitting people for whom 25 minutes is worth $20/$22.50 Roads suffer from induced demand [1]. You can't build your way out of traffic. The only solutions are tolls or quotas. In any case, if you can't find anyone willing to pay to use your infrastructure (at a price that recoups the investment), that's a sign you overbuilt. > transit for the actual public Cars going through this tunnel are cars off…

The concept of induced demand does not say you can't build your way out of traffic. This idea seems to come up a lot in transportation discussions. Driving a car on a road is not free in either money or time, so when a new road fills up it is because more people are going somewhere they want to go and are pay a cost to do so. Yes, when you build a new road near where there are already traffic jams, the new road gets…

Infinite roads are not an option. If there is more pent-up demand than total possible road capacity, then there will never be enough capacity.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#83

Post by selectodude »

microtherion wrote: post #61
matt4077 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to interfere with your cynicism, but the important information here is that Boring Co. is funding the construction itself. It's not public money being spent, and schools would be unlikely to receive any extra funding without this project. And, of course, this project is far more important as a real-world proof-of-concept for the technology than it is for its expected use for travelers. Reducing tunnel costs by 95…

> Not to interfere with your cynicism, but the important information here is that Boring Co. is funding the construction itself. It's not public money being spent It's not uncommon for projects to start out that way, and then magically, public money starts appearing anyway. If this really remains a privately financed project (financed out of the deep pockets of Musk's companies, and completed on time due to Musk's un…

Chicago doesn't have any money to spend on the project. It's not like there's a kitty and they can pull another few hundred million out to finish the project.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#84

Post by prof1le »

FLGMwt wrote: post #3

This is terrible. $25 for 12 minutes from one place in the loop to O'Hare CTA is $2.50 for 37 minutes (the $5 is if you start from O'Hare) This is only benefitting people for whom 25 minutes is worth $20/$22.50. $1bn or whatever absurd cost it comes out to be is much better spent on improving transit for the actual public. Or you know, to stop shutting down schools. EDIT: typo

A quick google search shows that Chicago is already spending .5bn on improving the blue line (https://www.transitchicago.com/yournewblue/).

Why would they approve this project if they didn't feel this was sufficient?

Only thing I can think is that the demand is going to be strong or they're thinking it's a steal with the contractor buying it out and are willing to experiment.

I'm all for new transit solutions and I'm really interested in this one, picking this route in particular though is what's odd to me...

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#85

Post by lhorie »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #13

> In Toronto, where the subway system doesn’t reach the international airport, a brand-new airport express line has fallen seriously short of ridership expectations, even with its one-way fare of $12.35 The reason this is failing is because of awareness. I travel to Toronto for work 4-5 times every year (for the past 12 years). I heard about this extension being approved a couple years ago and I've never seen a sign…

> The reason this is failing is because of awareness

I don't think so. On google maps, UP is the only option shown when going from union to pearson. The thing is that most people still need to take public transit to get to Union station, so it's not convenient enough for most people.

I used to live in Etobicoke where there's an express bus to Kipling station (the closest subway station to the airport). There's also an express bus line from Kipling to the airport. The subway system is run by the same entity (the TTC) as the buses, so a fare to go from Union station (downtown) to Pearson airport costs $3.25 and gets you there in about an hour. Subways run every few minutes and the express line to the airport every 10. By comparison, the UP express (the new train line) fare costs $12.35 and gets you there in about 30 mins, running every 15 minutes. So when considering UP, you're looking at paying $9 more to save maybe 30 minutes travel time (from union station).

BUT, the catch is that UP only goes from the airport to union station. The TTC also serves the entire Greater Toronto Area, so for the same $3.25 you can get from _anywhere_ in the city to the airport, and if you have a monthly pass (which you most likely do if you commute), then it basically costs nothing to go to the airport. Why would you go all the way down to the harbor front just to pay another $12 to go back up to Etobicoke, when you can just take the TTC to go directly to the airport for no extra cost?

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#86

Post by bryanlarsen »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #41
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is only benefitting people for whom 25 minutes is worth $20/$22.50 Roads suffer from induced demand [1]. You can't build your way out of traffic. The only solutions are tolls or quotas. In any case, if you can't find anyone willing to pay to use your infrastructure (at a price that recoups the investment), that's a sign you overbuilt. > transit for the actual public Cars going through this tunnel are cars off…

Every additional lane and rail is a good thing because it is a net increase in capacity. Even if it's an expensive road or rail it removes the traffic that considers it a good value from everywhere else. >Roads suffer from induced demand [1]. Demand is a good thing because it's economic activity that wouldn't have happened if the piece of infrastructure in question wasn't built out. Crappy infrastructure increases th…

"Demand is a good thing because it's economic activity that wouldn't have happened if the piece of infrastructure in question wasn't built out."

It's economic activity that has a huge amount of negative externalities and infrastructure cost. So if the economic activity generated has a value less than that of the externalities and costs, society is worse off.

So we need a way of limiting demand so that any trip whose benefit is less than its infrastructure and negative externalities doesn't happen.

Currently we mostly do this by making trips really slow and annoying during rush hour. There's obviously a better way but tolls are political suicide.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#87

Post by gok »

lvh wrote: post #51
gok wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 37 minutes if you happen to be in the Loop and time the train perfectly. Oh, then it's another 10 minute walk to the gates. Oh and almost none of the Blue Line stations are accessible, so hope you're not in a wheelchair or carrying big bags (who takes luggage to the airport, after all?) Speaking of...where exactly do your bags go on crowded CTA car? I keep hearing this argument about the Blue Line from people wh…

You are comparing the current state of the Blue Line against a proposed system, though. The argument is that you could improve the Blue Line significantly for $1B, and also that there's good reason to believe it's not actually $1B. (Doesn't have to be the Blue Line! Metra at Jeff Park or whatever with a track to OHare makes a ton of sense too.)

If we were going spend a cool billion to improve the Blue Line, I'd spend it on anything but making the airport experience better. Make the stations ADA-compliant. Use the extra space on the Congress branch for triple- or quadruple- tracking. Upgrade the power system.

But again, this is $1B not coming out of the CTA budget, it's $1B Elon Musk has burning a hole in his pocket.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#89

Post by nickik »

apeace wrote: post #74

The idea of having Boring Company pay for the construction and then reap the profits strikes me as a really great idea. When the government pays for construction, the contractors don't have a strong incentive to actually finish the project. They'll keep getting paid no matter how long it runs over or how over-budget it goes. But in this situation, Boring Co won't make any money unless and until they get it up and run…

> The idea of having Boring Company pay for the construction and then reap the profits strikes me as a really great idea.

We could do what all normal business does for infrastructure. Revolutionary idea.

But it is a good idea. Often private mass transportation is illegal. This seems to be a hybrid model, I don't quite understand what this project entails in terms of obligations by both sides.

The downsides might be that they go bankrupt with a half finished tunnel and then the government has to either put in money to finish the project or start a new project.

Re: For $1B, Elon Musk’s Tunnel to O’Hare Would Be a Miracle

#90

Post by selectodude »

gowld wrote: post #79
selectodude wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's substantially less of an issue in a dense urban environment like Chicago.

How is walking half a mile with luggage less of an issue?

I don't know, I do it all the time.
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