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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

#81

Post by Retric »

jcranmer wrote: post #71
losteric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Making an existing tunnel wider is vastly cheaper than building an equivalent tunnel from scratch. Simply knowing the soil composition makes a huge difference.

In hard rock you can use drilling and blasting across long sections rather than just the leading edge. Alternatively, a TBM needs to remove significantly less material.

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

#82

Post by ncallaway »

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.

I don't understand this comment at all. The Boring Company's main plans aren't to create new and novel tunnels. The Boring Company's goal is to create cheaper tunnels.

Like, if I said I was planning on developing a wheel at 1/10th the cost of current wheels, I don't care that the wheel predates my innovation by millenia. I'm not attempting to _improve_ the wheel, I'm attempting to make it viable in an increasing number of contexts by lowering the cost.

The same is true of the Boring Company.

You can dismiss it as being unrealistic, or as the cost-savings not actually being there. But I don't understand being dismissive because we already have tunnels. Of course! If we didn't already have tunnels, we wouldn't be trying to make them cheaper!

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

#83

Post by avar »

perennate wrote: post #21
duxup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Big Dig strikes me as what could be as much a reason not to do that thing.

Why do you say that? Even accounting for the cost, I think many would still argue that it was worth it, replacing a highway system that divided the city with a walkable network of parks that effectively connects different neighborhoods like financial district north end, along with a new series of (underground) highways that provided improved traffic flow. Before and after photos: https://imgur.com/JbgPur6 If the cost…

That doesn't look worth it at all. It cost $22 billion and the result is a narrow 1-block park through the center of Boston.

Most of those buildings next to what used to be the highway are at most 10-20 stories. A 60 story skyscraper was finished in Boston this year for $700[1].

So to a first approximation they could have had a full 2-3 blocks of parks around 15 new such skyscrapers to get the same building space after demolishing most of the buildings seen in the foreground on that picture, and have come out even on floor area.

They'd then have had had $12 billion left over to elevate the highway and put that elevated highway in a tunnel to cancel out the noise before they got to to $22 billion.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Seasons_Hotel_%26_Private...

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

#84

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

> Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today.

When I read stuff like this I'm flabbergasted. The cost of maintenance for tunnels is almost certainly higher than that for surface roads. That's not to mention additional considerations like always-on lighting (no free light from the sun) and poor access to businesses (so the roads still have to exist in some form). Tunnels only make sense in a few high-density urban centres, where the alternative would be elevated highways. Otherwise they're a great way to create a municipal budget time bomb when big repairs have to take place.

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

#85

Post by Robotbeat »

fabioborellini wrote: post #27

Maybe Elon should visit Europe or Asia and check out an underground mass rapid transit system or two. They have two orders of magnitude larger capacity. And even their capacity is finite. And keep in mind that the NYC Subway and the London Underground are NOT a good example of a modern mass transit system.

I've noticed that Elon Musk's projects often start off in the wrong direction, but evolve in a way that works ultimately. And that's what matters.

For instance, SpaceX originally insisted on parachute recovery of their Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. They tried, and it didn't work. But they switched to powered landing as some others had demonstrated (DC-X and Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace), and they massively succeeded.

Elon is perfectly willing to pivot to what works after exhausting other options.

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

#86

Post by bluGill »

jcranmer wrote: post #71
losteric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well this tunnel is only a couple miles long. Put in some lights and humans can walk the whole length to get around. It seems like a moving sidewalk could be put into this tunnel.

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

#87

Post by ncallaway »

snazz wrote: post #79
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.

I don't think he's mentioned it specifically for each of the things in the checklist.

I'm pretty sure I recall him mentioning electric vehicles and solar cells being important for mars, but I don't remember the interview.

Elon and SpaceX have been pretty explicit about Starlink as a system for funding the development of Mars transit vehicles and initial colony, though I'm sure a mini-Starlink around Mars would be in the long term plans.

I don't recall anywhere that Elon Musk has mentioned anything about The Boring Company being used for tunneling on mars, but the connection makes a lot of sense to me, as initial colony development would probably take place largely underground as a cheap radiation shield.

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

#88

Post by novalis78 »

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…

6. Thorium reactor for industrial power needs.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

snazz wrote: post #79
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.

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by froindt »

AlexandrB wrote: post #84
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…

> Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. When I read stuff like this I'm flabbergasted. The cost of maintenance for tunnels is almost certainly higher than that for surface roads. That's not to mention additional considerations like always-on lighting (no free light from the sun) and poor access to businesses (so the roads still have to exist in some form). Tunnels…

>The cost of maintenance for tunnels is almost certainly higher than that for surface roads.

Pros would include avoiding the freeze thaw cycle that destroys roads in much of the country. Tunnels could also allow pollution mitigation to take place if internal combustion engines were used, which is simply impossible on open highways.

Cons include an obviously higher initial capital expenditure.

I suppose we need to get down to a cost per person moved metric over something like 30 years to more objectively compare.

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