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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

#171

Post by efficax »

guruz wrote: post #68
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That sounds like a typical US problem to me. In contrast in Berlin, the areas with elevated subway belong to the most desireable living areas, e.g. the U2 in Prenzlauer Berg: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&biw=1047&bi... Or check out the lovely bridges above Gleisdreieck-Park: https://www.google.com/search?q=berlin+u-bahn+gleisdreieck+p...

L stops in chicago are also very desirable locations. The parent is greatly overexaggerating the problems with elevated trains

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

#172

Post by dunham »

melling wrote: post #4

If they aren’t going to finish the Vegas monorail, maybe they can build a tunnel from the airport to the Strip?

Back when I lived in Las Vegas, I had heard that the monorail didn't go to the airport because of lobbying/complaints from Taxi companies. If true, I suspect a tunnel would meet a similar fate.

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

#173

Post by ryantgtg »

Robotbeat wrote: post #77
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.

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.

I'm under the impression that their costs are cheaper right now because public agencies are eager to see a working test case and so exempted them from environmental clearance. I doubt that will still be the case when the scheme changes from "a single tunnel from Musk's home in Bel-Air to his work in Hawthorne" to "hundreds of stacked tunnels traversing the entire city." But I'm open to corrections.

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

#174

Post by zaroth »

jcranmer wrote: post #140
ncallaway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Agree that this evidences their short-term plans (1-5 years), but I actually think it's a poor-proxy of evidence of their long-term (5+ years) plans. I mostly agree with you about their short-term plans, but my understanding (which could be wrong!)…

I mostly follow mass transit and railway projects, so that's where my numbers are derived from. Considering that Loop is pitched as a new mass transit system, it makes sense to compare it to costs. Especially because Musk loves comparing it to the obscenely overpriced NYC Second Avenue Subway extension, so it helps to understand how much it actually cost. The Boring Company claims in its FAQ that the Second Avenue Su…

I’m not seeing the numbers you quoted on the linked page, but I see a $2b project to add a 3rd rail to an existing 10 mile stretch (LIRR), $2.4b for a mile+ of new tunnels and a new station (Flushing), $10b for the East Side project which entails a massive new terminal and 10,500 ft of new tunnels....

I think the theory is that these mega train stations where thousands of people walk through every hour to embark/disembark is one vision of transit, one which can serve an extremely dense metropolis, but also one which is terribly difficult to expand and maintain, as we see in NYC.

Now maybe the future is that people coming into and through the city are stopping at waypoints at the outskirts and switching on to subways which run at a fixed schedule and carry masses of people in long convoys to fixed destinations, where they then have to transfer to buses or walk to their destination. Carrying luggage or packages or even just keeping children close in these environments is stressful and requires vigilance.

Alternatively, a fully autonomous transport can pick up someone or some family at their door, and bring them directly to their destination. It can carry your luggage in the trunk. It has seats for all your party and is quiet enough to carry on a conversation or work. It plays the music you want as you go. Etc... Most importantly it works on a dynamic schedule and can accommodate any arbitrary pickup and drop off point non-stop. You can pay for different classes of service, different capacity, maybe even different transit speeds.

These are fundamentally different modes of transportation. Boring is not trying to lower the cost of fixed point mass transit hubs, nor are they going to iterate in their idea until they end up building a subway. I think it’s important to admit that fixed point transport hubs are not in fact the ultimate solution to all personal transit.

For the [rather large] share of transport which is done in personal vehicles, wouldn’t it be incredible to have a solution that’s better than the massive cost of surface roads and surface parking everywhere you look?

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

#175

Post by NullPrefix »

chepaslaaa wrote: post #169
ridgeguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you're just making the single point bigger

This could be said for any expansion, until your single point becomes "everything that is".

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

#176

Post by morgancmartin »

chepaslaaa wrote: post #169
ridgeguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you're just making the single point bigger

By a minimum of about 33.9 million miles, yes.

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

#177

Post by jobseeker990 »

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

Why am I not allowed to downvote this nonsense?

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

#178

Post by 127 »

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

Some find better ways to live on other planets, some find better ways to educate people how to live sustainably on this one, without fucking it up. It's all positive in my book.

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

#180

Post by naravara »

Robotbeat wrote: post #77
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.

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.

Most of that extra cost comes from the legal fees around buying the land and getting permits to dig under it. A better tunnel borer doesn't address any of that.

You could maybe save on OSHA concerns if you can somehow slash the number of people employed, but you'd need to get rid of a LOT of people before you see enough gains from that to make this a game changer.

Elon's whole deal around transit is utterly uninformed about anything urban planning.

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