Elon Musk Unveils 1.14-Mile Boring Company Tunnel (cnbc.com) 186
Last night, Elon Musk unveiled his vision of a high-speed tunnel system he believes could ease congestion and revolutionize how millions of commuters get around cities. CNBC reports: Musk, who founded the Boring Co. two years ago after complaining that traffic in Los Angeles was driving him "nuts," says the demonstration tunnel cost approximately $10 million to complete. Engineers and workers have been boring the 1.14-mile-long tunnel underneath one of the main streets in Hawthorne, California. One end of the tunnel starts in a parking lot owned by Musk's Space X. The other end of the demonstration tunnel is in a neighborhood about a mile away in Hawthorne.
Tuesday afternoon, the Boring Co. gave reporters demonstration rides through the tunnel in modified Tesla Model X SUVs, going between 40 and 50 miles per hour. Engineers have attached deployable alignment wheels to the two front wheels of the Model X. Those alignment wheels stick out to the side of the main wheels and act as a bumper along the track walls inside the tunnel, keeping the Model X on course and preventing the vehicle from running into the side walls of the tunnel. While the Boring Co.'s first tunnel may be complete, it is far from being finished. The surfaces are bumpy and have yet to be smoothed out. As a result, the demonstration ride, for now, is rough and passengers in the Model X definitely feel the alignment wheels bumping into the track walls to keep the SUV on course.
Tuesday afternoon, the Boring Co. gave reporters demonstration rides through the tunnel in modified Tesla Model X SUVs, going between 40 and 50 miles per hour. Engineers have attached deployable alignment wheels to the two front wheels of the Model X. Those alignment wheels stick out to the side of the main wheels and act as a bumper along the track walls inside the tunnel, keeping the Model X on course and preventing the vehicle from running into the side walls of the tunnel. While the Boring Co.'s first tunnel may be complete, it is far from being finished. The surfaces are bumpy and have yet to be smoothed out. As a result, the demonstration ride, for now, is rough and passengers in the Model X definitely feel the alignment wheels bumping into the track walls to keep the SUV on course.
Re:Also Reinvented the electric car. (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Working implementations of other people's ideas is still value.
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Congratulations Elon, you have invented the Obahn.
You meant "implemented", or maybe "made practical".
affordability = scalability (Score:2)
The thing that Elon Musk does is drive down cost to enable scalability. This isn't about a bumpy prototype tunnel, this is about looking at the tradespace and finding the combination of attributes that may enable this architecture to be affordable when it is scaled.
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So, ultimately, maybe like some sort of subterranean train?
Except you can drive the carriage all the way to your house after you arrive at your station.
Re:affordability = scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
He only drives down costs by cutting corners. His current tunnel lacks
If and when Elon constructs an actual transit tunnel he would have to follow NFPA 130 (TBC is currently advertising a position for a life and safety officer knowledgeable in NFPA 130 on their website) This code details a number of required safety features. The tunnel must have automated fire detection and sprinkler systems, the ventilation system must be sized large enough to quickly extract smoke. You need to have an emergency walkway of a minimum width and clear of obstructions. You need to have egress points at regular intervals either to another tunnel or to the surface. These egress points need to be shielded by fire rated doors. You need to have emergency lighting. You need to have standpipes for firefighters to connect their hoses too. Etc. etc.
Oh and this tunnel was neither dug faster nor cheaper than any other tunnel.
For a better comparison Super Excavators (the previous owners of Godot) used the exact same machine to build a 1,640 ft sewer overflow tunnel for $12.4 million, or scaling up $38 million/mile, right up there with Elon's $40 million cost, and the contract had profit factored into it as well and was done in a more challenging geology and included digging deeper access shafts that what Elon did. So I guess the Proof of Concept is that Elon can spend more money digging a tunnel using the exact same machine at a shallower depth and easier ground than an existing tunneling contractor.
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He won't have to follow fire code in California (Score:3, Funny)
A transit system based on tunnels won't have to worry about fire code in California. The fire code will be long forgotten centuries before he finishes the environmental impact studies. He'll need to make sure it's waterproof, because California will be underwater before they approve something that could effect the habitat of a pair of Palo Alto earthworms.
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Maybe you meant "alter".
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Sadly, I am pretty underwhelmed so far. Once I saw the NFPA130 job posting I realized they now understand how badly they screwed up. What they “accomplished” as an unsafe tunnel that is not exceptional in any way.
It is like they approached the problem one-dimensionally.
Re:affordability = scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:affordability = scalability (Score:4)
History will remember Musk as one of our generation's greatest inventors.
What, exactly, has he invented?
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I actually think Musk is brilliant-- just not what we know of the tunnel concept. I would be surprised if there weren't big parts that we had no idea about though, as the waffling on seemingly import items like "skates" does not make sense. I think he is trying to figure out a vision he can actually deliver today for perception, but the master plan is very much in flux.
The part I am less confident about is if maybe this was just a "hey, I can get a 12' TBM cheap... would be fun to play with!" thing. Addi
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TFS indicates the cost of the mile long tunnel at ~10 million dollars, and TBCP (The Boring Company Presentation) used the same number and noted that this was their first tunnel.
Unless there is some funny math there, a serious possibility, the noobs did it for ~1/4th the cost of the pros on their first try.
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Oh and this tunnel was neither dug faster nor cheaper than any other tunnel.
For a better comparison Super Excavators (the previous owners of Godot) used the exact same machine to build a 1,640 ft sewer overflow tunnel for $12.4 million, or scaling up $38 million/mile, right up there with Elon's $40 million cost, and the contract had profit factored into it as well and was done in a more challenging geology and included digging deeper access shafts that what Elon did. So I guess the Proof of Concept is that Elon can spend more money digging a tunnel using the exact same machine at a shallower depth and easier ground than an existing tunneling contractor.
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Yes, I am going to hold Musk to the numbers if he wants cities to allow these sorts of tunnel networks. But a one off prototype tunnel is going to have higher costs than if you just keep digging a network of tunnels. And the comparison you have is with a sewer tunnel. No he has not innovated in tunnel building, but this is a transportation systems problem not merely a tunnel building problem
The basic principle of cost reduction
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And the comparison you have is with a sewer tunnel
And your point is? Is a sewer tunnel somehow more or less complex than what musk has shown so far? Why are the costs not comparable based on what's been dug so far?
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For a better comparison Super Excavators (the previous owners of Godot) used the exact same machine to build a 1,640 ft sewer overflow tunnel for $12.4 million, or scaling up $38 million/mile
Musk said it cost about $10 million to build the 1.14-mile demonstration tunnel.
So you are saying their very first ever test tunnel came in at 25% of the price of the established competitor?
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, or scaling up $38 million/mile, right up there with Elon's $40 million cost,
From TFA
Musk said it cost about $10 million to build the 1.14-mile demonstration tunnel.
So he came in 75% cheaper. $40m includes the R&D.
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It took a long time for SpaceX to build rockets that could reliably land again,
Why the past tense? What's the criteria here for deciding that "reliably" has been achieved?
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Using a rocket on at least two payloads successfully, which I understand has been done.
I don't think that is enough to earn the "reliably" description.
"Come eat at my fugu restaurant! The last two customers didn't die!"
Re:affordability = scalability (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike Spacex and Tesla, it has been clear from the earliest press releases that this tunnel business doesn't really have much to do with scientific innovation or invention. All Elon Musk realized is that he might be able to make money off of something which has been a bit of an open secret for the last ten years at least - that urban taxpayers were paying literally billions of dollars for short subway expansions (the Second Avenue Subway in New York being the biggest example), when there is absolutely no reason it couldn't be done for orders of magnitude less money. It's a combination of insane over-engineering (why the hell would you spend a half a billion dollars to climate control three subway stations in a subway system with over 200 un-climate-controlled stations, for example) and massive corruption. The tunnel boring machine used to dig the Second Avenue Subway required 5 to 10 people to operate. The city paid 50 to 60 people. There are pictures of them all standing around. Musk probably thinks he can write some simple software and do it with one dude. And he's right. Musks ten million dollar one mile tunnel is basically a giant "ha ha suckers" to the people (me included) who financed a 4 billion dollar one mile tunnel in Manhattan. Some city is going to give him a contract, and he's going to deliver, because it should never have cost 4 billion dollars to put a train in a tunnel to begin with.
Re:affordability = scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
A/C was the least of it -- why did the (two-track) 2nd Ave Subway stations need to have a full concourse level rather than just a narrow "bridge" to cross the tracks?
However, there were problems other than corruption. NYC is built on bedrock, which is a bitch to dig through. And it's a much older city than L.A., so there are poorly-market utility lines and other infrastructure underground -- half the battle was locating this stuff and moving it, as well as avoiding damaging the foundations of buildings.
As far as the tunnel-boring machine, was this thing running 24/7? There are 168 hours in a week -- with 40 hour weeks and vacation time, 5 crews sound about right. Add some support staff for repairs and the like, and you have your 50 people.
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That's a nice cheap line, just isn't true. (Score:4, Insightful)
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and the US now nolonger is reliant on Russia for ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS
I'm as big a SpaceX fan as the next guy, but Crew Dragon hasn't even had an uncrewed launch yet (scheduled for 2019 January 17). We're still very much reliant on foreign providers, for now.
I wish I was "failing" like Tesla (Score:4, Insightful)
Musk failed so miserably with Tesla.
I mean Tesla loses even against "domestic" competition like the Chevrolet Bolt which beat the snot out of Tesla Model 3 by 20% price-wise.
LOL. The Chevy Bolt sold 3,949 cars in the third quarter of 2018; at the same time, Tesla was making and selling more Model 3 cars per week than that. For the whole quarter Tesla sold 55,840 Model 3 cars. That's over 14 times the sales.
The Model 3 costs more, but it's also a better car than the Bolt, and it appears that customers are willing to pay the premium.
https://electrek.co/2018/10/03/chevy-bolt-ev-sales-slumping-us/ [electrek.co]
In November 2018, the Tesla Model 3 was the 6th highest selling car on the market, period. The Model 3 outsold the Ford Fusion and the Nissan Sentra. It sold about double compared to Volkswagen Jetta and about triple compared to the Toyota Prius.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/08/tesla-model-3-completely-crushing-us-luxury-car-competition-10-cleantechnica-charts/ [cleantechnica.com]
In fairness, the above is with a $7,500 tax credit. That credit will be reducing soon and then will go away. But by then, Tesla should have their $35,000 model available to sell.
Elon Musk had hoped to have the $35K car available by the end of 2018. That's not happening but it looks like it will happen in the first half of 2019.
https://insideevs.com/base-35000-tesla-model-3-production-8-months/ [insideevs.com]
Another fun fact: the Honda Civic and the Honda Accord are two of the top five trade-ins of Model 3 customers.
https://electrek.co/2018/08/01/tesla-model-3-top-5-trade-in-cars/ [electrek.co]
I don't think the word "failure" is the right word to describe Tesla or the Model 3. I expected it to beat the stuffing out of the BMW 3-series and other luxury cars; I didn't expect it to be competitive with the Honda Civic or the Nissan Sentra.
Also, for your prediction about Japanese car makers beating Tesla to come true, the Japanese car makers are going to need a guaranteed source of batteries. Tesla spent the big money to build their own battery factory, which at the same time gives them the lowest cost on batteries and a guaranteed supply of batteries. There will be millions of Tesla cars on the road before any other company can even begin to compete with them.
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Well, the Hyundai Kona is getting favorable comparisons to the Model 3, so it is about to come under big price pressure.
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According to Sandy Munro, the Model 3 has quality flaws he's not seen since Kia's of the 90's.
Sandy Munro also slammed the Model 3 chassis as being "it's too heavy and it costs too much money", while praising the Chevy Bolt chassis as "a good example of a well done body".
Suggesting insufficient Tesla hires with experience in finite element analysis.
Sandy Munro later said he "had to eat crow" and called the Model 3 "a symphony of engineering".
He said the Model 3 body is too heavy and too complicated. Elon M
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I see steveha, that you did not attempt to address your pathetic attempt at deception
Nope, no deception. What motive would I even have? Nobody cares what I say. I try to win people over with facts, but asserting my opinions is pointless because nobody cares.
As for the rest, congratulations, you successfully demonstrated that sometimes I get up early and sometimes I stay up late. Well done!
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and have a nice life.
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The costs will be driven down by the tax payer. Just like with SpaceX, the GigaFactory and all his other projects.
Not to mention the interstate highway system. Guess who paid for that?
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Well, obviously the roads, but what else has Rome ever done for us.
If you're building a tunnel... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're building a tunnel, laying a set of rails and an electric rail is a relatively small cost compared to the tunnel itself. The vehicles should run on rails -- metal-to-metal friction is lower than rubber to concrete, and they provide a way of powering vehicles without dealing with toxic batteries.
I'm not suggesting building a conventional subway, but rather some form of personal rapid transit. Designed correctly, the vehicles could "switch" themselves to different tracks without needing the complex switching equipment used by trains and subways today.
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Re:Love those things (Score:2)
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Re:If you're building a tunnel... (Score:5, Insightful)
You also predicted Tesla would fail... (Score:1, Troll)
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The idea is to have entry and exit ramps that merge with the transportation rail. That way the personal vehicle doesn't disrupt the rest of the people moving along. Then the personal pod/car/etc can easily leave or enter the "station" with minimum delay.
Rail a lot riskier and more exacting (Score:3, Interesting)
The vehicles should run on rails -- metal-to-metal friction is lower than rubber to concrete, and they provide a way of powering vehicles without dealing with toxic batteries.
LOL at "toxic batteries" - you aren't going to be eating them and the material inside get recycled.
As for rails - the reason not to use them is that laying them down is a lot more exacting. It adds a lot of needless delay to building out the tunnels, a lot of maintenance in the tunnels to make sure they stay aligned exactly. Not usin
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These "personal" cars won't have the level of monitoring and inspection that city subways have
Holy shit have you ever BEEN on an SF [sfexaminer.com] or NYC [nytimes.com] subway, and also in a Tesla owners car??
At least in Musk's tunnels a jacked up car just rolls in neutral off to a side channel instead of blocking every car behind it for an entire morning.
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metal-to-metal friction is lower than rubber to concrete
uh... you know that high rubber to concrete friction is a good thing, no? Cars don't move on roads "in spite" of the friction, but thanks to it.
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But isn't that the problem too? Rubber is good at acceleration. Metal wheels aren't. For sufficiently long tunnels where the metal wheels can get up to speed and just cruise, I think you're right. But for the first few "proof of concept" tunnels that are supposed to be pretty small, only a mile or two, I don't think metal wheels give a significant friction advantage compared to the "wow" factor of being able to accelerate and brake faster.
For a 10 mile
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Like those plastic tubs at the airport scanner?
Only bigger, of course.
Did something change? (Score:2)
Re: Did something change? (Score:1)
He closed the tunnel to dodger stadium. This is the Hawthorne tunnel
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Because he isn't a very smart man
Fixed that for you. Here’s what a real tunnel engineer has to say about this.
So really rather disappointed in the presentation and Elon still seems fairly ignorant on some pretty major obstacles when it comes to tunneling.
First thing I want to point out is that when Elon was touting the fact that tunnels are immune to to the effects of weather he completely ignored the threat of flooding for tunnels which is a serious issue. Look at NYC tunnels in the aftermath of Sandy for proof of that, and many of those tunnels had fairly extensive drainage systems and still flooded.
Also a major issue with his plan to reuse "dirt" from onsite to create concrete liner segments is that not all aggregate material is suitable for use in concrete. A major limiting factor is that the aggregate needs to contain very little if any silica to avoid reacting with the alkali cement and forming a expansive chemical gel. You also can't have any pyrite present in the aggregate for the same reason you want to avoid silica, and you want avoid expansive shale as well. Then there is the fact that a lot of material is simply lacking the UCS strength to be a suitable aggregate for concrete, clays, mica, mudstone, etc are all to weak for use and fairly common.
On to the TBM itself, I'm assuming all comparisons where against Godot in terms of things such as power output. Elon talked about increasing the power of the machine by 3x, we know from the published spec sheet that Godot which is a Lovat tbm built in 2005 has 1400 hp, 3x that gets you to 4200 hp, for comparison Bertha which recently finished tunneling a road tunnel in Seatle boasted 25,000 hp. More to the point though is that increasing cutterhead speed isn't a universal solution. In soft ground with a closed face machine, like what Elon has encountered so far, you want a faster cutting head as it is primarily being used for soil mixing and you don't need very much torque. However, in hard rock or in an open face machine you typically want a lower speed cutterhead with higher torque so you can shift and clear the muck. And in mixed face conditions you want a slower cutterhead speed down to reduce shock loading on your cutting tools as you constantly go between soft and hard ground. The Robbins Company has published white papers on how they've found that slowing cutterhead rotation dramatically increase cutting tool life, decreases downtime for maintenance, and increases overall productivity.
Also Linestorm appears to have considerably larger openings in its face shield which works great for soft ground with no rock in it. However, the gamble you take when you run large openings like that is that you can ingest oversized boulders which will either clog or damage your screw conveyor which is you'll only see contractors run that sort of wide open face when they are absolutely certain they won't encounter any boulders or rock features along the way.
Lastly, Elon talked about how average subway speeds aren't that fast but I feel like he is massively underestimating the throughput capacity of subway systems, For example NYC's Times Square subway station sees an average of 179,000 passengers per day. Assuming TBC deploys their 16 person pods they've proposed and everyone of those pods is filled to capacity, that represents more than 11,000 pod stops in a location per day, or a pod using the station every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, that's assuming you have the exact same demand at 11:30PM as you do at 5:00PM on the way home from work
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Lastly, Elon talked about how average subway speeds aren't that fast but I feel like he is massively underestimating the throughput capacity of subway systems, For example NYC's Times Square subway station sees an average of 179,000 passengers per day. Assuming TBC deploys their 16 person pods they've proposed and everyone of those pods is filled to capacity, that represents more than 11,000 pod stops in a location per day, or a pod using the station every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, that's assuming you have the exact same demand at 11:30PM as you do at 5:00PM on the way home from work
I presume that the point isn't to replace the Times Square subway station with one tiny entry point into just one tunnel? That would seem to completely defeat the logic of making a larger number of smaller tunnels.
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This is the technical test tunnel. What was shut down was the tunnel that was trying to test it with members of the public.
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The canceled project was the Sepulveda Boulevard tunnel. The backstory on that was that LA gave them an preliminary exemption from a (possible multi-year) environmental impact study. The fine folks of the Brentwood Residents Coalition took offense to that and sued.
That's the name to remember when you are baking on the 405. 'Brentwood Residents Coalition'
Yikes (Score:2)
Underwhelming (Score:2)
Musk keeps redefining what "finished" means in terms of this tunnel, and people keep lapping it up. He seems to have inherited a portion of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.
I'm sure if and when it actually has sleds running in it circa 2020-2021, people will swear that was the timetable all along.
Rail engineer commentary (Score:5, Informative)
A rail engineer made a few interesting comments [twitter.com] comparing this tunnel (which I guess admittedly is more of a proof of concept?) to an actual train. A few numbers extrapolated out of the press release; it doesn't really compare favourably:
To put it another way, Musk's shoddily-built tunnel will have to carry over EIGHT VEHICLES PER SECOND to match the capacity of an underground railway. No chance.
Just build some fucking trains, America!
Nobody walks in LA (Score:2)
You mean like get our of my car and walk? Dude, only a nobody walks in LA
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I worked for a company based in Santa Monica. Even the employees who worked less than a mile away from the office would still drive and complain about the traffic; it was literally insane.
As for the article:
The key part of this isn't moving massive amounts of people; it's about moving their cars with them so they can cover great distances in a shorter period of time and still be able to go "the last mile" that transit doesn't cover.
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That ignores the fact that railways don't get you everywhere, but cars do.
I moved cities two years ago, and was practically forced to change my commute from train to car. My previous location of both house and workplace enabled me to commute by train easily and I enjoyed it. Read books on the train, half an hour, it was very nice. New location, train is still nearby, but workplace isn't near any train station. It would take me 90 minutes to go by one train, then another train, then a bus. Even in the worst
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Just build some fucking trains, America!
Or maybe you could not compare some tiny proof of concept to a standard built out railway system. The rail engineer is completely dense in his comparison.
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You know a proof of concept is so called because it proves a concept, right?
Yep. Unfortunately the engineer is criticizing a pilot which doesn't exist, not the concept. Or did you actually think Musk's grand scheme was to have Model Xs drive down his tunnel, in which case you've clearly been paying zero attention to any of Musk's projects and the process they go through.
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Which is not possible. Muskâ(TM)s tunnel cost $40 million per mile. The last company useing the literally the exact same machine bored a tunnel for $38 million per mile.
Interesting.
At the price of tunnel digging it just seems like madness to do it and then not try to maximise the throughput of it with mass transit.
My city has built several big cross-city tunnels in the last decade and they seem great now, but in a couple years the traffic in them will be bad - one of them has been bottlenecked in peakhour because one end simply doesn't have the capacity to redistribute the traffic.
Incorrect figures (Score:2)
Which is not possible. Muskâ(TM)s tunnel cost $40 million per mile.
In the presentation he said it was $10 million for 1.3 miles.
Also stated - recently completed subway expansions in NYC were about $2 BILLION per mile.
This is just V1 of Musk's tunneler, they have other iterations to go that are cheaper and faster.
In the end the goal *is* multiple tunnels for throughput. As Musk said, once you go 3D you can do as many tunnels as you need.
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The problem is, digging isn't exactly rocket surgery. It has its majority issues though. I don't believe the hard part is the digging though.
Making people happy you're digging beneath their feet is hard. Not hitting any existing underground utilities, a downright nightmare. The main problem, as always with public works infrastructure, is bureaucracy and nimbyism. The secondary problem is everyone with a modicum of power wants their cut.
How do you get people to agree to something where a handful get
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How far down do you think utilities go anyway? Musk is tunneling way below electrical/sewage/etc.
In the presentation he mentioned that when they finished the tunnel and drilled through the other side the person in the house next door never even noticed.
The main problem, as always with public works infrastructure, is bureaucracy and nimbyism. The secondary problem is everyone with a modicum of power wants their cut.
Now that is for-real, except that when the benefits of many small tunnels become apparent as
His post is correct but so is Musk (Score:1)
Musks current tunnels fails to meet any safety requirements
Bullshit fear mongering, source? Musk said the tunnel casings are rated for 4x the max load they need to handle (even considering earthquakes).
Now on to the civil engineers letter:
And as far as power goes, large and mid size TBMs are often connected right to the electric grid with their own dedicated substations.
Which is stupid since you need to manage cables.
A big limiting factor of most TBMs is cutting tool life. In extreme hardrock conditions c
Just when you thought congestion was bad enough... (Score:2)
lots of trucks (Score:2)
it's not about how fast you bore, it's about how fast you can take away the dirt.
that's just a fecking lot of trucks
Speed ratings on tires (Score:1)
If they are going to propel cars at 150 mph, they better make damn sure that the folks that use this tunnel have tires that are rated for that speed.
If you want to see an outstanding achievement (Score:4, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If you want to see an outstanding achievement, look at the Shinkansen train in Japan. 60 years in operation, millions of passengers, zero lethal accidents, super-convenient, super-fast, and look, ma, no pointless tunnels.
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Define "pointless" tunnels, as Shinkansen surely does use tunnels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Gotthard Base Tunnel is outstanding. Musk's tunnel isn't remarkable for being outstanding, but for being cheaply built. Even at $200 million per mile, the Gotthard Base Tunnel cost 20 times more than Musk's tunnel. This price difference could make a huge difference for cities wanting to build subways or road tunnels.
How is this better than a subway? (Score:2)
A conventional subway requires the same tunneling as Musk's tunnel. A conventional subway carries a lot more people than individual cars. Entering and leaving the subway will require vehicle elevators, also less efficient than people elevators. Can anyone explain how sending electric cars with an additional set of wheels underground to run through the tunnel is going to be more efficient than just another subway? Is it solely the fact that you can can build one way paths (tunnels in one direction only, you
Let's see how it scales (Score:2)
road underground (Score:2)
it's just an extra single lane road which is underground for the moment?
Re:Keep it coming (Score:2)
so one more lane, solves the traffic problem? (Score:2)
How does this solve traffic. Adding one lane?
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In the elevators that lower you down to the tunnel.
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The elevator stations. And the tunnels are straight shots. Watch the interview with him. Basically this allows you to drive an electric car potentially of any make/model at 150 MPH and then take an "off ramp" to exit.
See the bottle neck there? The elevators are slow, the "off ramps" will get congested and backed up, then the main flow will as well. (Or if a car breaks down). Hopefully there aren't many if any bends or that 150mph car may not see the backup in time.
Sure this may help with extremely long stra
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Unless it's a closed loop it has intersections.
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Ever ridden a subway at rush-hour? One person holds up a train, the entire system stumbles for 45 seconds - and now you have twice the people at a platform because they missed their connection. And it cascades from there, as people try to push on to the next train, delaying it. Not to mention that Musk's tunnel has cars coming in and out of the system...
That sounds like a scheduling problem to me. I can assure you that people hold up the doors on the Japanese rail and subway lines, sometimes for 20-30 seconds, and yet the trains always run on time. If you aren't incorporating predictable human nature into your train schedule, you're doing it wrong.
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freeways don't have intersections or traffic lights either. And unless LA is underground is going to look like swiss cheese and you have an unlimited budget these tunnels are not going to be that plentiful. Just like above ground freeways. SO it's basically one more lane versus multiple existing 12 lane freeways.
Re:musk (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously dude. Nobody cares about your tunnel. And in California? It'll never get done. NEVER.
If there is one thing that Californians care about, it is traffic. It is the #1 topic of conversation, since we don't talk about the weather. What would we say? "Well, it looks like another nice sunny day with clear blue skies, just like every other day for the past six months."
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When I lived in Cali, no one talked about the weather because it was always too depressing. Always rainy and blah. And cold. And everything was brown and ugly, except for 6 weeks or so each year in spring. Silicon Valley is a nasty place, and I still don't get why anyone would want to be there if not dragged there for a job.