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

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

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 397 posts

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

#71

Post by jcranmer »

losteric wrote: post #54
michaelleslie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not necessarily. The key cost savings that Musk envisions boils down to "build tunnels that are too small to put existing rolling stock in," which means that if the proposed personal rapid transit system turns out to be like every other PRT system and not work well, you're left with a tunnel that is too small to be useful for anything else.

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

#72

Post by vkou »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #23
rayiner wrote: post #6

So what’s this fascination with tunnels? In Chicago, there are overhead elevated train tracks, and they work just fine. They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels. You can even build them over existing avenues. Why don’t we have more of that?

Have you ever lived near an elevated train? They're not pleasant areas, especially compared to subway stations. The area under the tracks aren't very usable, except as a roadway and parking lots. They're loud as hell, people on the trains can see into your home, the spaces around the elevated tracks are great places for people to do drugs and have crusty hobo sex. These criticisms apply equally to elevated roads. Mos…

> The spaces around the elevated tracks are great places for people to do drugs and have crusty hobo sex. These criticisms apply equally to elevated roads.

Tbf, the reason people use it for those purposes is because they are the most sheltered, out-of-the way places available.

When they stop being available, that activity moves to the next most sheltered, out-of-the-way place available.

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

#73

Post by bryanlarsen »

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 big dig is way more pedestrian friendly than multiple decks and pedestrian overpasses. And pedestrians are a huge positive for cities in so many ways.

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

#74

Post by ryacko »

Traster wrote: post #64
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.…

Well it's a concept I'm sure all of us are familiar with, if you want 10Gbps of throughput you can have a 32 bit bus at 322MHz or 64 bit bus at 161MHz. So if you want a tunnel with 10 cars/second you need one tunnel with at a speed of 10 cars/second or you need 10 lanes of 1car/second. That's really where my question is - the 125mph isn't what interests me, it's how you get a thousand cars (or people into cars) that…

A good metaphor, because as you increase bus size, the complexity of dealing with crosstalk increases. To achieve 10 cars / second one would have to size it more than 10 times, to include bypasses so that long distance traffic doesn't interfere with shorter distance.

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

#75

Post by throwaway2048 »

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.

It has basicly all the same infrastructure requirements of trains, thus inevitably, similar costs, but you give it a slick new label like "people mover" and suddenly the costs are cut 90%, but nobody builds "people movers" so the bullshittium can be heavily sprinkled everywhere.

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

#76

Post by aeternus »

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.

A more point-to-point metro system would be great. The airline industry has been embracing this change for quite awhile. People don't like a hub & spoke system and it doesn't make sense to take everyone to city center which just adds to the crowding and congestion, as many current metro systems do.

Imagine a city that is crisscrossed with multiple direct metro lines. Design for extremely frequent departures, which likely means smaller carriages.

We should be designing our transit systems to be faster and better than car-based travel.

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

#77

Post by Robotbeat »

ryantgtg wrote: post #56
michaelleslie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that a bad thing?

If they can somehow address the insane tunneling infrastructure costs in the US, I don't really care what path they take to get there.

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

#78

Post by jcranmer »

reaperducer wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are electric trains—what pollution? Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away. And light and air is a matter of setbacks. Lake and Wells are hardly seedy alleys. There is more light standing right under an L track than in NYC.

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…

> 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.

It is possible to build elevated rail that is much quieter than Chicago's and NYC's systems, so Chicago shouldn't be held up as an example of how noisy elevated systems have to be.

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

#79

Post by snazz »

calgoo wrote: post #67

I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check. 3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check. 4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check. 5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there. Hopefully he will cont…

Has he specifically called out the connection or is this your pet conspiracy theory? It doesn’t seem too far off, to be honest.

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

#80

Post by dtwest »

rayiner wrote: post #6

So what’s this fascination with tunnels? In Chicago, there are overhead elevated train tracks, and they work just fine. They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels. You can even build them over existing avenues. Why don’t we have more of that?

One thing I've noticed in Chicago and NYC is that the old steel elevated structures are extremely loud. However, the few locations in NYC that are made with much thicker concrete structures significantly reduce the noise.

Elevated rail is not inherently noisy, but the majority of examples in the US are. This is why people are against them. If we could fix the noise problem, this could be the optimal solution. I personally think it is possible.

Post reply on HN