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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

#181

Post by spectrum1234 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #89
dv_dt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this follows Elons pattern of being able to find areas where the fundamental technology has advanced and is available, but the integration and step up to a new level hasn't been invested in yet. I think the Boring company basically made more efficient custom built tunneling equipment.

Musk never learned that most of the cost of subways is the stations and supporting infrastructure, not digging the tunnel itself. Musk has not proposed any improvements to the expensive parts of tunneling.

This is completely wrong. The biggest costs to tunnels is bureaucracy.

Simply using private funds without numerous contractors can decreases costs by an order of magnitude with no technological improvements.

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

#182

Post by analognoise »

Shaliber wrote: post #164
hourislate wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toronto can't build a subway stop for under 1 billion. I would imagine someone like Elon could could dig a complete line with a dozen stops for 1 billion. It's amazing how he creates companies and solutions on a whim that revolutionize complete industries.

I can't speak for Toronto, but NYC builds a subway at $2.2 billion/km while Berlin spends $250million/km[1]. We don't need to revolutionize. We need to copy. [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...

NYC has crazy corrupt union labor.

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

#183

Post by bluGill »

toasterlovin wrote: post #128
incompatible wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We’ve been building houses for millennia and construction is still notorious for not going according to plan. One-off projects are just hard to get to go as planned.

Lesson: don't do one-off projects. Find a project that meets you needs, and copy it. Make minor tweaks to their design to fit your needs, but copy as much as possible.

Houses typically go according to plan because so many of the processes and parts are standard. Even large mansions can go according to plan if you have good management (note that cheap management is rewarded for change orders and thus will ensure things don't go according to plan while better management will see that if they don't make a minor change now things won't go according to plan latter.

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

#184

Post by martamoreno2 »

Is this for real? They are basically getting orgasms just because someone drills a tunnel, which is indeed revolutionary for public transportation... And it transports a whopping 4500 people per hour, will you think of that! That is almost as much as a normal, 100 year old subway train can do in a few minutes.

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

#185

Post by dzhiurgis »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #114
dzhiurgis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novel is faster and cheaper (because faster and less ventilation cuz electric cars). I think it makes total sense. Rail is so much more complex when compared to an electric bus.

Rail moves a lot more people than a 10-line highway.

Absolute capacity is far from useful metric when you have so many options of commute.

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

#186

Post by toomuchtodo »

mbesto wrote: post #159
SECProto wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Tesla Roadster was just a modified Lotus Elise. Buying an of-the-shelf product and reverse engineering it, before building ones' own, is a very valuable step.

And Tesla's Gigfactory is a JV with Panasonic and partially funded by taxpayers. I'd say the largest value add about Elon Musk is his ability to create a reality distortion field to convince large swathes of people to follow his dream. I'm actually not being critical of Musk here. Jobs did this and you can see how transformative certain technologies have been as a result.

Can’t we call it passion and vision instead of “reality distortion field”?

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

#187

Post by CydeWeys »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #49
Jernik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used miles and years right before that, so I'm not sure how it is confusing that m/yr is miles/year

It's confusing because the way the units are represented is inconsistent.

That, and also m=meter, mi=mile.

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

#188

Post by bluGill »

pjkundert wrote: post #140
thedrbrian wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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

My corrections in CAPS.

I don't think I need to say more, it should be obvious way tunnels for cars are a bad idea.

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

#189

Post by ericd »

mikeyouse wrote: post #154
threeseed wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are they actually building their own ? Haven't seen anything covered about what they've built or how it compares with anything else on the market.

Yeah they are.. they have a few, their first was just off-the-shelf technology, the second is a hybrid, and their third one is apparently fully designed by Boring Co.: https://tunnelinsider.com/everything-we-know-about-the-borin...

Pretty sure that's a joke, unless rocket engines are suddenly useful for tunnel boring...

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

#190

Post by MiroF »

fctorial wrote: post #161
BurningFrog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that road access is severely underpriced. If you had to pay for road access, you could easily set the price to where demand meets supply, and all roads would have well flowing traffic 24/7. But of course "induced demand" happens when the price is $0. The same would occur for bread, phones or pianos at that price point.

Roads do have a price, and it does increase with demand. What is the worth of 10 minutes of your time?

Do you not see how you're arguing in favor of his/her point?
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