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Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

latimes.com

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Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#121

Post by nchie »

twblalock wrote: post #73
noobermin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter.

> Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter. No they are not. Scooters and bikes are a great way to arrive at your destination sweaty, and you are at great risk of being run over by cars. Multi-modal transportation only works if your coworkers don't care what you smell like…

> No they are not. Scooters and bikes are a great way to arrive at your destination sweaty, and you are at great risk of being run over by cars.

> Multi-modal transportation only works if your coworkers don't care what you smell like.

This makes sense if we're talking _today_ in cities such as LA, however if you look at biking-friendly cities such as Amsterdam or Stockholm, it's not really the case at all.

I'd go so far as to say that, in my experience, biking to work is as common (or even more?) as driving to work in central Stockholm, and the sweat problem you're talking about is really non-existing.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#122

Post by nickik »

noobermin wrote: post #81
de_watcher wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tunnels under the cities in Switzerland are pretty useful for the masses... oh, wait, they're all rich.

With snark but really though, isn't this the real issue? Are we trying to make transit better for everyone or just a few wealthy folk?

As with literally every other technology. It starts out as something for rich people and if it proves useful demand will grow, price will fall. Cars were a luxury once.

The point is to make tunnel boring cheap and to build an system of dynamic individual or group transport.

Rejecting the system because rich people use it first is socialist logic and has no place specially if its not done with government money.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#124

Post by garmaine »

Isinlor wrote: post #111
carlivar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some journalists have become openly cynical about Musk, probably now that so many promises have failed to materialize.

He may have delays, but what have he failed to deliver? Everything is either work in progress or delivered. - internet payment platform, check - first privately founded company to do orbital launch, check - reusable cheap rockets, check - biggest rocket available + it's reusable, check - Dragon spacecraft, check - crew spacecraft, check (still needs testing, starting early next year) - Model S, check - Model X, check…

I'm a Musk fan, but literally 90%+ of the things Musk say never actually happen, or happen very late, or have so radically changed in the process as to be something different. You're just quoting the successes, not all the things that he's claimed to be working on in the history of his career.

I suspect one of the reasons journalists are so unfairly critical of him is that the story keeps changing. As an engineer I know this is because he is adapting to circumstance and the reality is that we ought be thankful that he is showing us early glimpses at all. But a journalist looks at that and says "wtf? if I report on this then it's my credibility on the line when next year it's morphed into something else."

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#125

Post by ohhhwell »

konschubert wrote: post #103

If they manage to reduce the cost of tunnel boring then that's super exciting and I congratulate them. But all this discussion of what to put in the tunnel seems very silly to me. Are they just re-discovering subways? Do they know that there are subways in the world (e.g. Paris) that run out rubber tires?

The problem with subway systems is that they are great once they have enough reach and stops to reliably and frequently get you were you need to go without needing a car. However, a small subway system with infrequent service and only a few stops isn't all that useful. If we take the claims here at face value (not saying we should) then this is a solution that provides value immediately for people commuting by car, and if the network becomes widespread enough it becomes easier to rely on it as a pedestrian. Essentially it might be a great way to bootstrap a transition to public transport in car-centric systems.

Also note that if you get an increased amount of people commuting in these tunnels without their own cars, new public transportation built by the city becomes a lot more valuable as well, since there's already a lot of people getting around without cars.

That said it is funny how private companies seem to rediscover public transport. Looking forward to Uber Train.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#126

Post by ForHackernews »

konschubert wrote: post #103

If they manage to reduce the cost of tunnel boring then that's super exciting and I congratulate them. But all this discussion of what to put in the tunnel seems very silly to me. Are they just re-discovering subways? Do they know that there are subways in the world (e.g. Paris) that run out rubber tires?

Yes, it seems like they're re-inventing subways (except with lower capacity), similar to how Lyft re-discovered the bus: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/06/lyft-reinvents-the-bu...

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#127

Post by garmaine »

mrarjen wrote: post #94

First thing I noticed, why is there a loose hanging cable on the side of the tunnel, plus how will a slightly taller car fit? Seems there is plenty of work still to be done.

The goal was to bore the hole, and that's what is being announced. You sure as hell can't drive in it today.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#128

Post by mjg59 »

reissbaker wrote: post #49
Tiktaalik wrote: post #36

What a gong show and waste of everyone's time. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075230308545454080 How can this man honestly think this sort of system could be higher capacity than a subway?

I'm not sure what you're purporting to show other than two people disagreeing with each other, without providing evidence... Sure, an individual subway car has "more capacity," but does a subway system have more capacity? For example, I rarely see BART trains come within five minutes of each other. A tunnel that allows cars within 10 seconds of each other could provide more capacity than a tunnel with higher-density…

Peak headtimes on BART are a train every 2-3 minutes, with trains carrying up to 1400 people (let's call it 1000 for the sake of argument). So at the low end, that's around 20,000 people an hour. If you had cars with a headway of 5 seconds then that's 1200 cars an hour, so you'd need an average occupancy of over 16 people per car. That's unrealistic, so yes, a subway tunnel has more capacity.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#129

Post by lawlessone »

konschubert wrote: post #107
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> guide wheels that can be attached to the front tires of autonomous, electric cars, steadying the vehicles as they move forward through tunnels." So the o-Bahn Busways in Aus, just underground.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway https://youtu.be/X89WSVjyBRw

Guys, guys, hear me out. I have a crazy idea. What if we use special cars only for the tunnel with some kind of ride sharing system? and then we put the cars on rails? This keeps them on track and also the rolling friction is much lower. Also, we could continuously charge the battery of the car if we have some kind of wire going alongside the tunnel and a slip contact. Actually we could make the cars much bigger as w…

amazing idea, i suggest we also reduce the size of the battery as it won't really be needed unless there is a power failure.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#130

Post by jillesvangurp »

konschubert wrote: post #103

If they manage to reduce the cost of tunnel boring then that's super exciting and I congratulate them. But all this discussion of what to put in the tunnel seems very silly to me. Are they just re-discovering subways? Do they know that there are subways in the world (e.g. Paris) that run out rubber tires?

Tunneling is currently so expensive that there are few companies doing any innovation on how to properly utilize them. A big part of the problem is actually digging them in a way that is cheap and scaleable. Another part of the problem is the organizations doing the digging and doing the exploitation are typically have misaligned incentives and goals.

For example, expanding subway systems is currently in the hands of very badly run semi government institutions who are arguably quite bad at even utilizing the tunnels they have. E.g. the new york subway system is famously less efficient than ever due to the fact that they keep reducing the speed at which trains travel through it. Digging new tunnels is relatively rare for them; and when they do dig new tunnels, they tend to just use them exactly the same way as their existing tunnels, which is not very efficiently. Also, like most government infrastructure projects, progress is slow and things tend to go way over budget.

Musk's approach is twofold: 1) turn tunnel digging into a scaleable business. 2) provide concrete things to do with these tunnels that are not backwards and stupid that he can sell. For example, if you have autonomous vehicles, you don't need a lot of expensive infrastructure inside the tunnels to get from A to B. Infrastructure like rails, signaling equipment, power lines for the trains, etc. It so happens he has a business for autonomous vehicles already. He sells the whole package. That's why he's emphasizing the use cases.

This is classic Musk, he thinks end to end an he might actually pull it off.

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