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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

#161

Post by clairity »

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 really appreciate what elon musk is doing, but to be clear, he's not strictly trying to make tunneling cheaper for mass transit.

as i understand it, the high costs of transportation projects are a political problem not an engineering one. well-run subway projects have been completed at $50-100 million per mile, while most such projects in the US are 5 to 10 times that. that's attributable not to sticter safety standards or excessive land costs or public agencies being inefficient, even if those things do contribute at the margins. it's because so many constituencies laden these projects with deadweight costs (lawsuits, foot-dragging, overcharging, kickbacks, etc.).

while his engineering leadership is exceptional and that contributes to lowering costs, elon adeptly sidesteps much of those constituent ladenings, perhaps through careful choice of goals and projects and sheer force of will. for all his faults, he seems to have the right blend of vision, skill, money, charisma, and motivation to bring these projects to completion without a lot of deadweight loss.

so the boring company's technological advances just won't translate to cost reductions generally in underground transportation projects. even if a project uses the boring company for the tunneling, the large infrastructure contractors will find ways to extract their generous slice of pie. we need political/social/economic solutions to reduce these costs, not technological ones.

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

#162

Post by skywhopper »

The math on this is highly questionable:

    The contract posted on the LVCVA website projects an
    operating capacity of 4,400 passengers per hour using
    “autonomous electric vehicles at high speeds,” which
    might include a Tesla Model X or Model 3, or another
    Tesla chassis converted into a 16-passenger shuttle.
There are two tunnels involved, so to manage to get 2,200 passengers through in one direction per hour, you're going to have to get 36 passengers out of whatever vehicles and 36 passengers into those same vehicles every minute.

The only way this can work with Model 3s or similar will require a loading/unloading experience similar to the Test Track ride at Epcot in Disney World, including the line and the numerous staff helpers to make sure you are buckled in.

Combine that with also needing to move those people down to the station and back up to their destination, and the likelihood that any of the three stations are in a location you already are or want to be, I'm not sure how useful this is going to be.

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

#163

Post by hannasanarion »

tntn wrote: post #129
ryantgtg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be great. Subway costs are absolutely ridiculous, so it would be fantastic if the boring company decides to build exactly the same thing for much less.

But it's not gonna be "for much less" because digging tunnels is probably the easiest and cheapest part of building a subway.

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

#164

Post by vntok »

whatshisface wrote: post #134
spookware wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me its to get away from religion.

You think nobody will bring their faith with them?

Precisely. Religions are in decline among the younger generations. By the time we go to Mars as a colonizing species, hopefully we won't bring "faith to a deity" with us.

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

#165

Post by hndamien »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #150
spraak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

There's a 100% chance of all life on earth going extinct, eventually, unless we colonize other planets.

This guy gets it.

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

#166

Post by spullara »

spraak wrote: post #95
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…

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

We will eventually be wiped out by an asteroid strike no matter what we do.

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

#167

Post by jcranmer »

ricardobeat wrote: post #155
jcranmer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Boring Company's main plans aren't to create new and novel tunnels. The Boring Company's goal is to create _cheaper_ tunnels. The Boring Company's main plans, as can be evidenced by their communications (such as their FAQ) and their commitments and attempted commitments to build actual projects, is to pitch a radically new, 21st century mode of mass transit that is really just a variation of personal rapid tran…

Maybe that’s part of the play? Here is a breakdown for subway costs: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVW4_dgWkAAtjsE?format=jpg&name=... What if you actually reduce track / signaling / control / facilities cost massively by virtue of using self-powered autonomous vehicles? Then the math could start making a lot more sense.

> What if you actually reduce track / signaling / control / facilities cost massively by virtue of using self-powered autonomous vehicles?

The problem is that it's hard to carry more people into a tunnel than a metro train (excepting forcing everyone to become pedestrians). The proposed replacement for metro trains is so capacity inefficient that you're going to spend more building parallel tunnels, and you'll probably have an even more egregious problem of vertical circulation. Vertical circulation is already an issue of concern on the busiest passenger systems, and trying to move heavy, bulky, low-capacity personal vehicles is far more difficult (requires far more space) than packing pedestrians as current systems do.

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

#168

Post by ben509 »

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…

From what I saw, the hyped Boring tunnel cost savings he demoed were by comparing the cost of the tunnel he had built to the cost of a complete station.

Comparing apples to apples, it's competitive, and that's an achievement in itself, but they haven't proven anything like the savings he claimed.

That's a recurring theme with Musk's hype. It's great that he's taking a fresh look at these things, and in some cases he's found some genuine efficiencies, but the expectations he puts out is that the rest of industry is locked down into hopelessly obsolete and inefficient methods. That's just not true, but it's a very appealing story.

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

#169

Post by chepaslaaa »

ridgeguy wrote: post #120
WhompingWindows wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Potential for finding evidence of life outside of the Earth, never mind scientific research into dozens of other topics. 2. Joy and sheer inspiration; why go to the moon, run a marathon, or compose a symphony? Joy and inspiration. 3. Potential to improve our own technology as we strive for the above points. Clear, clear evidence of this in parent's comment and after NASA's innovative tech. It's irrelevant if you p…

4. Removal of single-point extinction event if/when another dinosaur killer asteroid strikes Earth.

you're just making the single point bigger

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

#170

Post by bunderbunder »

toephu2 wrote: post #146
spraak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

Musk has said Mars is the backup plan for earth. What if one day there is a disease or meteor that wipes out the entire human population on Earth? (e.g., see the dinosaurs) Even if the only appeal was the wild wild west and uncharted territory, what's wrong with that? Look at what exploring the Moon has brought us, many unexpected innovations and inventions useful for life on earth.

The meteor strike wiped out the dinosaurs, but not all life. Mars currently has no life. The strong implication is that, Earth post meteor strike would still be far, far, far more habitable for humans than Mars ever will be.

As far as why describing Mars as Earth's backup plan rubs people the wrong way, I think it's a bit like Noah's Ark. While there is absolutely the cute story about the boat full of animals, and it does make for a good story, there's also the "meanwhile literally everyone aside from a minuscule elect ends up dying" bit. Which would be nothing but sour grapes if you didn't see people holding up the possibility of colonizing other planets as a mitigating factor that implies that we really shouldn't be quite so worried about all the environmental damage that's happening here on Earth. But you do.

Put it all together, and the complete narrative starts to sound like, "Sure, we're recklessly hurtling toward turning the planet into an inhospitable shithole for billions of people, but don't worry about that, because 0.00000005% of them are going to get to live on a completely different inhospitable shithole instead!"

Which, disclaimer, I'm not wanting to pan human space exploration. But I much prefer the "exploration for the sake of adventure and discovery" narrative. If that's not good enough, the ground to retreat to should be robots, not messianic fables for rich people.

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