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Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

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Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#131

Post by jcranmer »

ihuman wrote: post #98
choxi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's building us an express loop in Chicago: https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/ They're even paying for the whole thing, I think most residents here are excited about it.

The Boring company also plans to build a loop from DC to Baltimore, and it will also be self-funded. https://www.boringcompany.com/eastcoast/

Everyone with a new transit option plans to demo it between DC to Baltimore. The two cities are close enough to each other that a new company could fund the demo largely by itself. But the real hope is to convince government to extend it to go between DC and NYC, which is where the real market opportunity is, and, naturally, being the first to develop the technology, the initial company is the sole supplier. So plans to build something from DC to Baltimore should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#132

Post by Barjak »

cdelsolar wrote: post #68
readhn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you be ok with tunnel being built under YOUR house (that you own and worked/will be working for for the rest of your life) without consulting with you FIRST?

yes? i don't own the prismatic wedge of land that extends all the way to the core of the Earth afaik

This the Ad Coelum Doctrine in legalese. I don't think it makes sense either.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#133

Post by jcranmer »

mips_avatar wrote: post #130
jcranmer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tunneling does have deleterious effects. After all, the biggest targets of the environmental movement are those companies who make gigantic interconnected tunnels that most people know by the name of mines. (Granted, it's the ore processing that does develop the most ire, but the handling of spoil has been implicated in several disasters such as the Aberfan disaster). The first major issue of tunnels is that you have…

But unless you’re going to the same destination mass transit isn’t ideal. If there are enough shared routes, and the cost advantage of shared transportation add up to a big enough benefit than it works. But my ideal transport is teleporting, which I think a subterranean hyperloop pod is closer to.

The concept of Loop is basically yet-another-repackaging of personal rapid transit. And the operational history of personal rapid transit has essentially shown that it sounds good in theory but doesn't work that well in practice.

The real problem is that the suburban ideal of detached single-family homes combined with low-density commercial parks is not an environmentally-friendly way of living, and when you try to scale it up, what you get is an unavoidable mess of traffic that has no real solution. If you care about moving people, the first thing you want to do is get people out of their cars; and that means that you need to concentrate one of the endpoints (invariably workplaces) to allow people to walk to their destination at that point. The land use policies are going to have to change if you want to be environmentally-friendly, and anyone who promises a way around that is selling you a fantasy.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#134

Post by vinay427 »

bbeekley wrote: post #128
vinay427 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time. That applies to every culture, ever, and I have a hard time identifying some "California culture" that encompasses the state. The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.

> The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places. Measure R (2008, 67% in favor) and Measure M (2016, 71% in favor) both passed with supermajorities and raised Los Angeles taxes by billions to pay for rail and other public transit options. To me, that seems to indicate that the majority wants these kinds of projects.

The majority may want a few projects that cost relatively little, but they clearly don't want as much as people in other cities that spend more on public transit and have more public transit infrastructure per capita. In other words, I'm sure the majority is in favor of some public transit as an alternative, but the bar is far lower for being an alternative.

Also, it goes without saying that LA County is not representative of "California culture."

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#135

Post by drb91 »

jseliger wrote: post #5

My dad used to work in local government and likes to call the automatic opposition, "People united against anything." Today we call them NIMBYs. California has empowered them in peculiar and powerful ways, as anyone, anywhere, can challenge any project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which actually supersedes the national version (NEQA).

I associate NIMBYs with going against things that improve a neighborhood. I don’t think that includes all types of resistance.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#136

Post by drb91 »

dpcx wrote: post #33
wyldfire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet development should take the environment into consideration because it can have massive consequences. Those consequences are ultimately an externality of the development project and evaluating it in advance can help inform the true financials of the project.

I wonder whether those that were taking the environment in to consideration for the development thought beyond the project to what environmental impacts could be lessened by the project. I'm not a Musk fanboy, but if these tunnels will work the way he's suggesting, the amount of traffic that would be removed from the roads (and by extension, the pollution) would probably be a net benefit to the environment.

Cars fill the capacity of the roads. LA will just get more cars.

LA deserves better public transit.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#137

Post by CalRobert »

leesec wrote: post #69
CalRobert wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of the frustration is that all this tunneling stuff seems like a huge distraction from what we KNOW works. Mixed use development near transit supplemented by a network of bike lanes an 8 or 80 year old would feel safe cycling on. Tunnels aren't magic. Does anyone here think they won't succumb to induced demand just like any other road? Even if they reduce congestion (and they won't - the 405 carpool lan…

>I think a lot of the frustration is that all this tunneling stuff seems like a huge distraction from what we KNOW works. If we know it works how come no one has done it? Traffic and congestion is a major issue in basically ever major city in the US (and probably the world), why the hate for attempted innovation? >The other thing about Elon is that one wonders how many clever people are toiling away on solving the wo…

To the best of my knowledge, you are correct that every US city is horrible in this regard. This was not by accident.

To your comment "If we know it works how come no one has done it? " -

1) We have done it. Amsterdam fought like hell for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o . Now they have one of the finest cities in the world in which to move about.

Copenhagen at rush hour handles loads of people well because they have built systems that move people efficiently and safely. And pleasantly. Even driving there is nice, paradoxically.

https://twitter.com/Pidge/status/1064443820245422080

2) People fight it because they believe they should be able to drive anywhere they like, for free, and without interruption - and then even store their car for free as well! The ideal situation is to be the only driver, but of course that only works if driving is very expensive (something I support).

In LA people are so furious at the idea of not being able to drive everywhere they shout down (almost) anything resembling progress. Things like Elon's tunnel are used as ammunition in these fights. After all, why should we build bike lanes when we're getting these kickass tunnels!?? This is part of why I left LA.

As for your latter point - yes, it is very much my concern. We have similar views regarding Facebook and Co. but given that Elon's tunnels are unlikely to actually make life better (note my earlier comment regarding induced demand) this is taking resources from actual solutions we could do right now, cheaply, and that we know work.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#139

Post by jimmy1 »

mikeash wrote: post #122
jimmy1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it indicates much more than that: high taxes, high regulatory fees, high cost of labor. The median cost per square foot for a home in California is $319 dollars, the median cost per square foot for the entire U.S is $151. The median home price in California is $379,000, and the U.S. is $225,000. One only needs to do a simple web search to see the current migration from California's tech centers to other tech de…

Prices can't exist without people willing to pay them. It doesn't matter how high your taxes, fees, and labor costs are, if people aren't willing to pay, prices don't stay high. Another way of interpreting "The median home price is California is $379,000" is "people are willing to pay, on average, $379,000 for a home in California." The home prices are the data to support my hypothesis. If there wasn't demand for hou…

> The home prices are the data to support my hypothesis. If there wasn't demand for houses then prices would fall. Demand for houses means people want to move there. If there were a net migration out of the state, prices would be dropping.

This is true in general, but it isn't as immediate as you are making it out to be and doesn't give you any insight into how long it takes for the price to correct itself. The migration trends are 1-2 years old at this point. If my hypothesis is correct, expect to see your pricing drops soon (towards the middle to end of next big moving season, typically May 15 to August 31st), but only to a certain level and then it will make more sense for the builder to go under and let the banks take the hit.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#140

Post by enraged_camel »

deegles wrote: post #76
freeflight wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traffic that would be removed from the roads (and by extension, the pollution) I don't understand how any pollution would be removed, just because it's now in tunnels doesn't equal it being gone. Wouldn't it just be blasted back out through the ventilation system? Or were there plans to build some kind of "pollution scrubbing" into those?

I think the tunnels would run electric cars/trains only.

Okay, but what about the (probably massive) upfront environmental costs of digging the tunnels and building their infrastructure?
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