Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 206 posts

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#171

Post by danso »

quotemstr wrote: post #168
danso wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can’t build it profitably, or at least without going through the environmental impact review that every other project of this scale must pass. Do you really think the hole digging is the bottleneck for every other underground project?

How much infrastructure is getting built under the current review process? The current process is just a fig leaf for everyone getting a NIMBY veto. California ought to be ashamed of its technological paralysis.

It's not a technological problem. If people get unhappy when Facebook "moves fast and breaks things" in its mission to "connect the world", then people should be just as cautious when it comes to construction projects that impact miles of public infrastructure and thousands of private homes.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#172

Post by gamblor956 »

jimmy1 wrote: post #139
mikeash wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 migra…

Several major tech companies just announced moves into Downtown LA...Almost every new apartment building built in downtown has reached 90% occupancy within 6 months. A few of them reached 95%+ occupancy within their first month. For about 2 months earlier this year, the available inventory of new condos (as in, sold by the developer) reached zero and even the supply of condos on the market dropped into the lower double digits.

California is experiencing a net outward migration of people, but from the parts of California where there are already too many people, so all those people leaving has had minimal effect on the price of housing in LA or SF.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#173

Post by gamblor956 »

nimbius wrote: post #53

For those not familiar with LA's private property rights, they are some of the strictest in the nation. The 710 freeway, originally designed and intended to go all the way from long beach to pasadena, has successfully been litigated for fifty years to prevent it from ever doing so. heavy truck traffic has to exit to surface streets to continue to the city or route around it using the 101. trucks are prohibited on the…

Trucks are only prohibited from the 110 freeway on a portion north of Downtown LA.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#174

Post by gamblor956 »

jbaczuk wrote: post #25

Is it just me or is it ironic that the reason for cancelling is environmental impact, when the tunnel would help alleviate congestion and smog due to gasoline-powered traffic?

The stated maximum capacity of the Elontunnel is sufficiently low that it would have had minimal, if any, positive effect on congestion and smog.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#175

Post by gamblor956 »

lodi wrote: post #161
rripken wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you?

You don't own the airspace over your house (over some minimum altitude), why would you own the land under your house (below some minimum depth). I would have absolutely no problem with a tunnel running 20m--or whatever the safe, silent amount is--underneath my house.

So you wouldn't have been okay with the Elontunnel, which runs closer than 20m below the surface--about 28 feet in the case of the Hawthorne tunnel. Though for point of comparison, some portions of the Metro system run at this depth or shallower.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#176

Post by gamblor956 »

blaisio wrote: post #141

This is not a story of NIMBYs, this is a story of how LA can't make decisions for the greater good because anything that affects a useful part of the metro area requires independent agreement from multiple cities with very different demographics. A lot of people don't realize that, unlike NYC, LA isn't one city - it's a bunch of cities clustered together. Right now, there's no good way to force all the communities to…

LA's cities and peoples just agreed to spend several billion dollars on building/improving mass transit in the city...And we just voted to support those efforts again in this past election.

LA's cities actually work very well together on many infrastructure projects; it's the valley portions of LA (San Gabriel and San Fernando) that don't cooperate well with others.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#177

Post by mips_avatar »

danso wrote: post #171
quotemstr wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much infrastructure is getting built under the current review process? The current process is just a fig leaf for everyone getting a NIMBY veto. California ought to be ashamed of its technological paralysis.

It's not a technological problem. If people get unhappy when Facebook "moves fast and breaks things" in its mission to "connect the world", then people should be just as cautious when it comes to construction projects that impact miles of public infrastructure and thousands of private homes.

Sure I mean bad (insert bad thing) things are bad. And a risk to private homes should stop a project. But I can’t find any proof that there’s a risk here. Tunneling is really safe.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#178

Post by mips_avatar »

quotemstr wrote: post #168
danso wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can’t build it profitably, or at least without going through the environmental impact review that every other project of this scale must pass. Do you really think the hole digging is the bottleneck for every other underground project?

How much infrastructure is getting built under the current review process? The current process is just a fig leaf for everyone getting a NIMBY veto. California ought to be ashamed of its technological paralysis.

In theory there’s going to be a high speed train built between SF and LA. Not convinced it can happen, or should happen at the price these property owners have made the project incur.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#179

Post by mips_avatar »

mikeash wrote: post #99
et2o wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems reasonable to me. If they can take off while reducing nose pollution, they should. I wonder if they do this at other airports located in of near cities such as LGA.

It's a pretty common thing. Here's a long survey and discussion of various noise abatement procedures that I haven't actually read through: https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Documents/Revi... I have some mildly related personal experience as well. The glider club I belong to started getting noise complaints from people living near the airport. On a busy day, our tow plane might make 25 takeoffs. We often…

Glad you guys worked it out.

Re: Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan

#180

Post by mips_avatar »

gamblor956 wrote: post #174
jbaczuk wrote: post #25

Is it just me or is it ironic that the reason for cancelling is environmental impact, when the tunnel would help alleviate congestion and smog due to gasoline-powered traffic?

The stated maximum capacity of the Elontunnel is sufficiently low that it would have had minimal, if any, positive effect on congestion and smog.

It’s a test tunnel, you would get the improvement when more are made.
Post reply on HN