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Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

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Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#141

Post by monodeldiablo »

emodendroket wrote: post #128
monodeldiablo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A close family member is an urban planner, and he blames a succession of legal challenges that have forced public entities to account for all sorts of value that the property could never actually attain. And, of course, the increase in number and density of holdouts has driven acquisition costs way, way up for large public projects, since time delays incur costs. Lawyers have learned that, even if the city/state make…

I mean, I don't think it would really be ideal for the government to be seizing property for a pittance left and right either.

Neither do I. As I said, it's a delicate balance to strike. Personally, I'd rather it tilted in favor of property owners than the other direction.

There's no denying, though, that it's a huge and increasing cost to public works projects.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#142

Post by Brakenshire »

lmm wrote: post #110
Brakenshire wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, the appearance of induced demand is not a general argument against building roads! People get value out of getting to places. If we build road B intending to relieve congestion on road A, but road A stays just as congested, we nevertheless have enabled people to get places with road B that they would not otherwise have been able to reach. That increases utility. There are cases where this doesn't…

Right, so what we need to do is take into account value of space that roads will take up (that could otherwise be used for houses, businesses, parks...), and only build more roads if the value they produce outweighs the value they consume. That's not an induced demand issue though.

I would say that's a pretty clear example of induced demand and the problems arising from it. You build the motorway, people build low density suburbs outside the city to drive and take the motorway to commute into the centre, that delivers hundreds of thousands of cars into the centre which crashes the road-space efficiency of the central area, which damages not just the people driving into the centre, but also the people who live close in, who are using much more efficient and scalable forms of transport. If the motorway was never built, people would live in apartments instead, they'd use buses or trains, and walk, and you could have more people working and living in the city while maintaining a functional transport system, and higher utility as a result.

It's not just a question of the motorway filling up, and maxing out an increase in utility, the motorway filling up means that more efficient uses of the roads in the centre are prevented. There is benefit balanced against detriment, and it's perfectly possible (depending on the exact circumstances) that the detriment will be higher than the benefit.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#143

Post by dahart »

XorNot wrote: post #105
dahart wrote: post #68

We can't afford to maintain the surface roads & bridges we already built, and tunnels are more expensive and require more maintenance by like an order of magnitude. (I made that up, but I'm pretty sure it's right, to within an order of magnitude... but if tunnels are 1000x more expensive, then I'm wrong). I can admire someone who has the resources to exclude himself from the traffic problem instead taking action to t…

The US can easily afford to maintain it's infrastructure. It would make money in doing so. Expense is not the reason the US has infrastructure problems.

If that's true, what is the reason? Is it because roads are public spending and not private development?

I guess I do have to clarify that saying we can or can't afford it is overloaded. We may have the money to do it and still not be able to afford it for a variety of reasons including politics and higher priorities. I think it's fair to say we can't afford it when we have debt and we're not fixing the problem. All the money we have is currently going to other things.

So how do we make money fixing it? If we would make money, why are we falling behind rather than getting ahead, if it was such a clear win economically, why aren't we doing it already?

This article implies that our current annual rate of return on highways is less than 10%:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/15/business/deal...

FWIW, I also think it's fairly easy to look at the actual scale of existing infrastructure and come to the conclusion that the magnitude of the problem isn't something that billions or a trillion dollars will put a real dent in; it looks bigger than that to me just looking at these maps:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/maps-of-ame...

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#144

Post by monodeldiablo »

nradov wrote: post #122
emodendroket wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense has eminent domain been eroded? Given that the Supreme Court ruled about ten years ago that eminent domain may even be used to make way for private enterprise it seems to me that it is quite powerful.

Sure eminent domain remains legally powerful. But politically it has become more of a hot button issue in certain conservative circles who actively lobby against its use. And when eminent domain is used the takers have to pay fair market price so with the huge increase in urban real estate values over the past few years it's much harder to just find the money.

Not to mention all the accounting and legal shenanigans that can be used to pump up "fair market" value. Including the costs of arbitration if the seller doesn't feel the offer is fair. Which itself gets budgeted into the price...

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#146

Post by motoboi »

grey-area wrote: post #86
dahart wrote: post #68

We can't afford to maintain the surface roads & bridges we already built, and tunnels are more expensive and require more maintenance by like an order of magnitude. (I made that up, but I'm pretty sure it's right, to within an order of magnitude... but if tunnels are 1000x more expensive, then I'm wrong). I can admire someone who has the resources to exclude himself from the traffic problem instead taking action to t…

Cars and public transport are vastly different in capacity. A tunnel for cars is obviously a crazy idea but what if it carried some sort of pods that carried lots of people at once, maybe in a vacuum, at fast speeds?

I think you probably made a joke, but this is exactly what Hyperloop is.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#147

Post by knz »

owenversteeg wrote: post #135
owenversteeg wrote: post #119

Ok, so one thing I've noticed reading the 120 comments in this thread and the article is that literally nobody knows anything about boring, or tunnels. Musk knows nothing, he put someone in charge who knows nothing, the reporter knows nothing, and the commenters here even admit they are completely guessing and know nothing about boring/tunnels. I definitely don't know anything about tunnels. It's a joke that came to…

Answering my own question, bit by bit: It looks like there have in fact been improvements in tunnel creation in the last 50 years. Examples: - NYC Third Water Tunnel, under construction since 1970. 24 deaths, the vast majority of which were decades ago as safety improved. In fact, the first tunnels were blasted and drilled; the newer ones are made with a boring machine. - St. Gotthard Road Tunnel, 1969-1980, just one…

> For example, the aforementioned Gotthard Road Tunnel had over 875 accidents and 30 deaths in a span of just 24 years.

Pollution from congestion probably has at least a similar impact in terms of premature death and debilitating disease.

Edit. Down votes for stating that pollution from congestion causes premature death and serious health effects - yikes! Is that even a disputed fact? Google is full of academic papers on the very subject. The first result I see talks about congestion pricing having a massive impact in London. I would argue that congestion relief from the construction of tunnels would have a similar impact.

http://oem.bmj.com/content/65/9/620.short - "Predicted benefits... were 183 years of life per 100 000 population... In London overall, 1888 years of life were gained."

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#148

Post by Ericson2314 »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #140
HUSSTECH wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak somewhat for the UK, but I assume the same can be said for most of Continental Europe, Japan and China where (deep) underground tunnels for have been around for a long time. The deeper tunnels of the London Underground are "bored", that is a full circular profile is cut for the tunnel path. This is contrasted with the "cut and cover" method, which just digs a pit, builds a support structure, and covers it…

> I'd be interested to know if any US cities have deeper tunnels Some NYC subway stations and lines were built with boring as opposed to cut and cover. 90% of the new 2nd Avenue line, for example, is planned to be bored[1]. Here[2] is an article with more details about the tunnel boring machine used -- the comments also have a lot of good discussion. Also, Los Angeles has done some boring for its new subway lines[3].…

DC's certainly seems bored—and some are extremely deep and therefore must be. Stations might be cut and cover but are arched to match.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#149

Post by HUSSTECH »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #140
HUSSTECH wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak somewhat for the UK, but I assume the same can be said for most of Continental Europe, Japan and China where (deep) underground tunnels for have been around for a long time. The deeper tunnels of the London Underground are "bored", that is a full circular profile is cut for the tunnel path. This is contrasted with the "cut and cover" method, which just digs a pit, builds a support structure, and covers it…

> I'd be interested to know if any US cities have deeper tunnels Some NYC subway stations and lines were built with boring as opposed to cut and cover. 90% of the new 2nd Avenue line, for example, is planned to be bored[1]. Here[2] is an article with more details about the tunnel boring machine used -- the comments also have a lot of good discussion. Also, Los Angeles has done some boring for its new subway lines[3].…

That 2nd Avenue line looks awesome! Also, one BIG thing the NYC subway has over on the London Underground...extensive Air Conditioning! hat-tip

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#150

Post by jcranmer »

HUSSTECH wrote: post #137
owenversteeg wrote: post #119

Ok, so one thing I've noticed reading the 120 comments in this thread and the article is that literally nobody knows anything about boring, or tunnels. Musk knows nothing, he put someone in charge who knows nothing, the reporter knows nothing, and the commenters here even admit they are completely guessing and know nothing about boring/tunnels. I definitely don't know anything about tunnels. It's a joke that came to…

I can speak somewhat for the UK, but I assume the same can be said for most of Continental Europe, Japan and China where (deep) underground tunnels for have been around for a long time. The deeper tunnels of the London Underground are "bored", that is a full circular profile is cut for the tunnel path. This is contrasted with the "cut and cover" method, which just digs a pit, builds a support structure, and covers it…

> I'd be interested to know if any US cities have deeper tunnels?

The Forest Glen station on the Washington, DC Metro is deeper than the Hampsted tube station (196 ft versus 180 ft, respectively).

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