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Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

latimes.com

181–190 of 237 posts

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#181
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s AMP seems to circumvent this: https://www.google.nl/amp/s/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m...

So is Google AMP or LA Times then in non-compliance?

As long as AMP is GDPR-compliant, neither have a problem. The issue is that LA Times doesn't want to deal with getting the appropriate consent for their tracker scripts.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#182
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're comparing a difficult but real situation with a perfect but hypothetical one. Things always are wonderful when they're research projects that don't need to conform to real-world limitations.

> difficult but real situation

His first argument is that it's currently too expensive to have any innovation. This tunnel cost 10 millions $. Sure it's usage is still hypothetical, but you can't say this won't be much more accessible to innovate.

I'm in Montreal, our subway barely changed in the past 30 years. I was lucky, I was affected by one of the only change they did in theses 30 years, 3 more stations on an already completely full line. That came with a 745m$ price for 3 stations that sure allowed people further to take it, but it didn't increase at all the actual capacity. It's hard for any of our administration to even consider any major expansion because of that.

If making smaller projects now make sense, maybe we will see more innovation in the technology, in how they are handled, etc...

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#183

> "Still, the $10 million is orders of magnitude lower than a typical subway project, Musk said." Umm, and the capacity of these tunnels is also orders of magnitude lower than a subway. It would also be a lot harder to use and available to far fewer people. This entire idea should be laughed out of existence, but despite everything, Musk still gets fawning coverage for any crazy idea he spouts. Maintenance will be im…

They left out basically every expense from that number (they noted it was unclear if labor was even included in that number), and did construction in a single city with a fawning council (legal expenses are massive on infrastructure projects).

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#184
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of BART in Paris (RER) has 90 seconds intervals between trains in peak time - and thats the regional train system, not the metro. It carries 50k pax per hour in each direction - that would be a lot of cars, like eleven cars a second at 1.2 person occupancy. You mention "cheap tunnel boring" - maybe that is the keystone of Musk's plan that will change the paradigm... With a little knowledge of tunnel bo…

One of Elon Musk's ideas is that underground you can have a three dimensional system of tunnels and that this can help solve some of the capacity problems.

As dense and as cheap as Musk's technological vision becomes, a question remains: why carry a car at all instead of carrynig people ? Why carry mostly dead weight ? The denser the network, the more acute that question - if Musk's vision is an ubiquitous three-dimensional underground transport mesh, then why does it seem to conscientiously avoid being a public transportation system ? Does Musk believe that saturating the city with autonomous vehicles that use tunnels as network backbone can be more efficient than heavy public transportation networks ?

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#185
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s no subway nearby, how would you do that? Also not everyone can afford a luxury car. Just imagine lyft, lyft line, and a bigger lyft line. They can all coexist.

> If there’s no subway nearby, how would you do that? So here's an idea - how about they run subway trains in these tunnels instead like they do in the rest of the world?

> So here's an idea - how about they run subway trains in these tunnels instead like they do in the rest of the world?

So here's an idea, why is there no subway trains there? Easy answers, not enough money/value into them.

He suggest a way to add value to the system, by allowing luxury cars to go through them and save traffic time. It's also a way to keep your car before and after the path, which can't happen in a subway. Theses add values.

Smaller tunnels can also be much more cost effective and can be done in an iterative way, based on the actual needs of the system. In Montreal (my city) that's a big issue where we just can't get the funds to improve our subway system because it's just so much money which is hard to justify. Our government pension program is currently funding a pretty big improvement in our transit system because THEY have the funds to do it and it's going to be profitable to them. They made it profitable to invest into our infrastructure and yet the freaking government can't do it.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#186
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're comparing a difficult but real situation with a perfect but hypothetical one. Things always are wonderful when they're research projects that don't need to conform to real-world limitations.

Not so hypothetical now that they delivered the first tunnel. I'm guessing that might help him land a few more deals for more tunnels. My understanding is they already closed a few such deals.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#187
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mistake, I had to search for the max Autosteer speed and Google gave me an old article. Seems they have been upgrading steadily from 45 mph in January 2017 to (currently) 90 mph? But then my original question remains: why do they need guide wheels for this, when they can do 90 mph without them on normal roads?

Even that’s wrong. My S would do autopilot to 90 mph in 2016.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823234503355158528?s=20

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go 250 kmh on German highways regularly (unfortunately). It doesn't seem to be unpractical.

And whats the speed limit in German tunnels? In case you don't care to find out: 80-100 km/h (50-60 mph)depending on the state.

Yes, but my point was whether the price if the tires is a show stopper or not.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#189
post #140
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are trains that run in narrow tunnels in London (12 feet wide I think?). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Undergrou...

They have a huge problem with overheating because of the small gap between roof and a tunnel, it also reduces potential speed of the train.

IIRC the main heat source is the breaking of the trains combined with the high frequency of them. I suspect that using many cars will still release a lot of heat into the tunnels.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#190
Is digging down really cheaper than going up?

Chicago has got an elevated train [0] and even double decker streets [1] and those don't have lots of the problems that tunnels do like ventilation, escape tunnels, and moving all the dirt.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_%22L%22

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive

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