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The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

citylab.com

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Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#51

Post by rayiner »

reaperducer wrote: post #38
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So what’s this fascination with tunnels? The upscale crowd doesn't like the audio/visual clutter. There's nothing tunnels do that well planned overhead infrastructure can't do more cheaply (at the cost of being audible and visible). Edit: Since I'm being down-voted, other than being less offending to the eyes/ears of non-users, what do tunnels do that overhead infrastructure doesn't?

Cheaply ≠ better.

Yes it does! Cost directly affects how much transit you can build. If it didn’t cost New York 5x as much money to build a mile of track as it does London or Paris, New York could build five times as much track for the same fares/taxes.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#52

Post by [deleted] »

pdq wrote: post #22
breck wrote: post #2

Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…

This Boring Tunnel is all hype so far. The demo tunnel doesn't look to have sufficient ventilation or emergency exits in case of fire, car crash, etc. They haven't addressed the ingress and egress congestion problems into and out of the tunnel. How can a single elevator go up/down to handle 1000+ cars per hour (4400 passengers per hour)? Basic math gives you 3.6 seconds for the elevator to go down, wait for the car t…

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#53

Post by untog »

bluGill wrote: post #37
breck wrote: post #2

Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…

I disagree. Cars should be at surface levels. Going below ground or above ground is too expensive: cars (and more importantly trucks which this tunnel doesn't cover at all) are heavy and so they need expensive infrastructure. We can have tunnels and overpass in places where required, but in general cars belong at surface level. What we should be doing is moving humans up: we should be building sky ways between buildi…

I'm not sure I get your logic here. Why does the fact that trucks are heavy mean that they don't belong below ground and must be at surface level?

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#54

Post by losteric »

michaelleslie wrote: post #50
ryantgtg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, there isn't a offramp/onramp in the latest design scheme. When Boring Company first unveiled the design, it had elevators that moved vehicles from grade-level to the tunnel. The vehicles then locked into a track. Then after reaching an "exit" the vehicle is brought back to the surface so the driver can continue the journey within that same vehicle. But they recently scrapped all that.…

Sounds like a less-scalable metro system, a technology that predates this "innovation" by a century or so.

Musk wants to re-engineering both tunnel boring and how we use tunnels - the latter may not pan out but the former is useful regardless of what gets run through the tunnel.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#55

Post by untog »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33
breck wrote: post #2

Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…

>I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before and after the Central Artery. What did the Big Dig do that a better central artery with more decks wouldn't? The whole "highways are ugly" argument really is mostly from/for upscale people who don't want their view ruined. Very few people who actually has to use or live/work near the infrastructure really cares all that muc…

> The whole "highways are ugly" argument really is mostly from/for upscale people who don't want their view ruined.

That's really, really not true. And "it's ugly" isn't the argument usually presented, either - it's that it's a tremendous waste of space.

Move all the roads underground and you can reuse that land. Maybe for a park, but also maybe for high-density housing that will make things more affordable for everyone.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#56

Post by ryantgtg »

michaelleslie wrote: post #50
ryantgtg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, there isn't a offramp/onramp in the latest design scheme. When Boring Company first unveiled the design, it had elevators that moved vehicles from grade-level to the tunnel. The vehicles then locked into a track. Then after reaching an "exit" the vehicle is brought back to the surface so the driver can continue the journey within that same vehicle. But they recently scrapped all that.…

Sounds like a less-scalable metro system, a technology that predates this "innovation" by a century or so.

Yeah, the joke is that next they'll release that the concrete tunnel road is subject to deterioration, so they'll shift to steel tracks. Then they'll realize that these individual vehicles should be linked together to allow for higher capacity. Then... then you have a subway.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#57

Post by avar »

pdq wrote: post #22
breck wrote: post #2

Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…

This Boring Tunnel is all hype so far. The demo tunnel doesn't look to have sufficient ventilation or emergency exits in case of fire, car crash, etc. They haven't addressed the ingress and egress congestion problems into and out of the tunnel. How can a single elevator go up/down to handle 1000+ cars per hour (4400 passengers per hour)? Basic math gives you 3.6 seconds for the elevator to go down, wait for the car t…

> ingress and egress congestion problems into and out of the tunnel[..]

They posted a video 2 years ago that has 6 million views that shows how this works in the first 30 seconds. It was all over the news when it was posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI#t=0m13s

It'll work on the basis of tunnel on-ramps merging into the main tunnel, just like highways or train stations.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#58

Post by dwighttk »

reaperducer wrote: post #24
ryantgtg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a comparable tunnel? Isn't the Vegas loop a single lane tunnel for personal vehicles? I can't think of other existing/planned tunnels that fit that description, aside from other Boring Co ones. I'm not at all convinced that this design can scale.

It's not for personal vehicles. It's for moving conventioneers from one end of the convention center to another. Think of it as one of those people movers they have at some airports.

so we are talking about it only because of Elon?

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#59

Post by reaperducer »

rayiner wrote: post #48
reaperducer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are electric trains—what pollution I suspect you've never been in a subway tunnel and noticed all the grime and dirt spewed all over the walls and ceiling by electric trains. Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night. And light and air…

I lived in Chicago for four years. I’ve walked under the L hundreds of times. It’s fine. And it is necessary. The alternative to a cheaper above-ground line isn’t a subway. Usually, it’s no rail at all.

I lived in Chicago more than twice as long, and directly in the Loop for 90% of that time, not out in the neighborhoods. I lived for a year directly next to the Lake/Wells junction. I know about L noise.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#60

Post by noer »

ryantgtg wrote: post #19
breck wrote: post #2

Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…

What's a comparable tunnel? Isn't the Vegas loop a single lane tunnel for personal vehicles? I can't think of other existing/planned tunnels that fit that description, aside from other Boring Co ones. I'm not at all convinced that this design can scale.

From the description, it seems comparable to the subway system underneath the US Capitol building, House & Senate office buildings
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