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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

#161

Post by fctorial »

BurningFrog wrote: post #145
clairity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

induced demand is often (intentionally?) misunderstood as demand being literally insatiable (and by extension, "why bother?"), but really, we're just severly underserving the market, and there are very limited price signals we can rely on to understand the cost and value of a road foot-second (or meter-second). people want more fast, affordable, on-demand, point-to-point private transportation. "induced demand" tells…

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?

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

#162

Post by staplers »

chrisco255 wrote: post #157
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.

What's amazing to me is that we built the Golden Gate bridge for $35 million in 1933 (would be $688 million in today's dollars) and it only took 4 years. The Empire State building was built in one year (1930). What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly? Is it amazing that Musk can do things so quickly or is it just that we got so fucking slow on everything that it seems amazing?

Dragging out construction timelines drags out budgets. Developers (construction) got better at extracting value from clients and thus, time as well.

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

#163

Post by triggercut »

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/…

It's not just the digging. It's the fit-out.

Channel Tunnel suffered significant delays and additional costs for instance because the brackets supporting cable and pipe runs needed to be taken down after everything had been installed because of a latent design defect and replaced.

Imagine how long it takes to pull 20+km of cable off the wall.

Also, compared to other construction sites, tunnels are a different beast, you often need to transport huge amounts of materials, people and equipment long distances to get to your work-front (and back again). It might be a straight line, but it's still far.

As much as I love the Channel Tunnel (my father was an engineer on it and I grew up during the construction) the actual outrun cost benefit ratio just isn't there. Extra ferries probably would have been more economical.

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

#164

Post by Shaliber »

hourislate wrote: post #152
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/…

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...

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

#165

Post by [deleted] »

chrisco255 wrote: post #157
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.

What's amazing to me is that we built the Golden Gate bridge for $35 million in 1933 (would be $688 million in today's dollars) and it only took 4 years. The Empire State building was built in one year (1930). What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly? Is it amazing that Musk can do things so quickly or is it just that we got so fucking slow on everything that it seems amazing?

[deleted]

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

#166

Post by adventured »

chrisco255 wrote: post #157
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.

What's amazing to me is that we built the Golden Gate bridge for $35 million in 1933 (would be $688 million in today's dollars) and it only took 4 years. The Empire State building was built in one year (1930). What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly? Is it amazing that Musk can do things so quickly or is it just that we got so fucking slow on everything that it seems amazing?

> What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly?

It takes longer to complete an environmental impact review to do a major project than it did to build the Golden Gate. And that's just one of several major red tape & time hurdles that didn't exist in 1933.

> According to CEQ, the average length of a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement is currently 600 pages and takes 4.5 years to conclude. US federal agencies prepare approximately 170 such assessments per year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/09/white-ho...

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

#167

Post by jeltz »

maxharris wrote: post #56
jeromegv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this 10% of cost is just a marketing ploy by Musk to sell you the project. When you compare to the price of subways in Europe, this isn't any cheaper. North America is extremely bad at building cheap subways, but other places of the world have already achieved it.

I personally know people that work at SpaceX (because my wife works there). Reusable rockets weren't a cheap marketing ploy. I don't have personal contact with anyone at the Boring Company, but it's located right across the street from SpaceX in Hawthorne, and I know that many of the people there are from SpaceX. In fact, I just drove past the test tunnel there this morning, as I dropped her off at work. I might be b…

Your tone does come off as negative, especially the second question. I think virtually everyone agrees with that, so why bother asking unless you are questioning the intelligence of him (which I do not think you do, but you come off that way)? If you do not want to sound negative you should skip any questions with only one sane answer.

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

#168

Post by mc3 »

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!

But... the city is you! Without the trains that's more cars in your way when you drive your car.

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

#169

Post by jellicle »

hourislate wrote: post #152
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/…

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.

Right, but Toronto's would be a real subway and this is just a joke.

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

#170

Post by tamiral »

hourislate wrote: post #152
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/…

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.

Toronto can't stay without a delay for more than 15 mins... on the subway system.... I agree with you :)
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