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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

#211

Post by ChuckMcM »

abduhl wrote: post #202
ChuckMcM wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised that people who design boring machines or design tunnels are not regular readers or commentators here on HN :-). Like Musk, I've felt that tunneling is under utilized (unfortunately I don't have the resources he has to bring to bear on it) but there is a wealth of information out there on the current state of tunneling. Three interesting projects that have a number of 'explainers' and various papers…

I design both boring machines and tunnels and am a regular reader on HN. I have worked on tunnels ranging from the smallest to the largest, rock to soil, and all forms of construction. I have stopped commenting on any tunnel related Elon topic due to people refusing to believe my experience and expertise when it does not align with what Elon Musk and his team of "experts" have said or published in their desk studies.

Awesome! I've got a question that I have not been able to answer. Seattle's "Big Bertha" is surplus once they finish the Alaska Viaduct project in a few months. What process could I use to establish whether or not one could use that machine locally? Assume I can get an inventory of all parts used in the machine. And a related question, is there a way to estimate the cost to retarget a used machine to a new mission?

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#212

Post by nradov »

Fricken wrote: post #10
adamjc wrote: post #2

I thought the current thinking was that building more roads means that there will be more roads to use, and therefore more cars on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

That's the good thinking, but because it isn't intuitive it often gets kicked to the curb by bad thinking. More roads = less traffic, right? right? No? One could also use tunnels to build subways and presumably Hyperloops. I wonder, though, about why big infrastructure projects so horrendously expensive, in America in particular. There are developers, planners, consultants, politicians, unions, contractors, sub contr…

US infrastructure construction costs are among the highest in the world. There appear to be multiple root causes including: extensive legal protections for private property owners, environment reviews and lawsuits, need to work across multiple government boundaries, labor laws, union work rules.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...

http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/04/7-reasons-us-infrastruct...

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#213

Post by yokisan »

jkelsey wrote: post #172
yokisan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. There's your problem: being enchanted in the first place. The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them and then huff when reality—inevitably—fails to keep up with the myth. Flawed human accomplishes great things is the story of most of history's pioneers.

This is a good point, however... > The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them This is not true. These people, by the very nature of their positions as chiefs of well-known organizations, have to maintain near untarnished super-human public perceptions (at least to the people that support their organization/company/ideals). They ask for it by accepting the position in the…

> They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place.

The spotlight is thrust upon them, that's true. However I think equating leading tech figure with righteous human being is something we take as axiomatic. It may often be true, but don't be crestfallen when it's sometimes not.

Plus the scale tips over the course of one's career. Bill Gates spent decades crushing the competition before he took upon the task of eradicating disease.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#214

Post by tunesmith »

adamjc wrote: post #2

I thought the current thinking was that building more roads means that there will be more roads to use, and therefore more cars on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

Induced demand is one of those things that always struck me as an abused concept. Yes, it happens, but it's impossible for it to be always true. New roads will attract more traffic, but only up to a point. There exist roads in the United States that aren't experiencing traffic jams at rush hour. If Induced Demand were a law, that wouldn't be true. So you can't just say that building new roads won't alleviate traffic, period. There are cases where it is true, and there are cases were adding new roads actually make traffic worse, but there are also cases where adding roads (or tunnels) will alleviate traffic.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#215

Post by MK999 »

throwanem wrote: post #3

Light rail solves urban congestion, too, and a city that doesn't already have a subway isn't all that likely also to be so densely involute that rights of way can't be secured for the trackage. Elevated electric trams are a thing, too, and require a much smaller ground footprint. Not that I don't get what he's saying, and I do get that existing and well proven systems aren't sexy, but I feel like either of those is g…

The TransMilenio model could probably be applied some places with great effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#216

Post by marssaxman »

artumi-richard wrote: post #210
adamjc wrote: post #2

I thought the current thinking was that building more roads means that there will be more roads to use, and therefore more cars on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

There has to be a ceiling to how much demand can be induced.

One could view the US Interstate Highway System and its legacy of suburban sprawl as a massive, decades-long effort to reach that ceiling, but we don't appear to have run out of headroom yet.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#217

Post by battlebot »

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…

Don't forget that boondoggle in Boston!

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#218

Post by jerven »

ozborn wrote: post #187

Can somebody who is an engineer or is familiar with the tunneling process explain why boring machines are used for tunneling rather than explosives? It seems to me the primary energy costs of tunneling are associated with converting hard earth/boulders/bedrock into rubble and then transporting that rubble out of the tunnel. Thus explosives (if properly and efficiently delivered) could deliver far more energy than a b…

Mud, most of the tunnel boring machines dig through mud. Mud does not need any more fracturing, its quite easy to dig through as is. Its really hard to dig tunnels in it because it likes to collapse on top of you.

It's like why do you use a drill and screws to hang a picture instead of a handgun some 9mm's and a nail.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#219

Post by quotemstr »

mikeash wrote: post #56
jessriedel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induced demand often happens, but certainly not always. It just depends on latent demand and network effects. 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 t…

Spot on with the "still creating value" stuff. With most things, creating more so more people can have it is seen as good. With roads, it's somehow seen as bad. It makes sense if the roads have negative externalities, like noise, or ugliness, or pollution, or destroying pedestrian access. But none of that applies to tunnels used by cars running on clean energy.

> somehow seen as bad

I've noticed a certain utopian streak in some urban planning enthusiast communities --- one that's not compatible with the automobile as the primary mode of personal transportation. The general thinking seems to be, "$PROPOSAL reduces the number of cars on the road? Good!"

Back when I lived in Buffalo, NY, there was a group of people who'd write editorials in The Stranger (the local alternative weekly) and various blogs demanding that the city or state tear down the "Skyway" (a large bridge for NY 5), rip up expressways, narrow roads, and so on. Buffalo is not a wealthy city. The city is lucky to have inherited this infrastructure from a more prosperous era; it'll need this infrastructure if it's to become prosperous again.

It would be ridiculous to spend millions destroying this infrastructure when the city can't even afford to remove condemned houses in abandoned sections of the city. Yet week after week, people would publish articles demanding that the city do just that. It was incredible.

The only explanation I have for this impulse is that these advocates of infrastructure removal were really motivated by an aesthetic romanticism, an impractical idea of what a city should be, and a general dispositional aversion to modernity generally and to internal combustion engines specifically.

This mentality drove me up a wall. The automobile is an incredibly useful invention. It's allowed billions of people a degree of personal mobility that our ancestors could only have imagined. That's why we use the things so much. We can talk about how to make automobiles more efficient. We can debate the best schemes for allocating space in limited public infrastructure to the most important uses. (I'm a fan of congestion charges.) But just railing against the existence of automobile traffic is ridiculous.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#220

Post by tshannon »

shabble wrote: post #93

My laymen's understanding (from various documentaries & articles) is that the expensive part of tunnel construction is managing the transitions between different materials. Boring through hard rock might be slow, but hitting pockets of mud, loose rock and other things (especially when unexpected) can seriously mess up the works, and cause massive delays due to machine damage or reassessment and reinforcement/collapse…

If uncertainty is such a big problem, aren't there any technology solutions for it? Can radar be used to tell the density of materials along the whole boring route?
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