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.
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.