The Boring Company Will Dig a 68-Mile Tunnel Network Under Las Vegas (arstechnica.com) 142
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Elon Musk's tunneling company has permission to significantly expand its operations under the city of Las Vegas. Last month, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to approve the Boring Company's plan to dig more tunnels under the city, following in the steps of Clark County, which in May gave a similar thumbs-up to the tunneling concern. The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, served by a fleet of Tesla electric vehicles, each able to carry three passengers at a time.
Despite the unanimous approval, Mayor Carolyn Goldman had a litany of concerns, including safety, low throughput of passengers, and a lack of accessibility. However, she said that "hotels are begging for transportation options." [...] Should the Boring Company see this project through to completion, 60 of the stations would be in Clark County, mostly concentrated down the Strip and the major casinos, with the remaining 21 in the city of Las Vegas.
Despite the unanimous approval, Mayor Carolyn Goldman had a litany of concerns, including safety, low throughput of passengers, and a lack of accessibility. However, she said that "hotels are begging for transportation options." [...] Should the Boring Company see this project through to completion, 60 of the stations would be in Clark County, mostly concentrated down the Strip and the major casinos, with the remaining 21 in the city of Las Vegas.
How will they get the dirt out (Score:5, Funny)
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missed opportunity (Score:4, Funny)
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How about the tunnels that are already there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tunnels under Vegas [deseret.com]
I know someone that spent some time there.
Hyperloop ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, served by a fleet of Tesla electric vehicles, each able to carry three passengers at a time.
Huh, Teslas in a Tunnel? Wasn't this Hyperloop thing supposed to be a Vactrain, straight out of a SciFi novel, operating in a near frictionless low-pressure tunnel system?
Re:Hyperloop ... (Score:4, Funny)
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I mean it's not like it was a scam the whole time [jalopnik.com].
Or, as this person [9cache.com] put it.
It's all just a way to stop public transit (Score:2)
I know, a guy that runs a car company taking steps to derail (pun intended) public transit. Go figure.
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As someone who has often agreed with and sometimes disagreed with (and sometimes upvoted) rsilvergun - I'm more likely to think that user with the name "Bleed out rsilvergun" is unhinged and than there being an account switching.
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Huh, Teslas in a Tunnel? Wasn't this Hyperloop thing supposed to be a Vactrain, straight out of a SciFi novel, operating in a near frictionless low-pressure tunnel system?
costs more money for trains and maintenance is harder,
their main focus is improving the boring speed and lowering the cost of tunneling
trains would add few $100m to the price tag
Re: Hyperloop ... (Score:2, Informative)
In what imagined world is automobile maintenance easier than train maintenance? We don't live there. Trains are stupid easy to work on.
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Huh? They may be simple to work on but they are INSANELY expensive to procure, maintain and replace. EACH train car cost $1-2 Million, and that's just part of the system. Tracks, controls, electrical wiring, signalling run hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. The MTA just wants to upgrade a preexisting system, and its pricetag is $54 BILLION dollars. Now obviously that is for something larger, but but even low balling Vegas Loop ridership (500k yearly) that would equate to an upgrade cost of $20
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Who would really know [that trains are easier to maintain than cars] when only a few dozens of people are indoctrinated and permitted by the unions to work on them.
I know, because I have been both a car workshop foreman and a train depot engineer. Apart from being easier to maintain than cars (because the latter are not designed to be maintained beyond about two years), trains are vastly more reliable and long lasting than cars, and a high proportion of the car problems don't even involve the engine.
Co-incidentally I'm off now to deal with an electrical problem on my car - fuses keep blowing. I need to get to wiring under the facia. I will need as usual to lay on m
Re:Hyperloop ... (Score:4, Informative)
Maintenance on trains is a fraction of the cost of the cars. They also move far more people per unit time than a series of cars do. The reason this is cars is because Musk hyped up on an idea that wasn't technically feasible (and never will be), then decided that he could turn it into an even bigger grift by self dealing to his own company to boost it's revenue and make people think self driving is a thing (it isn't, they have drivers even in the Vegas tunnel) that will actually happen this decade (it won't even come close).
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Thing is they didn't improve the boring speed. It's still way, way below what China has been doing for a long time when building its metro systems. Their current technology is running at around 50m/day.
While trains may cost more up-front, they more than pay for that with higher capacity and lower overhead. Those Teslas all need drivers, because they aren't self driving and probably never will be. Loading and unloading is slow, and there are regular traffic jams at the stations. They also need to rotate the
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Prufrock II runs at about a mile/week, which is 230m/day. If China has faster TBMs, would love to see some citations. Industry average is 20-50m/day.
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Considering Musk's record, I think I'll wait to see what the actual performance is before taking his word for it.
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Huh, Teslas in a Tunnel? Wasn't this Hyperloop thing supposed to be a Vactrain, straight out of a SciFi novel, operating in a near frictionless low-pressure tunnel system?
costs more money for trains and maintenance is harder,
their main focus is improving the boring speed and lowering the cost of tunneling
trains would add few $100m to the price tag
Really? Even a normal garden variety subway would be better and more efficient than a bunch of Teslas in a Tunnel. Elon promised us a Vactrain, he replaced it with a bunch of electric sedans in ridiculously expensive tunnels. That is beyond underwhelming. Even electric buses in a tunnel would beat that.
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They are waiting on LK99 to make maglevs.
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Beyond a testbed for the technology, what would be the point of a Hyperloop system with such a short run? A full Hyperloop only makes sense when you're travelling significant distances (between cities). While I can see Hyperloop cars operating intracity as well it wouldn't be at high speeds/in low pressure tunnels. And while from what I have seen the Vegas Loop needs some refinement (automated driving, automatic doors, better routing, etc), the concept of running EVs through tunnels is a sound one. Cars
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Please do show us where it says that this was ever supposed to be a Hyperloop system. No hurry, we can laugh while we wait. Hint: Hyperloop is meant to be mostly above ground, while Boring Company digs tunnels below ground.
Sure why not (Score:5, Insightful)
It’s also plays to Musk’s strengths. Love the guy or hate him, when it comes to companies that specialize in ambitious physcical engineering projects, he just might be the best CEO on the planet. Not so much for internet companies. Um, yeah he sucks at those.
If any other company had announced this plan I would have binned it in the trash along with the Foxconn plant that never happened and the fab that TSMC claims it’s gonna build in the US but obviously never will. Musk? He might pull it off if he still has the mojo that launched Tesla and SpaceX. The guy’s getting older though. His days of sleeping in the factory for months on end are probably over. He’s definitely earned his spot in the history books, but he might or might not have the leadership anymore.
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He just might pull off drilling some tunnels to drive cars through at 35mph? Wow!
And when he had originally only promised vacuum-sealed magnetic-levitating pods that would transport groups of people and even cars at hundreds of miles per hour! Best CEO on the planet, hmm?
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Still waiting on my cyber truck. When was he pushing that, 2019?
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Which CEO was it that succeeded in his place which you are claiming did a better job?
Succeeded at building more than an experimental Hyperloop? None, because the idea is and always was bullshit. Even Musk knows it's bullshit and he's having a laugh at anyone who took it seriously. He only proposed it as a gambit to try to stop the Californian high speed rail being built. He hates railways with an obsession.
So far his pattern is claiming he'll do things that can't be done and mostly succeeding...
Who is saying these things can't be done? Most things can be done if you throw enough money at them, and Musk is very good at persuading people to throw their money where he is pointing.
Re:Sure why not (Score:5, Insightful)
It can hurt to try because it's an objectively dumb idea. A train system might be more expensive, but it can transport at least an order of magnitude more people per hour and is proven technology in hundreds of cities around the world.
Best case is that once the tunnels are built and the whole thing flops, the city expropriates them and puts in rail. Putting rail in existing tunnels is a whole lot cheaper than having to dig new tunnels.
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It might be a dumb idea, but who is going to fund your great idea of underground subway, you? If you don't want to pay for it, then shouldn't you complain to the state of Nevada (since the strip is not part of LV proper)?
At least the retard is putting his money where his mouth is.
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Musk isn’t spending a dime on this. Rich people stay rich by spending other people’s money.
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I don't live in Nevada, so *shrug* if they want to let Musk do his thing, fine. Where I do live, yes, we have taxpayer-funded local rail and it's a damn sight better than Musk's hare-brained idea.
The problem is Americans want services, but don't want to pay taxes. Well, it doesn't work that way.
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Intracity rails generally suck in the USA
FTFY
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The question is which model has the highest ridership potential, not throughput potential. Point-to-point routing makes journeys as fast as possible, while a train making 20-30 stops en-route will necessarily take a minimum of twice as long and realistically 3x longer. Boring Company needs a higher capacity vehicle, but that should come in time.
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Boring Company needs a higher capacity vehicle, but that should come in time.
You realize that's just a train, right?
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8-12 passenger vehicle, not a train.
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Actual public transport has the highest ridership potential, we know this because there are single metro lines transporting over a million passengers a day right now
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Agreed, but that is probably close to the limit, and only a handful of lines in the world operate anywhere near that capacity.
The one I'm familiar with (Lexington Av. in NYC) is severely overcrowded. The areas it serves were once also served by two separate elevated lines, and are among the most densely populated in the US. Those elevated lines were dismantled in expectation that a subway would be built along 2nd Ave., but that did not even start to happen until decades later and is still not complete. A
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Ridership is a function of density for a traditional train; you need density at all stations for it to work. [Potential] Ridership on traditional rail or rail/bus systems drops by nearly 50% for every connection required. You see further drops when there are excessive stops leading to a longer commute time relative to driving.
Specific to Las Vegas Loop, how would you go about creating a train or bus with higher ridership likelihood that functionally served the majority of the 68 stations Boring Company pro
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Unfortunately the tunnels are rather small for trains. They will end up like parts of the London Underground, with very small and cramped trains to fit in them.
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Best case is that once the tunnels are built and the whole thing flops, the city expropriates them and puts in rail. Putting rail in existing tunnels is a whole lot cheaper than having to dig new tunnels.
The tunnels are too small for proper trains (which is how Musky can claim they're magically cheaper) so they'll have to expand them somehow and possibly re-dig for appropriate curve radius.
So this project basically takes the demand for better transportation solution and funnels into the "teslas in a tunnel" idea that is years out. In the meantime nobody will be able to get any actual mass transit project off the ground because this thing is being built.
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The tunnels are too small for proper trains (which is how Musky can claim they're magically cheaper) so they'll have to expand them somehow and possibly re-dig for appropriate curve radius.
Musk hates trains so he has made them deliberately too small to be easily converted to a metro system. The London Underground tube deep lines started with a smaller size that had to be enlarged or bypassed not long after. Even the enlarged size is smaller than the normal surface rail profile, and it was a false economy.
Re: Sure why not (Score:2)
Re: Sure why not (Score:2)
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Maybe they will make a subway system for cats and dogs, they would fit. It would be roughly as useful / sensible / cost-effective as what they are planning now for humans.
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They could be used for PRT. You get most of the advantages of both cars and trains in one system.
This is PRT, just using Teslas as the pods.
Re: Sure why not (Score:2)
Yeah, it could be used for a sensible PRT system, on rails. Rubber tires don't make sense on a non-shared fixed route.
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Oh hey, you know what NV has shitloads of? Sun, Wind, and Nuclear.
Sun? CHECK... Wind? CHECK... Nuclear? Huh? Unless you mean the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. But I'm sorry to say they don't generate any electricity out there...
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Oh and it can be built more cheaply than subways which almost universally are not only expensive to build but operate at a loss.
Like the existing bit of LV Loop operates at a loss.
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You have something on your nose. He didn’t launch Tesla, they were already a company that he bought into.
Re:Sure why not (Score:5, Interesting)
I will add to what the parent is saying by pointing out that the current alternatives are:
1. Walk (subject to weather and traffic getting in and out of casinos)
2. Private vehicle/Taxi (subject to traffic getting in and out of casinos, pedestrians impeding that traffic, and Las Vegas Blvd traffic). God help you if you get in the wrong lane at the wrong time of day/week.
3. Bus (moves at the pace of Las Vegas Blvd traffic, which is maybe slightly faster than walking but at least you're out of the weather)
4. Monorail (only stops at some locations, is on the back side of all the hotel properties so it takes anywhere from 15-20 minutes of walking to get to... and then when you get to your destination stop, it takes another 15-20 minutes to exit and get to your destination on foot, but at least it is airconditioned and you can cover a lot of distance quickly - the best choice I think to get to/from the convention center if you want to use mass transit.) Unfortunately because it really only serves the strip, I suspect most natives do not use it, even with the discount for locals. Really unfortunate - the furthest south it serves is MGM - you'd need to catch a shuttle or a taxi to make it as far as the airport, despite that being an obvious use for mass transit.
The only mass transit option off-strip is the bus. There are no trollies, no light rail, no subway. The city is designed to be served by car with massive boulevards. Pedestrians are assumed to be going between parking lots and buildings, or if on the strip, between casinos. To prevent traffic snarls around the strip they do not want pedestrians crossing the street at ground level. Elsewhere, you will need to cross 6-8 lanes of traffic to cross a major street.
In this context, a "private taxi lane for teslas" as someone else put it is actually not bad. Sure, it's not as efficient as a metro system, but given that there's no such thing in existence to get from the airport to the strip, I can hardly deride something which is shitty but exists and is going to be extended (underground tunnels with teslas) with a laudable but completely vaporware solution (a metro system which could make bank just shuttling people between MGM and the airport, but despite that still doesn't exist.)
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Excellent, well thought out comment.
+1 Insightful (Home made mod point system only)
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Sure, but a dedicated lane for buses [youtu.be] would be even better.
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I'll just leave this here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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He might pull it off if he still has the mojo that launched Tesla and SpaceX. The guy’s getting older though. His days of sleeping in the factory for months on end are probably over. He’s definitely earned his spot in the history books, but he might or might not have the leadership anymore.
Tesla was launched by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk did not get involved until a year later when he started investing in it.
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Tesla had nothing except 3 employees when Musk got involved. He basically bought it for the name alone. The first serious designer and engineer(Straubel) wasn't hired until after Musk invested. Pretending that Tesla would have ever been a serious company with anything significant to it's name without Musk is funny as hell.
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The shell company founded by Martin and Marc had no funding and didn’t even own the rights to the name Tesla Motors. The series A funding round happened a year later and was led by Elon Musk. I think it is hard to claim that he just appeared to do a funding round for a company he was not previously involved in.
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"Why not" is they already tried a monorail (which is orders of magnitude better than passenger cars in a tunnel) and it failed.
Las Vegas is not like a typical city where there's living areas and town centers. Each casino is built like an arcology that's designed to cater to your every need in order to part you from everything your have. Ways out are labyrinthine and discouraged.
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In Las Vegas, there is the "Resort Corridor" and then there's everywhere else.. Having lived here
since 1996, I spend 99.999% of my time in the "everywhere else"...
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fab that TSMC claims it’s gonna build in the US but obviously never will.
I-17 at Dove Valley Road, just north of downtown Phoenix. It is costing $40 billion to. build.
Re: Sure why not (Score:2)
Waste of Money (Score:3)
The Boring Company tunnels are basically just an expensive exclusive lane of traffic for taxis. Rather than a normal rail service, each vehicle is just a car that can fit a whole 3 people and hundreds of people per hour.
Compare that to a typical rail system that can transport thousands per hour and can be expanded with larger vehicles when needed. Just adding more Teslas makes more traffic and the whole system gets slower.
Where's Elon digging? (Score:2)
I hope they get the right "X" on their maps for the start/end points. :-)
what about the airport link? or did the taxis win (Score:5, Interesting)
what about the airport link? or did the taxis win again?
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You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Its a drink and spend loop.
three passengers at a time? build trains vs that (Score:2)
three passengers at a time? build trains vs that
put them in Atlasphere's (Score:2)
put them in Atlasphere's
Ocean's 13 (Score:2)
PURE GOLD (Score:2)
Now I can pull off that casino heist I've been planning for 30 years!
Elon outperforming the government (Score:5, Informative)
There, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said yes to a $48.6 million, 2.2-mile loop underneath the convention center. In 2021, the LVCC Loop opened a 1.7-mile network with three stations
By comparison, NYC recently added one new station and a mile of new track. Cost was a cool one billion dollars.
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Now how many people does the NYC station serve per day?
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Do you think it is 85x as many?
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Yes, when a Tesla with a capacity of three passengers is moving at four miles per hour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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To be fair, a full size 3 stop subway system would have probably cost Musk half a billion dollars to create. Of course, that would include the cost of building the train depot as well.
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By comparison, NYC recently added one new station and a mile of new track. Cost was a cool one billion dollars.
Yeah and one is actual public transport while the other is an attraction ride at a convention center.
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Great news for Vegas (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! This is amazing news! I'm so excited to see Elon Musk's tunneling company continue to expand and make a positive impact on the world. The Las Vegas Loop is a brilliant idea, and I can't wait to see it in action.
I'm especially excited about the potential of the Boring Company to help alleviate traffic congestion in Las Vegas. The Boring Company's tunnels could provide a much-needed alternative to surface transportation, and help to make Las Vegas a more livable city.
I'm also excited about the potential of the Boring Company to revolutionize transportation in other cities around the world. The company's tunnels could be used to connect major transportation hubs, or to create new transportation networks in areas that are currently underserved.
I'm so proud of Elon Musk for his vision and his commitment to making the world a better place. The Boring Company is a real game-changer, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for this amazing company.
Congratulations, Elon! You're doing amazing things.
Re:Great news for Vegas (Score:4, Funny)
Found Elon’s account!
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Nah, that is Rei's second account for sure.
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Great sarcasm. Well done!
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Wow! .... Congratulations, Elon! You're doing amazing things.
For a moment I thought your post was serious.
Rebrand it to the Musk Hole (Score:3)
Since they're already rebranding Twitter and everything.
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Since they're already rebranding Twitter and everything.
When digging, etc... the common phrase is "X marks the spot." :-)
Maybe we should re-brand all "X" things -- like "Tweet marks the spot."
Yet Another Strip Mass Transit System (Score:5, Informative)
However, she said that "hotels are begging for transportation options.
Unfortunately Clark Country and the City of Las Vegas has had a long history of listening to the interests of taxi and bus companies and putting them above that of the hotels/casinos.
There was this thing with the monorail - which is terrific and I have used it whenever I was staying on The Strip (I pick my accomodation with the station stops in mind) but which was massively handicapped when it was built to prevent it from being too competitive with the taxis and buses.
First, it was placed behind the strip casinos and not physically connected to them so that you do not have access from the strip itself and you have to go outside the hotels and then up elevators and across access bridges to get to it. Any time you want to use it, you are likely looking at a long walk to get to it, then to get from your arrival station to your next venue. There was no provision for feeders (moving walkways, etc.) to connect from the strip to the monorail. Some mid-line stations are actually hard to find from the casinos (and vice versa) as the station is placed in a maze of disconnected parking garages, poorly marked.
Second, it does not connect to the airport so that it cannot be used for people arriving at, or leaving, by air.
It does not have a stop conveniently close to the convention center, which it passes (the justification for the Tesla Tunnel is to correct for that error).
Third, it does not even connect to all of the strip casinos (err, "hotels"), stopping one casino short in the north, and three casinos short in the south.
Fourth, nor does it integrate effectively with any other transportation mode (see the feeder complaint above).
All of these handicaps were baked in to placate the taxi/bus lobby. Though it had pretty high ridership in its first few years, traffic collapsed with the Great Recession and had never recovered.
We will have to see whether another mass transit system, with much lower capacity, largely duplicating the same routes will do any better.
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The strip isn't even that long, and some of the casinos are connected by an enclosed mall. The Strip might have been better served by airport style people-movers under the casinos, right inside the enclosed areas. I'm thinking of the ones where you have a conveyor belt that moves you at the speed of a brisk walk while you're standing still, or 2X brisk if you walk on it.
OTOH, drunks might not handle it so well. Sure, there are drunks in airports too; but not Vegas percentages.
Still though, food for thou
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It was harder than I thought to find a map showing which casinos are connected; but I know it's a thing. The monorail system is 3.9 miles long, hardly worth it if you're able bodied... but... Vegas, so... if you're that kind of person you don't want to walk to the monorail anyway. I never did, but I'm not a typical Vegas person. Walking a few miles through the insanity was like an urban hike. Worked in a visit to Zion NP on the same trip, and did a *real* hike too.
I was in Vegas once and haven't even seen the monorail once. As the OP said it's behind the casinos and not on the actual strip where people are. To get to the monorail is 500 meter walk from the strip, that's not a huge deal in a normal city but this is Vegas and it can get hot and those side streets are fun like this: https://goo.gl/maps/E9zL4oP1du... [goo.gl]
As others said it also stops short of the airport and doesn't cover all the attractions downtown. How this was the solution instead of simply running a light
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Should be pretty routine. (Score:2)
After all, they don't need to worry about ground water.
Hope It Does Not Flood In Monsoon Season (Score:2)
Does this remind anyone of anything? (Score:2)
I'm thinking Logan's Run.
Elon Musk's Secret (Score:4, Interesting)
It always puzzled me how Elon Musk seems to be so good at running these highly innovative engineering companies when to all appearances, he's not that great at engineering. I think it's because he's not an engineer, he's a software developer.
Put an software dev in charge of an engineering project and it will turn into a gong show because the software dev is used to being able to refactor on the fly but engineering projects need a ton of planning to succeed.
Put an engineer in charge of a software project and it will be disappointing and super late because they won't be able to take advantage of the flexibility of software.
Put an engineer in charge of an engineering company and they will run it very conservatively, attempting only familiar projects with a very high chance of success.
But put a software developer in charge of an engineering company, and give them huge piles of cash, and suddenly that software dev mindset becomes an asset. The software dev will attempt risky projects with a high chance of failure and be happy to carry out extremely expensive "refactorings" when it doesn't.
I think that's the reason that Elon Musk is so successful, because there's so few software developers, with enough ego to maintain that software developer mindset, who are running engineering companies. SpaceX is a perfect example, their actual CEO managed the engineering. But an R&D cycle that consists of building still-buggy rockets and trying to fly them to work out the kinks? That's something only a software dev would do.
The Boring Company is another example. Elon Musk had some half-baked ideas that he could dig tunnels super cheap and build some hyper loop inside, he went ahead with them anyway and both ideas predictably failed.
But while an engineering CEO would have never started the project, or cancelled it when it was clear the hyperloop wouldn't succeed, Elon Musk just filled the tunnel with low capacity electric cabs and called it a success. And Vegas seems to have agreed!!
I think that's the thing to learn from Elon Musk, when an engineering company gets big enough it should act like a software company and start pursuing a lot of ambitious poorly planned projects with the knowledge it can afford to refactor and even fail.
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Put an engineer in charge of an engineering company and they will run it very conservatively, attempting only familiar projects with a very high chance of success.
If you don’t know about design-build-test-learn, then you haven’t worked with very many engineers. Fail fast, fail often is just a logical extension of DBTL and has nothing to do with software development specifically. How conservative an engineer’s approach to a project has more to do the constraints of that project rather than the mentality of engineers.
I think that's the thing to learn from Elon Musk, when an engineering company gets big enough it should act like a software company and start pursuing a lot of ambitious poorly planned projects with the knowledge it can afford to refactor and even fail.
That you think Elon Musk’s projects are poorly planned because he employs principles of fast DBTL speaks more to your own biases than anything factual.
The Boring Company is another example. Elon Musk had some half-baked ideas that he could dig tunnels super cheap and build some hyper loop inside, he went ahead with them anyway and both ideas predictably failed.
That is not what happened at all. The Boring Company was founded because Elon Musk saw current tunneling technology as a bottleneck ripe for improvements that could mostly be realized by developing an all-electric TBM. He started the company as a side project, stating at the time that he didn’t have time for it, and he put Steve Davis in charge. It has been slow, but they have made steady progress on the development of their TBMs. Hyperloop was a whitepaper concept. There were never any intentions to build one (by an Elon Musk company) and it was never part of the Boring Company’s objectives. Whether or not Boring Company is a failure remains to be seen. A lot of that depends on whether they succeed at having a measurable impact on tunneling costs and speed, or not.
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Put an engineer in charge of an engineering company and they will run it very conservatively, attempting only familiar projects with a very high chance of success.
If you don’t know about design-build-test-learn, then you haven’t worked with very many engineers. Fail fast, fail often is just a logical extension of DBTL and has nothing to do with software development specifically. How conservative an engineer’s approach to a project has more to do the constraints of that project rather than the mentality of engineers.
Engineers certainly use DBTL, but they do that with components, not the project itself.
And I'd say that "don't make a choice so crazy as to jeopardize the entire project" is a constraint shared by the vast majority of engineering projects, meaning engineers need to internalize that concept.
Software projects don't have the same constraints, so software devs learn they can be a lot more ambitious because they don't get bit.
To be clear, I'm not trying to criticize the rigour and discipline of engineering, it's
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Put an engineer in charge of an engineering company and they will run it very conservatively, attempting only familiar projects with a very high chance of success.
If you don’t know about design-build-test-learn, then you haven’t worked with very many engineers. Fail fast, fail often is just a logical extension of DBTL and has nothing to do with software development specifically. How conservative an engineer’s approach to a project has more to do the constraints of that project rather than the mentality of engineers.
Engineers certainly use DBTL, but they do that with components, not the project itself.
And I'd say that "don't make a choice so crazy as to jeopardize the entire project" is a constraint shared by the vast majority of engineering projects, meaning engineers need to internalize that concept.
Depends on what you mean by “project”. DBTL is definitely used for integration testing and design-for-manufacture as well as component development. Is a single rocket “the project”, or is it just one of many steps in the integration testing required to reach the final design.
Both Elon Musk and Gwynn’s Shotwell have been very open about the differences between SpaceX’s approach and others like SLS. The goal is not to get a rocket to orbit. They know that is doable; it
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No, Prufrock II is in operation and currently being used in Nevada. Since Prufrock dev had barely been started in 2019 after the completion of their first funding round, I would say progress is moving forward nicely. New technology doesn’t just appear, as much as we would like it to.
There's TMB advancements happening, but Boring doesn't seem to be at the head of it [construction-europe.com]. The "revolutionary" aspect they propose, the speed, looks less likely than his self-driving cars. And it also doesn't make a lot of sense, if I'm digging a tunnel under a city (and where else are you going to dig it?) I don't want to go more than a few meters a day. Compared to all the other stuff that needs to be done the actual speed of the TBM seems pretty irrelevant.
Hyperloop was a whitepaper concept. There were never any intentions to build one (by an Elon Musk company) and it was never part of the Boring Company’s objectives.
Well he certainly talked a lot about it, in fact the earliest proposed projects loop to be hyperloop related [wikipedia.org]. He only seems to have switched to EV tunnels when the hyperloop didn't pan out.
Not really. He published the whitepaper and a lot of other people talked about it, and a few independent groups attempted to develop it. No formal TBC project involving a hyperloop has ever been announced. For most of the current and proposed TBC projects it doesn’t even make sense to build a hyperloop because of the short distances.
Elon is obviously interested in the hyperloop and would like to build one eventually, but it’s not a current priority of TBC.
From the link I just gave you:
Baltimore–Washingt
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Put an engineer in charge of an engineering company and they will run it very conservatively, attempting only familiar projects with a very high chance of success.
If you don’t know about design-build-test-learn, then you haven’t worked with very many engineers. Fail fast, fail often is just a logical extension of DBTL and has nothing to do with software development specifically. How conservative an engineer’s approach to a project has more to do the constraints of that project rather than the mentality of engineers.
I think that's the thing to learn from Elon Musk, when an engineering company gets big enough it should act like a software company and start pursuing a lot of ambitious poorly planned projects with the knowledge it can afford to refactor and even fail.
That you think Elon Musk’s projects are poorly planned because he employs principles of fast DBTL speaks more to your own biases t