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The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

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Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#131

Post by eloff »

aaron695 wrote: post #63
mc3 wrote: post #41

ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Otherwise do I submit this to HN? https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling . I think tunnels are the future though for cities. But I'd prefer trains to be running in them, or roads that only allow electric public transport. Edit. In 1988 they started work on the Channel Tunnel UK to France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

> ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Honestly as a 5 year old you are not going to get it. This is multi levelled. Some people just like Elon. But what's really however interesting is how Elon is changing manufacturing. It's like a new Kanban But it's not 5 year old stuff. I'd just say, I know all the other kids like rockets and think they are cool to wa…

Just a pet peeve, I hope I don't tell my kids it's "adults stuff" and leave it at that. I think kids can sometimes surprise you at how much they can understand. Explain it as simply as you can, and if they don't get it try again. If they still don't get it, well maybe it's too advanced for them, or maybe you can't explain it in a simple enough way.

I know I was eternally annoyed at how much adults underestimated me growing up.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#132

Post by reaperducer »

kjksf wrote: post #97
reaperducer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this seems much faster than Big Bertha in Seattle Big Bertha dug under the downtown of a city with existing tunnels and utilities. The Las Vegas tunnel is mostly under parking lots with no obstructions.

While I doubt that "Las Vegas tunnel is mostly under parking lots with no obstructions" is even close to represent reality, here's what Boring Company says on the subject: > With a typical minimum depth of 30 feet, The Boring Company tunnels are well beneath most utilities, which are typically less than 10 feet below the surface. In circumstances where a utility is located deeper, the tunnel depth is increased accord…

While I doubt that "Las Vegas tunnel is mostly under parking lots with no obstructions" is even close to represent reality

I've been to the site. I've seen the machines and the pit. I have no doubt about what I've seen.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#133

Post by imron »

astrodust wrote: post #66
mc3 wrote: post #41

ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Otherwise do I submit this to HN? https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling . I think tunnels are the future though for cities. But I'd prefer trains to be running in them, or roads that only allow electric public transport. Edit. In 1988 they started work on the Channel Tunnel UK to France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Elon's making bold claims about how he's going to disrupt the tunnelling industry but so far the results are unimpressive to say the least. Tunnel boring is a complex, multi-faceted civil engineering discipline with a large number of well-funded firms that are aggressively competing and innovating. In this space Elon is utterly insignificant. The ELI5 version is: "Elon thinks he can dig tunnels faster and cheaper tha…

> Tunnel boring is a complex, multi-faceted civil engineering discipline with a large number of well-funded firms that are aggressively competing and innovating. In this space Elon is utterly insignificant.

20 years ago you could have said much the same thing about Elon Musk and rocketry.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#134

Post by [deleted] »

Lammy wrote: post #84
irq11 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the pace of the SF chinatown muni tunnel, the digging happens relatively quickly...the slow parts are the parts before and after the digging. In SF, they spent years surveying, moving utilities, excavating stations, etc., dug the actual tunnel in (IIRC) a year, and have spent subsequent years finishing all of the other stuff that makes it more than a hole in the ground.

To be fair, _everything_ takes unnaturally long to happen in SF due to all the ways a Very Concerned* Neighbor can tie any project up in approval meetings. https://forms.sfplanning.org/NeighborhoodNotification_InfoPa... [*] About their property values

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#135

Post by endothrowho333 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #106
ShorsHammer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Sydney Metro tunnel is coming in at nearly double the initial budgeted cost. It's over $1B per km of tunnel. Australian infrastructure projects are hardly something to be proud of.

The MTA's Second Avenue line in New York comes out to more than AU$2Bn per km, on my reckoning (US$2.6Bn/mile). It's the current world champion for expensive holes. The fact is that megaprojects basically never come in anywhere near their schedule or budget. That's because of a selection bias. When you crunch the numbers honestly, megaprojects come out as a terrible on a cost-benefit or ROI analysis. The ones that ge…

Can you elucidate on that line of reasoning some more? I am unconvinced.

It has been my experience -- which some more "keepin it real" journalism concurs with -- that New York's outlandish infrastructure costs, as well as the majority of the USA's public projects, are primarily due to two main agents:

1. White collar bureaucracy

2. Blue collar "bureaucracy"

Both parties -- and the multitude of agents that operate within them -- are all too able to align their "piece" of the project towards their own interests.

These interests very much involve time and money.

For money, it's simply rerouting costs. And for time, it's "making one's mark," by misallocating resources to personally-enriching matters, that do not benefit the project as a whole, and usually hinder it.

It's late, and I'm not at 100% to go into detail, but surely this is well-known already?

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#136

Post by bluthru »

mdszy wrote: post #9

So they're halfway through digging the tunnel, not halfway through doing all the other things to make the tunnel actually as useful as musk is claiming. This all just seems like subways from first principles but probably worse.

>This all just seems like subways from first principles but probably worse.

The big advantage is creating tunnels with a smaller diameter, allowing them to dig much quicker. So much space is wasted between each subway car that a large diameter isn't necessary.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#137

Post by jacques_chester »

endothrowho333 wrote: post #135
jacques_chester wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MTA's Second Avenue line in New York comes out to more than AU$2Bn per km, on my reckoning (US$2.6Bn/mile). It's the current world champion for expensive holes. The fact is that megaprojects basically never come in anywhere near their schedule or budget. That's because of a selection bias. When you crunch the numbers honestly, megaprojects come out as a terrible on a cost-benefit or ROI analysis. The ones that ge…

Can you elucidate on that line of reasoning some more? I am unconvinced. It has been my experience -- which some more "keepin it real" journalism concurs with -- that New York's outlandish infrastructure costs, as well as the majority of the USA's public projects, are primarily due to two main agents: 1. White collar bureaucracy 2. Blue collar "bureaucracy" Both parties -- and the multitude of agents that operate wit…

I did structure my argument to say that the optimistic estimates precede the other problems. Before ordinary problems of inefficiency and corruption arise, the project has to be sold as a viable investment.

I take the argument about selection bias from Brent Flyvbjerg, who has been studying megaprojects for a fair while now. He calls it "survival of the unfittest"[0].

A similar resource is Merrow's Industrial Megaprojects[1], which is based on a large dataset of such efforts. He identifies many factors in project overruns, but essentially notes that most projects start off with fanciful estimates that will never be met. For a book about petrochemical plants, bridges and power stations, it's a fun read.

[0] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1409/1409.0003.pdf

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Megaprojects-Concepts-Stra...

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#138

Post by [deleted] »

majormajor wrote: post #95
cgy1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has said that he doesn't believe in induced demand: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626?s=20

I think he's woefully disconnected from the non-rich person's life, then. He can already afford to buy however much space he wants. >If the transport system exceeds public travel needs, there will be very little traffic. Sure. But... it would take an enormous amount of development to make this happen, because so many people are going to want more space if they can have it with still a For all the talk of walkable nei…

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#139

Post by jacques_chester »

incompatible wrote: post #126
jacques_chester wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MTA's Second Avenue line in New York comes out to more than AU$2Bn per km, on my reckoning (US$2.6Bn/mile). It's the current world champion for expensive holes. The fact is that megaprojects basically never come in anywhere near their schedule or budget. That's because of a selection bias. When you crunch the numbers honestly, megaprojects come out as a terrible on a cost-benefit or ROI analysis. The ones that ge…

But it's just a subway tunnel, which have been built in cities since the 19th century. Is it really so much harder to do such "megaprojects" in the 21st century, with the vastly better equipment now available?

A large fraction of NYC's subway system was built using cut-and-cover, which is much cheaper than the deep tunneling being used for projects like the Second Avenue line or the East Side Access.

That's before adding other factors such as increase regulation, inflation and good ol' corruption.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#140

Post by pjkundert »

thedrbrian wrote: post #121
nonanonymous wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't exactly improve the ROI.

It makes it a lot worse. You can fit a load of people on a subway train versus a model s or x

You’ve got the wrong perspective.

From the perspective of the city, the ROI of a subway train is high.

From the perspective of an individual, the ROI of using my own car in a tunnel, exactly when I want to, without parking, waiting, embarking, smelling the vagrants, disembarking, walking or getting a cab, ... Priceless!

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