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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

#191

Post by jcranmer »

zaroth wrote: post #174
jcranmer wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/dise…

You have to click on "Past Projects" to get to Second Avenue Subway Phase I. There's no direct link to that for some reason.

Edit: http://web.mta.info/capitaldashboard/MajorProjects/MajorProj... works as a link to just the information table, without the entire page.

> 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?

I generally care about mass transit, and it becomes pretty obvious that if you care about mass transit, you have to get people out of the massive wastes of space of single-occupancy vehicles. The problem I see with solutions like the Loop is that they're pitched as trying to replace mass transit, and there's no consideration given to the fact that storing empty personal vehicles takes lots of space that don't exist in dense cities, or, in places such as Kansas City where SOV transit is preferred, creates massive dead zones of parking that deadens the appeal of the area.

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

#192

Post by throwaway2048 »

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.

A dinosaur-killer sized asteroid strike would still leave earth far, far more habitable than mars is (there would at least be air and water) as would essentially any other conceivable natural or cosmic disaster.

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

#193

Post by vageli »

smileysteve wrote: post #184
NullPrefix wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It so happens, that the Sun's expansion will eventually consume most of the planets in the galaxy; of course, it will also be so cold long before that point humans won't be alive.

> It so happens, that the Sun's expansion will eventually consume most of the planets in the galaxy; of course, it will also be so cold long before that point humans won't be alive.

In the galaxy or solar system?

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

#194

Post by netinstructions »

dang wrote: post #17

The submitted title was "No, the Las Vegas 'Loop' Is Not the Future of Public Transportation". That broke the HN guidelines, which ask submitters to use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait, and not to editorialize. We remove submission privileges from accounts who post like this, so please don't. Note: if this was the article's original title and, as sometimes happens, they changed it, then none o…

The title (as in, the text between ) on the page served to me was:

"Las Vegas to Elon Musk: Tesla Tunnel? We'll Take 2 - CityLab"

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

#195

Post by maxxxxx »

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

Totally agree. Mars seems a miserable place. I would prefer we sent probes to Europa, Enceladus and upper atmosphere of Venus first to see what’s going on there.

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

#196

Post by spurgu »

bunderbunder wrote: post #189
aeternus wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the actual goal of environmentalism on earth? If it is to preserve diverse species, then it absolutely makes sense to colonize other planets and spread the wide variety of plants, animals, and other organisms. The earth will eventually be burned up by the sun.

Let's keep a sense of perspective here. What the sun's going to be doing a billion or so years from now seems like a rather remote concern compared to entire countries being underwater in a few decades. If interstellar space travel is ever practically attainable - and, FWIW, that is still a controversial subject - then humans absolutely will figure it out. Or rather, they will just so long as they manage to extend bo…

> Let's keep a sense of perspective here.

So like a few million years?

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

#197

Post by bongobongo »

zaroth wrote: post #131
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

Little Elon had a dream that he will one day walk on Mars. He thought to himself, well why can’t I? All I need is billions of dollars, and rockets (lots of rockets), and space ships, and renewable energy, and tunnels, and,... And then Little Elon started a little company during the dot com boom called Zip2 and sold it to Compaq for $300 million. Then X.com which led to PayPal. Then SpaceX, Tesla, and all the rest. It…

Yikes, dude. I'm sorry, but Elon Musk is just a guy with money. He's not a demigod. He's not a genius. He's not even a captain of industry. He's just a rich guy playing with money and and building a personal brand.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have ideas, and that some of those ideas aren't the totally self-serving delusions of a rich dickhead, but a good many of them are, and I certainly don't want any part of "the path toward the Big Vision" of some rich dickhead. Seriously, buddy. Listen to yourself. You just described "the path toward the Big Vision" of some unelected billionaire as if it were some form of spiritual revelation or ideological telos.

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

#198

Post by PopeDotNinja »

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

There is anything plenty of stuff that could irrevocably nerf the viability of Earth as a habitable world. Something will wipe out all remaining life on Earth eventually. A billionaire wanting to go to Mars makes more sense to me than a billionaire trying to build the world's biggest private yacht.

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

#199

Post by bongobongo »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #114
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

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…

All of those things could also be accomplished by doing something, you know, useful.

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

#200

Post by breck »

clairity wrote: post #161
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 stan…

Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems.

Won’t let me build a wire across your property—-no problem, I’ll go wireless...as an example

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