I really don't get the hate this is receiving considering the context of what is going on in Los Angeles. Traffic is a problem city wide, but it is particularly bad for events at Dodgers Stadium. Musk's plan won't fix all of that, but it won't hurt. I also don't see how the plan is any more outlandish than this [1] plan for gondolas to Dodgers Stadium which is closer to actually happening. Either way, both of those projects are using private money. If people want to try to fix traffic themselves and all they need from the public is permission, why should we stop them? That is an infinitely better approach that approving spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on a trolley system a few miles from Dodgers Stadium [2] or an even more massive investments into a subway system that most Angelenos never use and therefore are hesitant to support.
The "hate" is because the Musk proposal would accommodate 2800 people per day, or less than 3% of the crowd of a typical game, most of which arrives within the space of the same 2-3 hours. (In comparison: the lowest-capacity trains in the LA Metro system can handle 2800 people in half an hour--about 4 trains--running on a regular schedule, or 6000+ running on special-event schedules.)
In other words, its a solution to absolutely nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing: it's just Elon bloviating another half-assed idea that he takes no responsibility for.
It's a test track that would interfere with the future construction of any public transportation running through the area, including lines that are currently in the early planning stages. That doesn't include it's impact on utility lines, water mains, or future housing construction (the Elonrail would only be 30 feet deep as currently planned, so no building over 3 stories could be built over it).
Elonrail responsibilities are to offer a good negotiation position for themselves. It's up to the city to counteroffer, say....:
1. Burying slightly deeper to accommodate larger building for the future.
2. Demolish the "test rail" after the "test" is proven to work.
3. Expand the rail after success is proven to accommodate a larger attendance
Elonrail/boring company is happy with the success of the test's outcome, the boring company will use this test as propaganda to further their goals and build larger projects, the boring company will not mind tearing down (or grandiosely upgrading) their tunnel with the new contracts it receives, and in the meantime: the region makes money from the project in the process.
The city has no responsibility to counteroffer, or even to waste any time or money considering the proposal. It's up to Elonrail to make a realistic proposal to the city if he hopes to get approval for his boondoggle.
in the meantime: the region makes money from the project in the process.
Based on the submitted financial plan for the Elonrail, it would earn maybe $250,000 a year. It would several tens of millions just to tunnel, not including the hundreds of millions to build the many stations along the way that Elon has proposed, or the millions it would take to build all the carts.
>The city has no responsibility to counteroffer
>gamblor956
Everyday lobbyists are making proposals to congressmen, founders are pitching to VCs, people applying for jobs and asking for salaries, and there is usually a middleground that these two parties can land at.
Perhaps the mechanism in like you suggest, simply to reject the offer OR perhaps more beneficially, the city should reject the offer and ask for what it wants at the same time, and play the negotiation game.
edit: I read your profile, and I get you're a lawyer, and that you're technically right that it has no `legal` responsibility to counter ... That mentality doesn't get either party anywhere.
You are starting from the position that the Elonrail is a good thing, or a practical thing, or even a feasible thing.
I start from the position that it is none of the above. It is a boondoggle, like the hyperloop. It solves nothing and the proposal as presented only raises numerous problems that Elonrail fails to address. Which is pretty typical of Musk these days: present a shiny new idea, not fully thought out, as if it were something innovative, take credit for it, and then let other people do the work of actually figuring out whether it's even possible to implement.
Elon Musk has zero clue how public transport works and doesn't seem the least bit interested in figuring it out.
Put a train in there, not one car at a time.
How are these signalled? Are they all "autonomous"? Whatever it is, it sounds like it's ripe for disaster if operating at scale.
Being stuck in a subway train tunnel in a large subway car can be a miserable experience. Being stuck in a tiny pod is undoubtedly worse. It's like being stuck in an elevator you can't stand up in.
I agree, it's not more outlandish, but a subway system is a proven and much cheaper alternative.
> If people want to try to fix traffic themselves and all they need from the public is permission, why should we stop them?
Public safety, regulation/oversight of construction in city limits. It's also IMHO naive to think Musk will fund this himself and not ask the city to foot the bill.
A subway might be a more complete answer, but there is no Musk character throwing private money at the city hoping to build a subway. Also like I mentioned previously, there is little political capital to expand the subway. The subway system as it currently stands is simply ignored by a huge percentage of the population and adding a small extension to Dodgers Stadium wouldn't change that. So yes, this won't help that much, but we shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Musk is currently claiming that he will not need public funds for this. I don't have any reason not to take him at his word. My opinion of this project would change if there would need to be any non-trivial public investments. However if this is a serious concern of the city, there are obviously ways to structure the contract so the city doesn't find themselves on the hook if Musk changes his mind.
Also like I mentioned previously, there is little political capital to expand the subway
Stop spreading FUD. LA literally just passed Measure M a few years ago to...vastly increase its rail network. Metro is currently in the process of extending 3 lines, building a new line, an airport PeopleMover, and multiple multi-line connecting stations. This doesn't include the nearly 100 miles of additional rail planned for construction over the next 2 decades.
The subway system as it currently stands is simply ignored by a huge percentage of the population and adding a small extension to Dodgers Stadium wouldn't change that.
Completely false. About 20-25% of the Dodgers crowd takes Metro to the game.
Musk is currently claiming that he will not need public funds for this. I don't have any reason not to take him at his word.
Elon has made numerous misrepresentations about nearly all of his businesses, his personal life, and other people...just in the last year. At this point, anything he said should be viewed with suspicion unless he can provide corroborating evidence of its veracity.
Measure M was addressing a higher level transportation ordinance. You can't use that as proof of support specifically for the subway system. Either way, I have not seen any proposal for expanding the subway to Dodgers Stadium outside the one from the mid 2000s that has not progressed (AFAIK).
>Completely false. About 20-25% of the Dodgers crowd takes Metro to the game.
That ridership number you supplied for Dodgers games is legitimately surprising. I had not heard that usage has ticked up that much. Do you have a source on that? I would obviously admit I am wrong if there are legitimately 10k+ people regularly travelling to Dodger games using Metro.
>Elon has made numerous misrepresentations...
I am not going to debate this. Musk's word is good enough for me to entertain his proposal, but it should never be good enough for the city to simply accept without any contingencies. Contracts exist for a reason.
As someone who lives in LA and used to live in SF, I do feel it's true everyone I know ignores the Metro and just drives/Uber's/whatever. I'm probably in a privileged position, though.
It was also quite noticeable back in SF that way more people used the BART than normal for Oakland Raiders games and even, to a less degree, AT&T Stadium games. So games actually can get the rich people to take poor people's transport.
> Musk is currently claiming that he will not need public funds for this. I don't have any reason not to take him at his word.
Musk has made numerous claims (e.g. Autopilot, Model 3 production, secured financing for taking Tesla private, that a cave rescuer is a "pedo") that have turned out to be wrong, even though being wrong would be materially and legally damaging to him.
What damages does Musk face if he's wrong about his project not needing public assistance?
> If people want to try to fix traffic themselves and all they need from the public is permission, why should we stop them?
They need more than permission, they need the government to give them exclusive use of property (including, if necessary, acquiring property for them by way of eminent domain.)
Don't forget that it also effectively prevents any other similar solution: "The result is that the tunnel would have negative value to the region. As a transportation service based on how Musk wishes to construct and operate it, it has practically no value. But in the event of upzoning in West Los Angeles, the tunnel would complicate any possibility of rail under Sunset connecting Hollywood with Downtown. Metro may even need to acquire and demolish Musk's tunnel, or else dig under the tunnel, which would complicate intermediate stations in Silver Lake and Echo Park."
There is already rail connecting Hollywood to downtown that doesn't see particularly high usage. I am not sure why this specific real estate needs to be reserved for a second Hollywood to downtown subway line that as far as I am aware has not made any progress in the decade or two since it was initially proposed.
The Red Line, which you are referring to, is one of the most used subway lines in the US. Combined with the Purple Line to Koreatown, the two are #9 of the list of most-used rail systems in the US...and that doesn't include the light rail systems (i.e., above-ground rails) of the Expo, Gold, and Blue lines.
Los Angeles is the 2nd biggest city in the US. Being number 9 on the list of most used railways in the US isn't exactly a huge accomplishment when much smaller cities like Boston appear above them on the list.
Elon's plan is very expensive and clearly won't help, if you're even mildly numerate (2400 whole people per hour at full capacity). It's also farcical to pretend this will happen without enormous piles of public money, both implicit in terms of right of way, and explicit via enormous subsidies. The proposed revenues are a dollar per ride! This thing is an enormous cash fire.
clearly won't help, if you're even mildly numerate (2400 whole people per hour at full capacity)
So you're defining "help" == "completely solve." Would you say that a program offering discounts to people who carpool to Dodger's stadium would not help unless it completely solved the problem? Would a gondola going to Dodger's stadium "not help?"
It's also farcical to pretend this will happen without enormous piles of public money, both implicit in terms of right of way, and explicit via enormous subsidies.
The whole point of the boring company is to get the tunnel boring infrastructure out of the government-laden, subsidy-heavy mode of operation. It's the same overall strategy as was behind SpaceX.
> The whole point of the boring company is to get the tunnel boring infrastructure out of the government-laden, subsidy-heavy mode of operation.
... I'm not sure I agree. Given that The Boring Company has spent most of its effort on selling its PRT (er, sorry, "Loop", since PRT is apparently so 20th century) technology, and has basically made no attempts to bid for any actual tunneling contracts, it's all about trying to make a new (well, new attempt at a never-successful old) transit mode and not about tunneling at all.
The Boring Company's own FAQ is a pretty damning citation. There is about one question on tunneling [1]. Most of the page is itself devoted to discussing Loop, and even then, it doesn't actually ask any hard questions, such as how they handle capacity or routing, given that the evidence of earlier such systems (e.g., automated baggage handling; PRT systems) is "this stuff doesn't work well."
[1] And there's quite a lot of facts on the page that are misleading or just plain wrong, particularly in the one question on tunneling.
You're claiming to know the intentions of the Boring Company based on the ordering and number of Frequently Asked Questions? Sorry, but that's not very compelling.
And there's quite a lot of facts on the page that are misleading or just plain wrong, particularly in the one question on tunneling.
That sounds actually substantive. Why not comment on those?
> You're claiming to know the intentions of the Boring Company based on the ordering and number of Frequently Asked Questions? Sorry, but that's not very compelling.
No, I'm claiming to know it based on what they're actually working on, a passing interest in civil engineering projects that's deep enough that I actually read the Environment Impact Statements and construction plans, particularly with regards to mass transit systems. I might not be an accomplished entrepreneur, but you're not going to sell shiny new tunneling technology with a mass transit system that utterly fails at the "mass" part. Elon Musk has also pretty much said on record (well, on Twitter) that he hates trains because he doesn't want to have to be in a crowd of people, which is a good sign that he's interested in seeing the not-mass transit aspect as the major focus and not the tunneling improvements.
> That sounds actually substantive. Why not comment on those?
I have commented on them at least three times in this HN three alone. If you can't figure out what those were, here they are:
1. Digging deeper is not a panacea. You have heat dissipation, drainage issues, and especially vertical (people) circulation problems.
2. No one builds tunnels for $1 billion/mi. The tunneling costs do not drive the cost inflation to $1 billion/mi.
3. Smaller diameter bores are nowhere near as much a cost savings as Musk suggests they are. TFA even points this out.
There's lots of other stuff, which keeps getting brought up every time there's a thread on this topic. You'd have to have pretty big blinders if you follow the technology to miss the discussions of how many things just don't add up.
If our standard is every little bit helps, then how about a midfield helipad? Could probably deliver a dozen spectators and double as pregame entertainment.
Clearly "every little bit helps" is as much of a straw-man as "must completely solve." Replacing a part of the transport for 2500 people, in precisely the part of the trip that is most likely to be congested, using electric vehicles certainly sounds like it would be of more benefit with much reduced carbon footprint and noise pollution than a midfield helipad.
You could transport 2500 people for a few thousand bucks using a few buses and setting aside a game-day express lane for those buses. And the best part is, if the East Hollywood/Silverlake trips are popular, you can scale quickly and easily--and even on the fly--by simply using more buses.
This is in fact what they already do for Dodgers fans taking public transportation to the game from Union Station.
A gondola has hardware that can be removed in the future, possibly even sold to another user. A tunnel would be very permanent and possibly cause problems in the future. As the article stated, it is very hard to expand the size of a tunnel once it has be constructed. This limited size means that it can not be upgraded in any meaningful way. Ultimately, for a plan like this to work, the tunnel should be constructed as large as possible so that there is room for future growth.
How is it that the logic is flawed? There are real-world examples of undersized tunnels limited the growth of a subway network. London was specifically called out in the article.
It's the exact opposite of YAGNI. It's attempting to build the ultimate end-all be-all up front. No wonder tunnel building is expensive, and all the projects wind up huge and bloated.
There are real-world examples of undersized tunnels limited the growth of a subway network. London was specifically called out in the article.
If a larger tunnel to Dodger stadium is needed, why couldn't it be dug below, with the old tunnel used to carry infrastructure for the new tunnel? That seems a solvable technical feat.
It sounds like you're trying to bring a software mindset to an infrastructure problem, which is somewhat laudable, but ultimately misguided in this instance.
In this instance, as others have pointed out, it's already clear that the Tunnel Elon is proposing doesn't carry enough passengers to make a dent in the transportation load for the stadium.
It sounds like you're trying to bring a software mindset to an infrastructure problem
It's more that I'm pointing out that the tunneling industry is stuck in a "tunnels are big, expensive, end-all be-all projects" which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, precluding the development of radically cheaper tunneling technologies.
> It's the exact opposite of YAGNI. It's attempting to build the ultimate end-all be-all up front. No wonder tunnel building is expensive, and all the projects wind up huge and bloated.
The cost of making an incremental change to software is not appreciably different from incorporating the change in the first place. The same does not hold true for infrastructure; even a minor retrofit can end up being very expensive, especially if there was no provisioning for it. Look at the impact of the Rosslyn station on the DC Metro: the only practical solution to the capacity issue is to bore new Blue Line tunnels and a new underground station, which can't be had for less than ~$1 billion. Provisioning to solve this at the original system construction would have cost somewhere in the region of $300 million or so (there are other, much cheaper alternatives that can't be built with the current track geometry).
By saving $300 million, you're ultimately setting yourself to spend 3 times that much in the future.
> If a larger tunnel to Dodger stadium is needed, why couldn't it be dug below, with the old tunnel used to carry infrastructure for the new tunnel? That seems a solvable technical feat.
Undermining a tunnel is the easiest way to do this, but it requires closing the old tunnel to do. Digging a new tunnel immediately underneath an old tunnel is going to introduce different stresses on the old tunnel, which is going to be more of an issue if you're boring a parallel tunnel rather than a cross tunnel. Furthermore, all of the access points now have to go deeper to reach the new tunnel, which could introduce passenger circulation issues. It will also have passenger circulation issues during construction.
Maintaining access to existing infrastructure during construction is complex after all.
Digging a new tunnel immediately underneath an old tunnel is going to introduce different stresses on the old tunnel
So then dig the new tunnel beside it.
Maintaining access to existing infrastructure during construction is complex after all.
For many complex industries, there is innovation and cost reduction. Digging larger parallel tunnels is something that the industry should be making easier and cheaper, leveraging the existing infrastructure. The mindset that "tunneling is expensive" is exactly the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which prevents such progress.
What if there are things in the way? Like... building foundations. Stations. Access to the first tunnel. Lots of stuff that might be reasonably expected to grow up in close proximity to a tunnel.
Digging two tunnels at once is going to be much cheaper and easier than digging one tunnel and then digging the second tunnel much later, especially if you never planned to dig the second tunnel.
What if there are things in the way? Like... building foundations.
Then dig deeper. Given the strategies talked about by Elon Musk, the original Boring Company tunnel would have been dug to avoid those in the first place.
Stations. Access to the first tunnel.
Those wouldn't have right of way problems.
Digging two tunnels at once is going to be much cheaper and easier than digging one tunnel and then digging the second tunnel much later, especially if you never planned to dig the second tunnel.
Therefore, the logic is to dig everything you might imagine you might need, ever. Therefore tunnels are always going to be super expensive and elaborate.
> Therefore, the logic is to dig everything you might imagine you might need, ever. Therefore tunnels are always going to be super expensive and elaborate.
Not everything you might imagine you might need, ever. But everything you can reasonably forecast to need in the next 50 years.
The thing about tunnels: tunnels aren't expensive, stations are (particularly the station mezzanines and the pedestrian circulation to reach them). A two-track subway line is only going to be ~30% more expensive than a one-track line, and a four-track line only ~50-60% more than a two-track line. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out which one you need: one-track lines are never a good idea, and four-track lines are only necessary for trunks in megacities. You can look at your demand and figure out if you're going to need to go to 8- or 10-car trains as your maximum train length. Not to mention that you also (as a city) have the ability to steer development to increase demand on your subway networks via tools like zoning.
Insisting that you have to build only to minimal, current demand scenarios is being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
I am not familiar with the soil under LA but in many cases it gets much more expensive to "stack" tunnels. The construction of the upper tunnel relies on the stability of the soils underneath for support. Constructing a tunnel underneath may require the lower tunnel to be much stronger to support the loads. Why not just build the tunnel larger in the first place?
If Musk wants to construct these tunnels, that if fine but I feel that the City of LA would be foolish to allow him to do it without ensure that the tunnels can be used for larger vehicles if the "skate" concept proves to be inadequate. This would come at little extra expense and would still allow Musk to test his concept but have a contingency plan if it does not work.
elon musk said that he plans for higher capacity by building multiple tunnels. There can be up to 30 tunnels stacked on top of each other, a few feet apart in depth, or more likely stacked around both vertically and horizontally.
That's akin to people saying the truth lies in the middle, a fallacy [1].
If you want to reach a conclusion you need to analyse all the situations, and figure out if the criticism is warranted yes or no. In case of the pedophile tweet my opinion is that, yes the criticism is warranted. YMMV..
..but I'm not sure we should have this discussion in this very thread..
Understanding the hype cycle doesn't tell you who is right. It just makes you more skeptical of going along with the hype cycle.
In particular, Elon Musk's bad behavior on Twitter doesn't tell us very much about the technical feasibility of building a tunnel, any more than it tells us whether a SpaceX rocket will fly. Mood affiliation might make it seem like it's closely related, but logically it's not.
It seems like this tunnel is better thought of as a tech demo that will be open to the public.
If it turns out to be more expensive than they think, they'll find out soon enough, without cost to taxpayers.
If it works, it won't carry much traffic, but it's proof of concept and people will have fun trying it. And Boring Company will be able to do something more ambitious with better proof of their claims.
This key graf at the end describes why it's a bad demo that may cost taxpayers a lot of money:
"The result is that the tunnel would have negative value to the region. As a transportation service based on how Musk wishes to construct and operate it, it has practically no value. But in the event of upzoning in West Los Angeles, the tunnel would complicate any possibility of rail under Sunset connecting Hollywood with Downtown. Metro may even need to acquire and demolish Musk's tunnel, or else dig under the tunnel, which would complicate intermediate stations in Silver Lake and Echo Park."
I think he's really reaching there. As a tech demo, this tunnel is not that important in the long run (low hours, low traffic, only used for entertainment traffic) and so could easily be shut down if something better is put in later.
But it’s a horrible POC. It’s not solving any serious mass transit problem. No, the Boring company exists to solve Musk’s “I don’t want to share space with other people” problem.
The real problem with The Boring Company is the fact that anyone takes it seriously as a form of mass transit. The damn idea is crowding out real solutions while we indulge Musk’s pipe dream.
We have known about real solutions for decades - but people won't accept them for various selfish NIMBY reasons.
Hell look at the sheer irrational hostility Google Bus faced - despite its sole purpose being to get the Googler traffic they were complaining about off the road. The cure is clear but they don't want to take their medicine.
The Google bus actually has something in common with this tunnel nonsense. Both are private enterprises. Google could have given money to expand the city bus network instead of running private buses. Elon could work with the LA public transport companies, but he is choosing not to.
The thing about contributing to public goods is that it benefits everybody. The problem with building private solutions is that even-if it has some public good (e.g. replacing many cars with one bus) it still creates an us-vs-them situation where mere mortals cannot take advantage of the Google bus.
Expecting people much less corporation to give away for public infrastructure is unrealistic in itself. That isn't Google's job. The city and its residents need to take responsibility. By definition municipal transportation either is doing things more efficiently than Google to be able to fund others or Google is paying more than they have to. Given that they aren't trying to undercut Google Bus expenses in a "Hey we could operate it cheaper for you and buy up the buses you already have for a long term contract" it is clearly not the previous.
I fully support improved public transit and good governance but it isn't Google's job to support it but the transit's job to support everbody and make the additional taxes worth it. Why should Google pay? They already get their share and it is up to the city and its residents to decide to use it that way. The public transit option always has to compete with private regardless of what the delusional gatekeeper attitude. Not to mention flexibility - if Google wants to bus their people to a convention instead of the usual routes they can.
Resentment is still an absurd case of sour grapes. Especially given the resistance to public transit infastructure expansion for fear it may bring them in contact with poor and minorities, housing expansion for it may change the facade from when they got their or devalue their absurdly inflated nest egg from artificial property tax stagnation. I bet anything the same people would flip out if they were told they couldn't use their private vehicles on public roads yet they want to do the same thing to Google buses. After they themselves vetoed alternatives.
Lets face it - the area's biggest root problem is an entitlement issue. It is one thing to want corporations to pay more taxes, it is another to stop every possible solution and then screech like howler monkeys over solutions that don't harm them. By all means hold corporations accountable for misconduct but this is just irrational. Other areas have been trying anything to replicate their success and failing. As an outsider it is painful to watch an already objectively great area squander their potential for further improvement and act so damn bratty and crazy.
I understand the outrage, but what are the "real" solutions, who is pushing them, and why aren't they gaining traction? Maybe tunnels suck, but at least there is something happening.
Trains. Lots of trains. Inside tunnels. On the surface. On elevated tracks. That interconnect in a network so you can get from anywhere to anywhere. On trains.
> and why aren't they gaining traction?
Because everytime someone points out mass transit is a solved problem, has been for over 100 years, everyone responds somehow saying "that's unrealistic!" or "eww gross you want me to sit next to someone else!"
I love trains. Still, other than a few major cities, they aren't a great way to get around in the states. It is a shame there isn't more public support for building more rail.
There's a reasonable limit on how high you can build, as well as noise concerns and NIMBY. Building over existing neighborhood is a nogo.
Train transfers are a pain in the ass. I live a block away from a rail station and only use it when going to the absolute heart of downtown. Even then I drive as close as I reasonably can and take the train for the last 3 miles. It saves me at least an hour round trip vs taking the train the whole way.
Bicycles and electric scooters combined with changes to the roads to give them priority over cars. We'd be better off in general if we didn't waste so many resources on making our countries work for cars.
Bikes aren't really a solution for lots of places in America. To much sprawl. Lots of non bike friendly weather. That said, in the places where bikes are reasonable, they are fairly convenient to use (bike lanes and whatnot). Still, they aren't widely used.
Bicycles and scooters aren't year-round solutions for huge parts of the US. You can't optimize your roads for something that is a non-starter for 1/3 to 1/2 of the year.
I doubt that any single solution would work for your entire country.
It works fairly well here in The Netherlands. The country is flat but it does have cold winters (two weeks of snow/ice and two-three months of close-to-or-under-freezing temperatures).
Whenever I have worked within cycling distance (15km or somewhere with a viable train connection) I've cycled all year round.
It would work in a city such as New York (which has a similar climate to here); the metro is already great for the bulk of the journey and bikes/e-bikes would work great for the last part. You'd just have to replace the cars.
Where in the US are bikes not suitable for 1/2 the year?
Are you thinking areas like Florida and Texas? I can see biking being tough in the hot/humid summer but wouldn't something like an electric scooter (where you're just standing there) be fine?
That's fair. My intuition is that a scooter would be ok, but I'm definitely not familiar with the kind of heat they get down there. I'm in Milwaukee WI, 95 and humid is our normal "hot summer day"
I think it might prove something more specific: is the cost as cheap as they claim? If so, it can be scaled up by building more, cheaper tunnels. Even if stations are the main cost, this might change the architecture.
As proof it only goes so far because each site is different, but it's a step towards justifying their claims.
As for crowding out, I haven't seen any other mass transit projects delayed because of them. Have you?
> It seems like this tunnel is better thought of as a tech demo that will be open to the public.
Except it sucks as a demo.
TBC is basically proposing a variation of Personal Rapid Transit. The main theoretical virtue of PRT is that it provides a point-to-point mass transit system; its main theoretical issue is that it is low capacity for the cost of its infrastructure. Demos should showcase strengths; if you're proposing improvements to technology, you should highlight your ability to overcome previous limitations.
This proposal does not highlight its capabilities, and gives ample room to excuse failures. It is planned to be single track: capacity will be utter trash. Point-to-point is pointless when there's only two points.
Of course the worst aspect is that the one-way, bursty nature means you need to have someplace to store the cars at each endpoint. It's not bad at a stadium, which is naturally going to be a massive dead space, but the other terminus is supposed to be a metro station. Either you're going to need to build a massive underground cavern (at which point boring a second tunnel and deadheading cars to empty space would be much cheaper [1]), or you're going to have to dedicate surface space to car storage--at a metro station, where logic dictates you should be having high density for commercial/residential purposes.
[1] The cost of subway lines is heavily dominated by the stations that need to be dug along the route. I haven't sized out dimensions, but it's not unreasonable to assume the necessary car storage is going to be larger than an underground mezzanine.
I'm assuming that, unlike when Musk is behaving badly on Twitter, they're not just winging it. He's hired engineers who designed these things and figured out the costs (as well as can be expected) before making the proposal.
If not, I guess we'll see. This project isn't big enough to prove what you want, but it'll prove some basic competence if it works.
I'm a huge baseball fan and saw this Twitter thread this morning[0]. Definitely an interesting scroll. There was a meeting yesterday at Dodger stadium to discuss this, that was announced just 12 hours prior. I'll bullet some high points.
* Some of the commenters at the meeting were actually SpaceX employees.
* It's an idea to boost attendance, meanwhile Dodgers led the majors in average attendance per game. (It's true the Dodgers have a lot of season tickets to companies, who might not actually use them).
"[According to the Boring Company FAQ,] The current standard for a one-lane tunnel is approximately 28 feet. By placing vehicles on a stabilized electric skate, the diameter can be reduced to less than 14 feet. Reducing the diameter in half reduces tunneling costs by 3-4 times.
"This claim is contradicted in professional literature. Studies of particle accelerator tunnels as well as rail tunnels that look at different diameters find that reducing the diameter in half reduces costs by a factor of two and not three or four."
That's actually quite surprising. I would have thought that changing the diameter would have no effect whatsoever on the price of boring a tunnel, to a first order of approximation. Almost none of the variables involved are dependent on the diameter of the tunnel.
Musk seems to think that costs for tunneling are proportional to the square of the diameter (i.e., proportional to cross-section). If you assume that the cost is dominated by the amount of spoil you need to excavate, that makes sense. But that's not the domination of the cost.
A tunnel bore is relatively cheap. Musk cites the costs of $1 billion/mi. subways, but that is a very malicious bait-and-switch. The tunneling cost for those subways come out to around $100-150M per track-mile of tunnel, and I suspect that includes the standard tunnel accoutrements: drainage, airflow, lighting, etc. Much of those accoutrements are invariant to the tunnel diameter, to a first approximation.
Tunnel-boring itself has some costs, but most of those don't scale as fast as cross-sectional area. Cutting head replacements and the ultimate spoil disposal are the only things I can think of that do. The TBM itself, and the tunnel shielding are going to scale linearly with circumference. Things like the power systems, spoil recovery, or manpower costs for manning the TBM are going to pretty much be invariant with size (assuming the size is generally the same magnitude).
All totaled, you'd expect the costs to scale somewhere around linearly with diameter/radius.
Well the area of a circular tunnel is proportial to the square of the diameter. Perhaps a lower area allows the bore to tunnel faster? That kinda makes sense, but I have no idea how much the area of a circle relates to tunnel boring in reality, if at all.
The tunnel boring machine would likely cost much more, for a larger tunnel, but it's fixed relative to the length and a capital expenditure, much of which can be recovered or re-used. The amount of material moved would be proportional to the area of the tunnel, but I can't see that as a major cost factor. A larger machine would need more lining material, and more workers...
It seems most of his ideas lately are like this. Was he always so...wrong? Or is something personally going on in his life? Rumors that he tweeted about the privatization of Tesla while on LSD seem to make a lot of sense when you watch his recent erratic behavior.
What I don't understand about the Boring company is that Musk's vision seems to be: Cheap tunnels so that we can throw lots and lots of cars down them thus alleviating congestion. Everyone gets mad and points out that cars driving down tunnels do nothing to alleviate congestion, because cars driving down tunnels result in tiny tiny capacity (2800 people per day in this case?) and that if you want to solve congestion just build more train tracks and run more trains on them.
Here's my question: Why is no one talking about the idea of using what Musk is pushing as a new incredible cheap way of building tunnels to build tunnels with trains in them?
Ask yourself this, if Tesla is so good at making autonomous driving software, and can make the cheapest batteries, and can automate manufacturing more than anyone deemed possible, why do they not sell these. Why do they target only half a million cars a year while they could completely take over multiple industries by becoming tier-1 supplier to various manufacturers? It is to maintain hype, the real truth is somewhat humbling.
The same applies to boring company, if they can dig tunnels so cheaply, they would become tbm suppliers or contractors, not an end to end solution.
Why don't they build a spur off the LA Metro from Union Station a short distance up to Dodger Stadium? They build a metro but it doesn't go where people want, like the airport, the Rose Bowl, or the new stadium they are building.
> They build a metro but it doesn't go where people want, like the airport, the Rose Bowl, or the new stadium they are building.
Metro rail connects some of the densest residential (South LA, Koreatown/Mid-Wilshire, Mid-City, Palms, Hollywood) and commercial (Long Beach, Pasadena, Koreatown, Hollywood, Downtown, Santa Monica) districts of the region.
Prioritizing Metro rail construction to bring people to POIs like LAX or the Rose Bowl for what amounts to a handful of trips a year per person would be a waste. Better to serve trips people make nearly every day, like commuting to work or school and going shopping.
POIs like the airport and entertainment venues are perfect for the Metro because they cause huge traffic jams, there is very little parking, and the added convenience for occasional riders would increase overall ridership. Metro for commuters is great, but what about everybody else? If you want people to take the Metro, go where they want to go. I don't use the Metro for commuting but would use it to go the the airport or ball game to avoid traffic and parking.
If you're able-bodied, the walk from Chinatown station to Dodger Stadium is pretty easy and very pleasant until you get to the stadium grounds -- where you are shoved aside for cars to climb the hill into the parking lots. I really wish the stadium would improve pedestrian access; at least place a real curbed sidewalk at the downtown gate.
It seems most of his ideas lately are like this. Was he always so...wrong? Or is something personally going on in his life? Rumors that he tweeted about the privatization while on LSD seem to make a lot of sense when you watch his recent erratic behavior.
SpaceX: How will we fund the amount of rocket fuel required to get the stuff to Mars that can produce an atmosphere? If producing an atmosphere isn't required, then how will indoor atmosphere be maintained sustainably (financially)? Matt Damon's math didn't seem to work out in that movie...
Tesla: So far so good, but what about battery recycling?
“We are at the very beginning in energy storage in general,” says Phil Hermann, chief energy engineer at Panasonic Eco Solutions. “Most of the projects currently going on are either demo projects or learning experiences for the utilities. There is very little direct commercial stuff going on. “Elon Musk is out there saying you can do things now that the rest of us are hearing and going, ‘really?’ We wish we could but it’s not really possible yet.”
https://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla-ba...
Please don't link to Phil Mason / Thunderf00t. In addition to being a misogynist (top videos include "Feminism versus FACTS" and "Why feminism poisons everything"), he's also a food scientist posing as a rocket scientist.
Please don't assert that someone's beliefs or advocacy about a political movement make them wrong about facts. Classic ad hominem fallacy. Listening to people making sound arguments about X even though you disagree with them about Y is healthy, and the lack of this health is a major intellectual problem of this century in my humble opinion. Listen more, judge less. Post and watch more things from people with whom you disagree. And don't shut people down just because their views on unrelated topics are not palatable to you.
There's a threshold to things like that. Would you honestly watch Alex Jones's video evaluating technical facts raised if it was posted? At some point you can discount people / publications as generally not caring about facts. It's fine to deny them the ad revenue.
Absolutely. When talking about matters of science and physics, Alex Jones has a very poor track record to say the least. He's demonstrated a strong history of inaccuracy and blatantly ignoring facts to fabricate sensational stories. The opposite of what we should appreciate about some of Thunderf00t's contributions, in fact.
As much as I disagree with Thunderf00t's political opinions and how much I hate his style, he has a pretty damn good track record on dismantling hypetrains of physical impracticality.
More clearly, if Alex Jones had a good track record of accuracy or predictions on anything, then his contributions would be valid and shouldn't be discredited because of his opinion on unrelated things.
You're right, the fact that he's an asshole just means he doesn't deserve link and ad revenue. The fact that he's unqualified to make many of his engineering claims is why you shouldn't use his videos in arguments.
I've observed a dearth of videos going into technical detail about why the "busted" things will succeed. I'd like to see them.
Thunderf00t does have a great track record in predicting the failure of many pipe dream techs including solar roadways and fontus and waterseer and that thorium car. Who exactly is qualified to do so? Basically anybody with a cursory understanding of physical forces and skepticism, which he has.
I'm not sure why you set the bar so high for reasonable skepticism informed by very, very basic physics
> Thunderf00t does have a great track record in predicting the failure of many pipe dream techs including solar roadways and fontus and waterseer and that thorium car.
Thunderf00t takes things, let's say Scio, and shows how, despite marketing videos and press attention and funding, they're complete nonsense. Then he shows what the state of the art is, or what the basic physics say. Then he does follow-up videos when they fail. The Waterseer series is absolute gold.
What references do you need? A chemistry or physics book and what the failed projects actually say when and as they fail.
Properly justify it? Read his YouTube page and video list. I didn't even get into the racist shit. I'm going to let you guess what "Who's killing who, by race and gender, FBI statistics" and "Black Son of a MULTIMILLIONAIRE, STILL the SJW victim!" are about.
Before you say "ad hominem:" no, that doesn't apply here. He's not a credible source.
Speaking against a particular brand of feminism does not make one a misogynist. From watching his videos, it's pretty clear that he isn't prejudiced against women. He just calls out bullshit claims by the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, who is on record stating that video games are a 'male sex fantasy' and whose only credential is being a perpetual victim. People like Phil Mason and Stephen Fry are a desperately needed public voice against bullshit disguised as feminism or social justice.
If Anita Sarkeesian went unchecked, games like GTA would be banned by now and reclassified as rape simulators.
This attitude of blindly dismissing people's arguments or entire credentials just because you bought into an agenda, this refusal to engage in civil debate and discuss matters on their merit. I think this is one of the factors destroying democracies around the world today. Everything must be polarizing, everyone expressing views you disagree with must be shunned. Any attempts to debate established status quo must be shouted down.
She is all of those things by virtue of playing public victim. She was a no name vlogger with a handful of subscribers. Her entire 'career', if you can call it that, began when the internet overwhelmed her kickstarter to fund a bunch of videos about how misogynistic video games are. She's the Kim Kardashian of feminism and an insult to 2nd and 3rd wave feminists who fought to improve society through intelligent discourse.
Watch this and tell me that you think she is making an intelligent argument about anything. And while you're at it, have a think about why the comments and votes might be disabled on those videos.
I'm aware of who Anita is, and I have no expectation of changing your mind about her.
That said, I think she was "all of those things" when people contributed over 100k to her Kickstarter, which was before the Gamergate harassment started. So she was earning her keep well before she was made the "public victim," as you say.
Of course the comments are disabled for her videos. Normal YouTube comments are toxic enough. She literally got bomb threats over scheduled appearances on conference panels – do you think comments on her videos are productive? If your Twitter was filled by anonymous users threatening to rape you, and kill your parents, etc., then you'd disable comments on your videos too.
> Speaking against a particular brand of feminism does not make one a misogynist. From watching his videos, it's pretty clear that he isn't prejudiced against women.
I have an issue with naming of those videos. It's great to call out people who misinterpret some labels and are harmful to others. But calling that "facts vs feminism" isn't helping. His other videos manage to call out specific things like solar highway, rather than being called "tech vs facts". Why imply that feminism is bad if you're going to talk about one specific person's idea? (that's not generally accepted)
He doesn't talk about just one person's idea though. Have you actually watched any of those videos? They're not ideally named and they're not his best content, but to pass that off as misogynistic is just beyond disingenuous.
I'm not saying they are or aren't misogynistic. Just that they're really badly named to be clickbaits and feed on the existing hostility against a bigger community. I've seen a few fragments and honestly they don't make me interested in analysing the whole thing. What they don't seem to do though is help any cause beyond getting more popular and setting up us-vs-them ideas.
Usable as commercial products? What product does the boring company have? They've asserted things will be cheaper, but haven't sold a ticket.
So far the boring company is a money pit. It remains to be seen if they can accomplish anything you suggest they have. For now they're still just a marketing engine.
One of the main reasons they say they'll build tunnels cheaper and faster is because they plan to make their tunnels half the diameter of other tunnels. It's like someone saying they can make cheeseburgers faster and cheaper than anyone else, but when you order one they bring you a slider instead of a normal full size burger.
The "hole" is that they think construction costs are too high based on "engineering literature". While the literature does undoubtedly say this, Musk's MO with SpaceX is doing things way, way cheaper than competitors, so I'm interested to see how he handles it.
Musk's MO with SpaceX is doing things way, way cheaper than competitor
Not sure why we give credit to Musk for SpaceX's success, given that it's his COO (Gwynne Shotwell) that is responsible for all of its operational success in the past few years. Case in point: despite Musk micromanaging Tesla, it's failed time after time to hit its self-imposed benchmarks; meanwhile--at Space X, where Musk has minimal management oversight, they've met and exceeded self-imposed and external benchmarks ahead of schedule.
Evidence strongly suggests that the Musk MO is the wrong MO, and he should let the professionals who know what they're doing handle things.
Decades of civil engineering differs with you. The cost to move a cubic yard of soil is rather well known for a given area. Labor costs are well established. I don't see how he is going to cut enough corners to make it cheaper by any noticeable amount. Privately funded earthwork projects are nothing new.
>The cost to move a cubic yard of soil is rather well known for a given area
Given traditional technologies and techniques
> Labor costs are well established
Primarily for union labor using traditional tools and techniques.
When spacex was started, the cost to move a kg of satellite into low earth orbit was well known. The cost of a new rocket development program from an engineering hours / labor cost perspective was also well established.
He broke a few assumptions people had, which resulted in dramatically lower costs.
I don't see why that strategy wouldn't _fundamentally_ play out similarly for TBC.
Traditional technologies and techniques for earth moving are rather simple and well refined. Moving soil still requires one to excavate the soil and transport the soil. I can't see any way around that. There are only so many ways to improve on this model. In rural environments it is possible to use larger haul trucks to move the materials. The urban nature of the construction site will limit the size of vehicles that can be used to transport the materials. As for the excavation equipment, a tunnel boring machine (TBM) is obviously the tool of choice. Maybe some efficiencies can be gained with the TBM through some sort of re-usability.
The space analogy, in mind, is not a great one. Prior to SpaceX, launches were generally a rare and expensive thing. Musk has changed that by making the process more efficient. Earth work, on the other hand, is done every day. There is likely a large dirt moving operation somewhere near every person that will see this thread. Be it excavation for the foundation of a large building or the construction of a roadway, moving earth is extremely common.
[edit] Clarity in the last sentence of the first paragraph.
> I don't see why that strategy wouldn't _fundamentally_ play out similarly for TBC.
Because they have given a reason why they expect lower costs. They don't expect to be able to actually reduce the cost of a boring a tunnel at fixed diameter; they want to bore smaller tunnels and assert that's good enough.
Another super-negative article. Let them try and pay for it I say. As a fellow nobody, I'd never think to stand in the way of folks attempting to improve things.
The route is good. I've often thought the Red line itself should go a more direct route down Sunset. The Vermont leg could be reused as a north/south from Exposition to Griffith Park where traffic is also horrendous. The Purple line uses the rest. Unlikely in my lifetime, however.
There are a few errors in the article as well. The red line turn where the map shows it connecting is an open plaza in the middle of a three road intersection:
Hollywood-Prospect/Vermont/Sunset.
[1] - http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/gondola-proposal/
[2] - http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-downtown-str...