'Boring Company' Video Suggests Company Is Abandoning Underground Rails (businessinsider.com) 182
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
Shortly after news broke that Elon Musk's Boring Company landed its first tunnel-building project in Las Vegas, it released a video of two Teslas racing in its tunnel near Los Angeles -- one using the roads, and the other using a Boring Company tunnel. The Tesla in the tunnel took one minute and 36 seconds to get to the destination, reaching 127 mph, the video, posted early Friday, showed. The car using the roads arrived in four minutes and 45 seconds, after getting stuck at a red light. The video revealed that the Boring Company had done away with a key element of the tunnel's original design: rails that guide the car.
The video revealed that a key element of the design of the Boring Company's 1.14-mile test tunnel in Hawthorne had changed. This demonstration of the tunnel differed from earlier ones in which cars were whisked along on rails. Replying to a tweet asking whether there were no more rails and the car was driving on Autopilot, Tesla's semi-autonomous driver-assist system, Musk said, "Pretty much." When asked why the original rail system had been abandoned, Musk added, "This is simple and just works."
The automotive site Jalopnik complains this misses the dream of a vacuum-based hyperloop system transporting speedy proprietary vehicles on frictionless electrified skates: Yes, for those keeping score, in a mere two years we've gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to -- and I cannot stress this enough -- a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car.
The video's marketing conceit is that the car in the tunnel beats a car trying to go the same distance on roads. You'll never believe this, but the car that has a dedicated right of way wins... To recap: Musk's company spent two years developing a very narrow car tunnel.
The video revealed that a key element of the design of the Boring Company's 1.14-mile test tunnel in Hawthorne had changed. This demonstration of the tunnel differed from earlier ones in which cars were whisked along on rails. Replying to a tweet asking whether there were no more rails and the car was driving on Autopilot, Tesla's semi-autonomous driver-assist system, Musk said, "Pretty much." When asked why the original rail system had been abandoned, Musk added, "This is simple and just works."
The automotive site Jalopnik complains this misses the dream of a vacuum-based hyperloop system transporting speedy proprietary vehicles on frictionless electrified skates: Yes, for those keeping score, in a mere two years we've gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to -- and I cannot stress this enough -- a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car.
The video's marketing conceit is that the car in the tunnel beats a car trying to go the same distance on roads. You'll never believe this, but the car that has a dedicated right of way wins... To recap: Musk's company spent two years developing a very narrow car tunnel.
Wait till you see the new HyperLoop! (Score:1)
Not a HyperLoop -- not a MonoRail -- just a raised highway in a tube ;)
Re:Wait till you see the new HyperLoop! (Score:5, Informative)
The Boring company is nothing to do with Hyperloop, they're two completely unrelated things. This article doesn't know what it's talking about.
Re:Wait till you see the new HyperLoop! (Score:5, Insightful)
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reaching 127 mph.Do you drive like that? (Score:1)
They make this sound as if it just "simple" and that every one wants to drive their vehicle that fast. In fact, the original plan was just simply stupid and won't work is why they gave up on it turned the project into this idea.
Can't wait until the lawsuits start to fly over this as well as by the end of year against Tesla and Elon Musk who make s claims that have never and will never come true. With the stock dropping 42$ this year and the statement that it won't drop below $10, yes, ten dollars... This
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127 mph. Some people do drive like that [bruceatkinson.com]!
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I agree, bullshit marketing
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Nothing is stopping other car companies from making competitive compatible products. It must be easy, if Tesla can do it.
Seriously though, more likely cities will pay for it, but with min-bus type things that can do public transit. Maybe give public transit higher priority or something on the lanes.
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Even so, I doubt very much cities will accept these if it’s just going to be public transport minibuses and Tesla vehicle
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Most likely, the company that operates thousands of satellites is the least likely to take a cavalier attitude to space junk.
Re: reaching 127 mph.Do you drive like that? (Score:2)
Relying on companies to do what is best and not what gets them the most money is stupid.
Every single Superfund site in the USA is due to that attitude.
Underground road network? (Score:3, Informative)
The plan is thousands of stations and the ability to navigate between tunnels.
So that would be like a road network, underground. In terms of congestion, how would this be any different from above-ground road networks?
Sure the extra lanes may help on crowded routes. Yes it could save precious above-ground real estate. But other than that, many of the same problems right? Never mind cost, safety, 24h lighting / ventilation, earthquakes or other issues.
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Biggest benefit over street roads is no intersections. No slowing down or stopping - it's a one-way right-of-way all the way to your exit station, with no pedestrians, cross-traffic, human-driven vehicles, weather, etc. to confuse things. You drive to your local station, and let the autopilot drive the utterly predictable tunnels to the the destination station, navigating and merging at speeds and traffic densities you don't have anywhere near the reaction time or inter-driver coordination to handle safel
Re: Underground road network? (Score:1)
You're crazy if you don't think critters and stray animals won't gather in this network of tunnels to be hit and mess things up.
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Zamboni comes through every 3 hours and clears up the mess.
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Biggest benefit over street roads is no intersections.
Which is also its biggest weakness. One part falling off a car, one blown tyre, one supersize milkshake thrown out the window and the whole thing comes to a halt until someone can get down there and clean it up.
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No intersections doesn't mean no interconnects for routing around problems - you just have something more like a highway interchange than 4-way stoplights.
But yes, any problem that blocks a a particular tunnel means other tunnels need to take up the slack, but much the same can be said for any road or highway lane. Those mostly have the advantage of cheap shoulders to mitigate the problem though, and usually interlane merging to be able to get around an obstacle.
Shoulders can be provided the same way they
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Elon is back in crazy mode: dude needs to finish one th
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>Freeways are often worse than the side streets when heavily congested
Yes they are - any route will be congested if it doesn't have sufficient capacity. A strictly autonomous roadway through can maintain much higher throughput since it can eliminate the many human behaviors that contribute to congestion. For example - if we took a lesson from ants, and had every car strive to remain halfway between the on either side, instead of most people following close on the bumper of the lead car, models suggest
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So you're going to have a direct tunnel, from each location, to each location, and two of them (for driving the other way!). Once you're on them, they'll be no deviation. And no getting out of the way of an accident.
Sure, if you tunnel *enough*, literally creating thousands of criss-crossing tunnels but at different depths so they don't touch, you could in theory do that. And you somehow think that'll be cheaper than a road network?
Because the second any tunnel "merges" into any other, you've got an inte
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Merging is not an intersection with cross-traffic that you have to stop for. And yes, a "Y" would be a huge bottleneck if both "small" legs were already running at capacity. But think of a highway interchange - all the Ys are alternative routes only used by traffic transferring from one highway to another - all the drivers that want to go from highway A to B turn onto an exit ramp, freeing up their slot in traffic for someone currently on the entrance ramp from B, and vice-versa. Things can get backed up
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Not interstates so much - at least not for their namesake transportation. Think instead of replacing all the multi-lane throughfares in a city with a network of tunnels interlinked with highway-style interchanges. Move all the long-distance travel within a city underground, where it can ignore all the surface restraints, so that surface traffic is largely restricted to local trips. No more snarls of traffic created by the interplay of local and through traffic using the same streets for very different purp
Re: reaching 127 mph.Do you drive like that? (Score:2)
This was Musk’s original vision (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure anyone should be surprised. This was never about mass transit for the masses - this was about his personal pique at getting stuck in traffic.
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This was never about mass transit for the masses
Plenty of technological innovation are targeted first at "the rich", and later trickle down to the masses.
Examples: Cars, computers, cellphones, air travel, toilets.
One way to look at this is that rich are funding R&D that will eventually benefit us all. You should be grateful rather than envious.
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The last thing we want is for roads to be for rich people only, hoping that it eventually trickles down to the rest of us.
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Re: This was Musk’s original vision (Score:2)
Re:This was Musk’s original vision (Score:4, Interesting)
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Great, but what happens when someone breaks down or there is an accident in that tunnel?
The big advantage of sleds is that the movement of all the cars in the tunnel is under central control. If there is a problem the system can bring them all to a stop quickly and safely instead of having an underground 125 MPH pile-up and fire.
Also note that the tunnel doesn't have much ventilation. Okay, it's a prototype, but the idea was to reduce construction costs by not having the big air moving systems needed to sup
L.A. Traffic (Score:2)
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You'll only have the human occupants doing that, and they can just go to sleep if the O2 levels really get that low.
You appear to advocate asphyxiating travellers. I'd suggest revisiting that approach and adopting one that wont result in criminal charges.
21st Century Marketing. (Score:2)
"...in a mere two years we've gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to -- and I cannot stress this enough -- a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car."
Well I don't know about the rest of you, but to me that description sounds perfectly...
Boring.
21st Century Marketing right there.
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Turns out wheels are simple, cheap, reliable, and proven technology. Who would have thought.
It's more that someone has already done all the hard work designing them, and since cars always have them any way, why design a secondary system if it doesn't have clear advantages?
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In addition, the generally inadequate self-driving technology that currently exists should be entirely sufficient to safely navigate nice orderly tunnel networks at high speed. Especially since you can exclude most of the chaos from humans and weather.
Uh huh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thereby turning this into one of the biggest examples of bullshit marketing and waste of resources ever.
It's not mass transit, it's a fucking express lane ... as such, it will be expensive, not beneficial to everybody, and it utterly a waste of any public money because it's not even trying to replace something like a subway.
Exactly the kind of bullshit I've come to expect from Musk .. half solve the problem and create something high end and of very limited use.
This shit might work for the secret lair of the asshole billionaire, but otherwise fails to solve any actual useful problem on any meaningful scale.
This is a private express lane for rich assholes .. I bet Las Vegas is going to find themselves really fucking pissed when Musk delivers the rich asshole express.
Re:Uh huh ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Its going to be interesting to see how local authorities react to allowing privately owned vehicles to travel at high speeds in an enclosed environment - the thing about putting it on separate rolling stock is that the transport operator can guarantee the service/maintenance history and current state of that rolling stock, but they can't do the same about any old persons car travelling down the same route.
Will a tyre blow at 120mph? A well maintained one shouldn't, but a badly maintained one certainly can - and a vehicle which is driven in an uncontrolled environment (city streets) is going to pick up damage to its tyres (nails, rocks, weather damage, scuffs from kerbing the car etc etc etc) that might then become an issue at high speeds. Will a thorough inspection be needed before each tunnel trip?
I see regulatory issues with this in the near future.
Re: Uh huh ... (Score:1)
Its going to be interesting to see how local authorities react to allowing privately owned vehicles to travel at high speeds in an enclosed environment
As there's plenty of existing precedent... I'd suggest "No, probably not."
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Really? Such as?
High speed (well above the national speed limit) personal cars in an enclosed tunnel?
Yeah, you are going to have to cite that existing precedent.
Re: Uh huh ... (Score:2, Insightful)
A tyre blowing at 120 mph is definitely bad news, but it's mostly because it means you're probably going to be hitting something head-on very soon. If you're confined to a one-car tunnel, your ability to hit things is going to be much more limited. You're certainly not going to be hitting trees, lamp posts, or bridge columns. You're not going to be hitting any oncoming traffic. You're even pretty unlikely to be able to get enough sideways momentum to hit the wall with any appreciable amount of force. M
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And what about the guy behind you, hitting you at 120mph? What about the debris left behind for the next car to slam into? This really sounds like a chain-reaction disaster waiting to happen.
It's a cool idea, but I doubt it's ever going to come to any kind of fruition.
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I don't understand the hate by socialist nutters on the rich.
I don't understand why people like you (idiots) always jump to framing things in a rich vs. poor context. Or socialism vs $WHATEVER you don't like today. Why do you do that? (Don't answer, I don't really care.)
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I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination.
Oh, no shit? That certainly comes as a surprise.
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I was born in NJ and lived in varying degrees of socialist hellholes my entire life.
Yes, we can tell you were born in New Jersey. It's as plain as the industrial soot on your misshapen face.
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Will a tyre blow at 120mph?
This is part of why the planned design assumes vehicles will be transported on "skates", rather than drive themselves. Another obvious reason for that is that the skates can be centrally-controlled making high-speed merges and minimal following distances feasible.
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Pretty much by definition it must be, since if a car breaks down, crashes, or gets stuck, the whole tunnel is blocked. Regular roads have at least an emergency lane for rescue vehicles (and rubberneckers) to squeak by.
How is it not mass transit also? (Score:2)
It's not mass transit, it's a fucking express lane
Very confused as to why you are anyone extrapolates that a tunnel will never hold a vehicle with more than one person in it just because a video shows a single car using the tunnel.
Remember how buses and cars use the same road today? Why are you saying that is impossible in a tunnel.
It can be as mass transit as any HOV lane, with a mixture of buses with many people and cars. Indeed that's how it's been described as since as far back as I can remember, so w
Missing the point (Score:1)
The point was not about cars/rails/skates. The point was how inexpensively and quickly a tunnel can be built. Tunnels (particularly 16 going in the same direction, as he imitated would be possible) is not practical with current tunnel boring technology. But if the cost came down, it could change the way we get around. The rest is just deciding what the most practical way of using the tunnels might be.
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I’m not sure if the speed/cost argument will be won by many small tunnels rather than fewer large tunnels if you look at the same endgame of moving people around, but time will tell.
The benefit of large diameter tunnels is for the tunneling contractor— their job becomes easier (and higher value); as a finished, integrated solution maximum value could very well be a tunnel that is finished and ready to use almost as quickly as the TBM moves past.
Compare this to Seattle’s Big Bertha— s
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Automated electric cars would tend to bring down the price of tunnels as well. In a controlled environment like that, the cars could drive at high speed very close together, increasing capacity, and electric would decrease the ventilation requirements.
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The Channel Tunnel (aka Eurotunnel):
30 miles long.
3 separate tunnels.
Starts in UK, ends in France (i.e. two separate nations, politics, legalities, teams, etc. dug towards each other from opposite countries).
"The eventual successful project, organised by Eurotunnel, began construction in 1988 and opened in 1994."
AND IT GOES UNDER THE FUCKING SEA.
I really don't think that what Musk is advertising is anything special at all... the difference being the Channel Tunnel did it and it's still there today and... yo
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Although I'm skeptical that Musk's "car tunnel" scheme is viable, to say that he is building tunnels "which can be used by one car at a time " is not accurate -- any more than saying that freeway lanes "can only be used by one car at a time". There is no reason that there can't be multiple cars in a single tunnel at the same time.
Running multiple cars in these tunnels at high speed will, of course, have its challenges. For example, to the extent these narrow tunnels curve it will either limit the speed at w
Re: Missing the point (Score:2)
This is because (as we see in the linked video) forward visibility is limited due to the narrow tunnels in curves.
IIRC, Tesla uses forward looking radar on their vehicles in addition to cameras. It is entirely possible to use radar to "see" around corners, especially gradual smooth corners like those in a tunnel. No clue if they're exploring that option but it's definitely worth considering.
The greatest! (Score:1)
Re: The greatest! (Score:2, Funny)
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Then don't put the thing underground (Score:1)
It will be even cheaper and simpler, and safer, with easy escape, and besides, we want to see the sights
Re: Then don't put the thing underground (Score:2)
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Tunneling is wicked expensive
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we could add pretty lights or red hexagonal sings
Who writes the song? Eh, ok, it's still a hell of a lot better than stained concrete and wavy conduit.
It the autopilot was a thing, switching would not be an issue. With side "rails" to guide the vehicle at the junction, it might even be plausible. The first prototypes will be interesting to watch.
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How about we add lanes and intersections too where these above ground tunnels cross. We'll need away too make sure cars don't hit each other, so we could add pretty lights or red hexagonal sings that means stop.
octagonal
It's easy to predict the traffic down there (Score:1)
I think using Tesla's autopilot is a great idea. A generic autopilot might not actually drive well in a narrow tunnel, but a specific tunnel mode would enable autopilots to reach those speeds easily. It's easy to predict the traffic down there. And, since every manufacturer is putting more and more intelligence into their cars, who knows if this becomes a standard in the future.
To those complaining the tunnels not being about mass transit: how about an electric bus driven by an autopilot? Maybe a Tesla, may
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"You can't take your own car in an ordinary subway, can you?"
The Channel Tunnel.
Hyperloop and tunnels are different projects (Score:1)
Yes, for those keeping score, in a mere two years we've gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to -- and I cannot stress this enough -- a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car.
It can fit one car width wise, but it should be able to fit a car every 30 feet or so. With a controlled environment and computer controlled driving, you should be able to cut all the safety factors to a minimum - closer following, less space on the sides, etc... The biggest factor enabling small tunnel usage would be the electric motors - internal combustion engines need lots of air to not poison people with carbon monoxide.
The ease of digging a tunnel that is only big enough for 1 car width wise and min
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"every 30 feet or so" is a recipe for disaster -- for the same reason we don't run separate subway trains "30 feet or so" apart. There will be failures (an "axle" will break, a wheel will come off, a tire will blow, etc...) that will cause cars to stop quite suddenly with parts flying off of them. A series of cars following at 30 foot intervals and running at high speed would result in pileups of epic proportions.
If "30 feet" is enough, why leave more than an inch between cars? At 127 mph, 30 feet is covere
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That would only last for a while -- the first pileup that killed a few cute kids or orphaned a few cute kids in several cars involved in the pileup would be the end of that following distance. 30 ft would rightfully be declared (by lawyers and legislators) to be too close and people would refuse to use the service until the separation was extended to be safe enough to reliably avoid collisions in almost all cases.
Really, it's all about money, not convenience. Juri
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If these tunnels are limited to Teslas, they will never get built as the public will, rightfully, raise a stink about tunneling under public lands for exclusive use of one manufacturer's vehicles or, even, vehicles meeting standards arbitrarily set by one company. If another company wanted to build their own tunnels for their cars, that would be complicated by the tunnels Tesla built in the way. As this continued, we would have messes of parallel and overlapping tunnels like the messes of utility lines whic
Unfair Comparison? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tunnel was empty. Put about the same amount of traffic inside as the street above and then compare.
It would only take one single slowpoke driver to turn that tunnel into a claustrophobic's worst nightmare.
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The tunnels would also be a terrorist or troublemaker's wet dream.
All those cars filled with people traveling at high speeds in an enclosed space with no way to escape....hmmm, sounds like a nice juicy target to me.
Makes sense to me (Score:1)
Re: Makes sense to me (Score:1)
How have other boring companies been leading the way in finding innovative and cost effective solutions to these problems, opposed to just enjoying a market dominance?
Beats me but I have it on good authority that the military utilizes nuclear-powered TBM's that dwarf anything the civilian world knows about.
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Of course there's a need for intersections and therefore traffic control. Unless of course the tunnel just goes to Musk's house, Tesla HQ, and SpaceX HQ. Heck, even for subways that are only one line, they need traffic control, so they can shunt to alternates as the do maintenance work.
It sounds like it's faster because there is only one moving vehicle in a contrived situation, instead of out of any intrinsic reason.
Meanwhile, in China... (Score:5, Interesting)
...they're developing actual trains that carry actual people very fast (600 kmph), using relatively little energy (maglev), between large cities: https://www.cnn.com/travel/art... [cnn.com]
When this goes ahead, they'll have a high speed domestic inter-city network that's faster than air travel, more efficient, & not dependent on fossil fuels.
I've travelled by high speed train (300 kmph) in Spain & France several times. Although journey times by train are longer, there's no long journeys to the airport & airport security nonsense to deal with so, city centre to city centre, it's usually faster overall. Oh, & you get beautiful views, you can get up & walk around comfortably, the washrooms are better, the food's better or you can bring your own picnic or takeaway & your own drinks, & it's quite relaxing. I'd take it over air-travel anytime.
Re:Meanwhile, in China... (Score:5, Insightful)
After the first high speed train crash disaster in the US is caused by a terrorist explosive device on board, boarding HSR will require TSA security theater screening much like the airports -- just wait.
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In Britain, they're already doing that:
https://help.eurostar.com/faq/... [eurostar.com]
A very shitty and unexpected surprise when I traveled with the Eurostar.
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the US can do that too if they wanted, just people wouldnt stand for it.
people in china just bend over and take it or they disappear.
But (Score:1)
end congestion, restore pedestrian spaces (Score:1)
The loop is not the hyperloop. They were always two different systems.
The appeal was always a single vehicle tunnel with self-driving cars, with the promise being the possibility of creating as many dedicated lanes as is necessary to bypass traffic. Just the fact that it can bypass intersections is a huge thing, and being able to travel more than twice HIGHWAY speed is a big plus too. A single vehicle, one-way tunnel with self-driving cars means almost no danger of head-on collisions.
The precise technolog
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Oh god shut up. Tunnels can be cheaper to build than roads? You Musk fanboys are morons. The idea of a tunnel network is astonishingly stupid.
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Tunnels almost certainly can be cheaper than conventional roads in some areas -- imagine building additional conventional roads in areas densely packed with high rises in big cities -- there is simply no place to build more roads without buying VERY expensive real estate and demolishing many productive buildings. Out in the middle of California's Central Valley, of course not.
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Oh god...just shut up. Tunnels are not cheaper to build (or maintain) than conventional roads. The entire idea is idiotic. There is more to just boring a "tunnel". It needs to be finished. Entrances and exits. Never mind. You Musk acolytes will never even listen.
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I am actually a Musk basher by most people's standards. In fact, I'm just objective and don't buy into his version of a reality distortion field.
However, where the only available real estate to add surface traffic capacity for traditional cars requires tearing down billions of dollars of high rise buildings (think financial districts of major cities for example), tunnels are likely cheaper. Of course, the best solution in such situations is probably not to add traffic capacity for traditional cars, but that
Lazy idiots confusing 2 different things (Score:1)
Hyperloop is a concept for special air-cusioned capsules moving at high speeds in partially de-pressurized tubes, competeing with airliners. This was the idea Musk open-sourced and encourages anybody to build anywhere, and he encourages this with contests for college kids. Personally, I wish he'd take a more-direct role in this and actually build one somewhere.
The Boring Company is an actual business Mush founded to build low-speed tunnels underneath cities to help de-congest auto traffic. This scheme start
lives up to its name. (Score:1)
Do they have new tunneling tech? (Score:2)
Does Boring Company have new tunneling technology that reduces costs? If not, then this is just a car tunnel optimized for self driving cars so it can be smaller diameter.
Its worth noting that tunneling costs do not scale that quickly with tunnel size because a lot of the cost includes making the tunnel human habitable (water sealing, fire protection, ventilation, emergency exits, lighting etc etc). Cutting a mining type tunnel is cheap. Turning that into something the general public can enter is a diff
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I cannot imagine a more stupid and dangerous thing that a "self-driving" car navigating a cheaply-built tunnel, far underground, at stupendous speeds. This is literally Deathtrap 2.0.
Tunnels are not safe things... they have to have escapes, exits, ventilation, etc. Having anything move through them at speed worsens the risk immensely. Doing so in "commodity" vehicles is really just asking for trouble.
The Channel Tunnel is three tunnels, 30 miles long, on which only regulated trains run (and which can car
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The things would be a terrorist or troublemaker's wet dream.
Cars filled with people traveling at high speeds in an enclosed space with no way to escape....it really sounds like a deliciously rich and juicy target to me.
The rails were kind of dumb (Score:2)
However, it's the tip of the iceberg as far as this system is concerned. No human is going to drive a car at speed through a narrow tunnel so it requires software. I don't see ANY city signing off on a solution that only works in one brand of car. It also doesn't solve the multitude of other issues with r
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Expecting people to install little wheels on their cars to lock onto rails wasn't going to work.
Fortunately nobody suggested that except you. The original design called for an electric skate, like the thing your vehicle rides through an automated car wash, only faster and long range.
Sounds about right (Score:2)
Thunderf00t made some videos about this (Score:2)
Seek for "Thunderf00t boring company" on youtube.
He raises some interesting points, some of the more important AFAIR:
- Elons tunnels aren't sensationally cheap and well within the cost range of "conventional" tunnels,
- a one lane tunnel filled with vehicles is a death trap if e.g. a car breaks down and a fire breaks out,
- At the in/outlets of such high throughput tunnels you need a massive system of roads to handle the throughput,
- Underground you have all kinds of facilities in a modern city, you can't jus
Not quite (Score:2)
"To recap: Musk's company spent two years developing a very narrow car tunnel. "
No. They developed a way to build tunnels for cheap. Just as they developed a way to launch rockets for cheap.
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I don't believe you.
Tunnelling - for the purposes of transport - is a science over 150 years old (at least) and unlike space access, not a market greatly constrained by entry barriers both financial (initial outlay) and political (NASA contracts, FAA regulation, national defense concerns and defense contractor lobbying, etc.) I have yet to see any tangible proof that tunnelling is a market where established, lifelong experts could be expected to be behind the cost-effectiveness innovation curve. Without cle
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Check out the debacle in Seattle (where I live) called the "Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel", also known as the SR 99 Tunnel.
Planning began in January 2008 but the actual tunnel boring didn't start until July 2013.
It ran into shitloads of problems, and more or less finished in August 2017. That was after numerous breakdowns and engineering issues.
After all that shit and work, it cost $3.3 billion and is only 1.756 miles long.
Publicly or privately funded? (Score:2)
Honest question: I have the belief that all of this is privately funded. If that's the case, then I don't really care what they do. I'll buy it or not when its done.
If its publicly funded, then I start to care and I'm probably against it no matter what ... probably but not positively.
The greatest disaster is when it is both publicly and privately funded like some of our Texas toll ways. You pay the taxes but you still can't use them.
Maybe, just MAYBE.... (Score:2)
"The automotive site Jalopnik complains this misses the dream of a vacuum-based hyperloop system transporting speedy proprietary vehicles on frictionless electrified skates"
Maybe, just MAYBE this is because the whole hyperloop idea was utter bullshit from the get-go.
It was never going to happen and all the hyperloop fantasy-players should wake up and face reality. It's not going to happen on any significant scale, period. Oh sure, they may work up some tiny test tracks, but this thing will never, repeat NEV
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Yeah, just need now to accommodate mechanical failures, battery failures, maintenance windows, medical emergencies and other minor inconveniences.