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Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

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Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#11

Post by wyldfire »

AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

It's an outstanding mechanism to derail public transit efforts, that's all. It's not a nothing burger because that would suggest it's a good faith effort that just didn't pan out.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#12

Post by testing22321 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

> Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary.

They were trying hard to make a TBM that was faster than the current literal snails pace and cheaper than existing ones. It doesn’t appear they’ve had much success, though I’d rather they tried than just sticking with the status quo forever.

> The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

They can, regulations just don’t allow it yet. Coming soon (tm)

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#13

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

[flagged]

This is a valid take, but I also wonder if there’s anything to be gained by chastising those who complain about the musk company. Nobody does a thing about any company being shitty, a company is singled out by the mob for critique in a way that may (?) lead to some kind of consequence, and my thinking is you may as well join in to get something rather than nothing done. The real issue is that public outrage does absolutely nothing most of the time.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#14

Post by kelnos »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

[flagged]

If this was one thing in isolation, I'd easily believe that many/most other companies are just as bad, and get slapped with small fines like this that they treat as a cost of doing business (and ends up being cheaper than the cost of doing the right thing in the first place).

But it looks like they were, in total, fined for 800 or so environmental violations, which feels like a lot of violations: https://www.propublica.org/article/elon-musk-boring-company-...

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#15

Post by ggreer »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #10
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

What do they do that is more impressive than routine tunnels built in cities for the last few decades (or even between different soverign countries under the sea!)?

Their main differentiator is cost. The Boring Company bid $48.7 million for the initial LVCC loop. The total cost to complete it was $53 million. The second cheapest bid was Doppelmeyer Cableliner, which would have built a people mover for $215M. The people mover would have had about 50% more capacity per station, but at 4 times the cost.

Tunnel cost is mostly dependent on the volume of material removed, which means that cost goes up linearly with length but with the square of the tunnel diameter. Trains and people movers tend to require significantly larger diameter tunnels, so their costs tend to be much higher. Also Boring Company tunnels don't need much infrastructure in them, so they save money on rails, high voltage power systems, rolling stock, etc.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#17

Post by bamboozled »

binary132 wrote: post #16

Some of these companies seem to have figured out that you can just do things and get away with it if you don’t mind paying a few fines (maybe “fees” would be a better term??)

Some? This is basically how we let society work now. If you have money, you can do really abhorrent things and just get away with it with almost zero consequence.

We have the law and the police setup to protect the rich from any real rebuttal to this status quo so we're locked in.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#18

Post by TulliusCicero »

bawolff wrote: post #6

How is that only a $500,000 fine??? Stopping when inspectors are there only to restart once they leave is willful enough that you wonder why this doesn't go into criminal liability?

It's rare for even blatant misconduct of this kind by a company to result in criminal charges.

Which is stupid, obviously. If it's intentional/willful breaking of the law, send them to jail the same way you would for an individual.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#19

Post by Rebelgecko »

ggreer wrote: post #15
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do they do that is more impressive than routine tunnels built in cities for the last few decades (or even between different soverign countries under the sea!)?

Their main differentiator is cost. The Boring Company bid $48.7 million for the initial LVCC loop. The total cost to complete it was $53 million. The second cheapest bid was Doppelmeyer Cableliner, which would have built a people mover for $215M. The people mover would have had about 50% more capacity per station, but at 4 times the cost. Tunnel cost is mostly dependent on the volume of material removed, which means…

How do their operating costs compare?

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#20

Post by jazzyjackson »

testing22321 wrote: post #12
AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

> Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. They were trying hard to make a TBM that was faster than the current literal snails pace and cheaper than existing ones. It doesn’t appear they’ve had much success, though I’d rather they tried than just sticking with the status quo forever. > The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite em…

Were they even trying to redesign a TBM? I think they were just using off the shelf boring machines at a smaller diameter (many tunnels one lane each) because building tunnels wide enough for a highway is exponentially more expensive.
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