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The Boring Company FAQ
- schiffern 9y ago>What do you do with all that dirt? >... The Boring Company is investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build structures... These bricks can potentially be used as a portion of the tunnel lining itself, which is typically built from concrete. Since concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, earth bricks would reduce both environmental impact and tunneling costs. I called it. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14224261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14224261
- easilyBored 9y agoI have seen ~3 decades old earth bricks (granted, uncompressed) and it's not pretty. Maybe compression and hydro-isolation does wonders.
- jacquesm 9y agoMix in some resin?
- greglindahl 9y agoThe traditional way is to use straw.
- schiffern 9y ago>~3 decades old earth bricks (granted, uncompressed) and it's not pretty No surprise there. CSEB is an entirely different material from regular old compressed earth block, which itself is entirely different from uncompressed earth. Squeezing out the empty space and adding a binder (cement) makes it all one solid piece as strong as concrete. Uncompressed earth is just... dirt. It's like saying, "Concrete roads won't work. How do we know? Because gravel is an ingredient of concrete, and gravel roads suck."
- atarian 9y agoI'd like to see more details about edge case scenarios. What happens if a sled gets stuck? What would be the procedure and response time for getting the right personnel down there? What failsafes are in place for disasters? What if the power grid went offline or there was a flood? How do you prevent human error? What if people left their gas vehicles on and there was a toxic level of carbon monoxide in the tunnels? What if people jumped or accidentally fell onto a sled while it was descending?
- jdavis703 9y agoYou can have the sleds equipped with oxygen and a mask, similar to what airplanes have for cabin depressurization. As for point B you can have doors or what not around the sled. But if people really want to commit suicide by sled there's nothing stopping them. What stops someone from jumping off a bridge with a highway below?
- acover 9y agoA really tall fence. Making suicide difficult drastically lowers how often it happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- astrocat 9y ago> I'd like to see more details about edge case scenarios. The thing is, we're all MUCH more comfortable with the danger we're familiar with, than the danger we're unfamiliar with. Imagine if planes were just being introduced today - what are the edge case scenarios? What happens if there's mechanical failure at 30,000 feet? What happens if there's turbulence, lightning, birds, volcanic ash? What happens if the pilot is suicidal? What happens if... But we really don't care, do we? Air transport is familiar. I'm not saying the dangers of new tech aren't important - they're very important; but keep in mind that while the idea of suffocating after a crash or malfunction in a hyperloop tube/tunnel will feel significantly more perilous than any misfortune that may befall you on a plane simply because a plane's risks are now familiar. When we look back at how planes came of age, it seems like people were idiots to get on them (I recently read about the de Havilland Comet... it disintegrated in mid-air like 3 times in a year - don't quote me on that, but it was bad). Did it have to be so bad? No; of course some disasters could have been avoided with better oversight and accountability, but nonetheless, in the face of risk, the new tech provided such great advantages that its risks were accepted. It's fair to be aware of the way new tech can fail, but we shouldn't dismiss a tech simply because it can't "prevent human error" 100% of the time, or be perfectly immune to failure of any sort. If we can introduce a new tech that has failure properties similar or better to current tech, but that adds significant value to everyday life, we're netting a very positive gain. We shouldn't let fear any failure prevent us from pursuing new tech, just like we shouldn't let fear of stubbing our toes prevent us from walking.
- HappyTypist 9y agoThis does not answer the most obvious and important question: why not invest in public transport? It's boring but it will work.
- CodeWriter23 9y agoThis IS public transit. Public transit without the last mile (or in LA, the last 5 miles) problem. This freedom-supporting tech also thwarts the tyranny inherent in public transit (schedules, robbing your life with all the waiting, limited load carrying capacity, forced interactions with antisocial individuals, etc.)
- so33 9y agoBut there is still a last mile problem, you have to enter and exit out of the tunnels. That's the last mile. Or do you suggest that tunnel building will become so viable from an economic and engineering standpoint that everyone will have an entry point in their garage? > This freedom-supporting tech also thwarts the tyranny inherent in public transit (schedules, robbing your life with all the waiting, limited load carrying capacity, forced interactions with antisocial individuals, etc.) Funny you don't mention the tyranny inherent in single-occupancy vehicles: Robbing your life having to find parking. Paying to park your car (if you live or work downtown). The antisocialness of sitting in your car for 1-2 hours a day with just NPR as your only friend. The inherent inflexibility of SOV travel, where your car carries just 20% of the designed capacity most of the time. And finally, the infrastructure that has to be built to support cars, driverless or not, zipping around everywhere, making it harder to walk or bike to where you want to go.
- josephpmay 9y agoNo last mile problem, as in your autonomous vehicle will drive the last mile
- ktta 9y agoThe last mile problem isn't about difficulty to drive, it is about congestion. Tunnels, however long they maybe to take advantage of the speed, must end. At the endpoint is where the problems start with trying to accommodate capacity everyone thinks it'll achieve.
- shpx 9y agoDoesn't a tunnel under a building significantly increase the chances of the building falling down? What about flooding?
- avn2109 9y agoNo clue why this is downvoted, these are valid concerns. Measuring and avoiding ground settlement consumes an enormous amount of engineering and contracting resources in every urban tunneling job. Flooding too can lead to work stoppages or long delays. You should have seen the Queens Bored Tunnels and Structures Project after Hurricane Sandy. It was pretty soupy. Source: Was a tunnel boring engineer in NYC, where we had an abundant supply of both buildings and groundwater.
- URSpider94 9y agoAn engineering study of ground subsidence and how to avoid it, vs "the building falling down" are two very different things.
- grzm 9y agoAny large project is likely to have difficulties of some sort that need to be taken into account to overcome: it's the nature of the beast. You're right, these are valid concerns. Asking the questions as your parent does implies that those at the Boring Company—while they may have not solved them in all cases—are not aware of them, especially as these aren't new problems. I speculate that the downvotes are a reflection that your parent isn't granting them this benefit of the doubt. One can infer from the FAQ that they are thinking of this in part from the R&D bullet point: > Tunneling R&D. In the United States, there is virtually no investment in tunneling Research and Development (and in many other forms of construction). Thus, the construction industry is one of the only sectors in our economy that has not improved its productivity in the last 50 years.
- URSpider94 9y agoNo, it doesn't. If it did, buildings in NYC would be falling down left and right. Heck, I hear they even put them under entire bodies of water! Yes, tunnels can flood, if they are below the water table. Good pumps can fix that problem. Again, the Chunnel being Exhibit A - it hasn't flooded, yet.
- i_am_olo 9y agoThen he will figure out that he can produce electricity with the geothermal vertical tunnels! And will merge the Boring Company with Tesla like he did with Solar City!
- Andrenid 9y agoIn the future I assume Tesla, Space X, Boring Co, etc will all become Mars Corp. He's said again and again his true goal is to colonize Mars and everything until then is to get to that goal. What happens when he does get there? Can be claim it? Become President? Or an area of it?
- wilonth 9y agoHe will become the Elon of Mars http://imgur.com/a/yhvDH http://imgur.com/a/yhvDH.
- smitherfield 9y agoHow are vehicles secured to the "electric sleds"? Seems like any obvious method would be super-unsafe and/or time-consuming and/or likely to scratch the paint.
- elchief 9y agoYour hacker mindset is truly inspiring
- greglindahl 9y agoHave you ever seen a car on a flatbed tow truck?
- smitherfield 9y agoThat's far from an instantaneous process. Would hold up traffic quite a while. And there are no people riding inside, and the speeds are far less than 125+ mph, so mishaps aren't nearly as risky.
- theprop 9y agoThis is FANTASTIC! It's important to understand how massive the Earth is (even though it's a pinprick when compared to the sun). You can EASILY go 3-D or deep. The deepest mines in the world are around 12,000 feet deep. This is about 6x the height of the tallest building in the world (2000 feet tall). Imagine, thus, putting in a tunnel at what would be every 5th floor of a skyscraper and that you could fit 6 skyscrapers underground...that allows for approximately 150 stacked tunnels! Excessive of course but possible!
- hilljgo 9y agoWhat's an earthquake like when you are on the 12th (or is it -12?) floor of an underground building?
- firethief 9y agoThat's among the safest places to be. There's a whole section about it if you read the article linked at the top of the page.
- orangemeek 9y agoThe problem is that there are only positive examples in the article. Of course that tunnels may collapse or be damaged during an earthquake.
- catmanjan 9y agoI'm just imaging a 150 way 3-d lane merge at the other end :O
- lucb1e 9y agoWhen imagining a 150 way merge I can't help but feel like it'll pollute enough to make nearby trees crumble in a matter of days. 150 ways at approximately 1 car per second (a very full highway) and 1.1 people per car (I hardly know anyone who carpools), there's 1501.1120 = ~20 000 people every two minutes. Trains can operate at the same frequency, carry a few thousand each and pollute a lot less -- heck, electric ones can draw from solar panels, reducing pollution to near zero. Give it ten tracks and you have equivalent capacity to 150 stinky lanes.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoDoes Elon wake up in the morning and say to himself "what kind of company should I make today that is both marketable and is achevable to increase my brand?". It seems like he is spreading himself too thin . Why not focus on Tesla QA or improving working conditions at his other engineering projects ?
- blhack 9y ago>Why not focus on Tesla QA or improving working conditions at his other engineering projects ? Bluntly, because I would imagine because he realizes that he is going to die eventually, and has a limited amount of time to do the things he wants to do.
- inetknght 9y agoBuilding tunnels in California and LA is great and all. But I'd like to see him do it in Houston, honestly, where common knowledge (cough) says that you can't dig deep in Houston because it's a swamp. Houston has, arguably, worse traffic than LA
- imron 9y ago> you can't dig deep in Houston because it's a swamp. That just means you need to dig deeper!
- rurban 9y agoNo, the ground water level is ~2m. This is a swamp, tunnels would be too expensive. And Houston is too big. Houston had a working public mass transport system, but big automotive pressure/corruption destroyed it. That's why Houston is unique. The mayor is elected every two years, because corruption is so rampant. The now widest highway worldwide, the I10 to Katy once had a railroad track in the middle. They even had a star system and park & ride before WW2.
- inetknght 9y ago> Tunnels would be too expensive > Houston is too big Sounds like a job for Musk, to be quite honest. He's pretty good at driving down costs. > corruption Now there's a statement I can, sadly, agree with. :(
- thatwebdude 9y agoX city is important, too! Bring it to X; after you figure out how to deal with the super cool and unique geographical features of X!
- gesman 9y agoTo solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic takes just a mindshift from corporate decision makers to realize that physical presence of employees are not necessary for success.
- gosheroo 9y agoIf speed is key, what about developing nuclear-powered TBMs?
- avn2109 9y agoMany TBM's are already nuclear powered, in that the grid power they consume was generated in a reactor somewhere. There is no reason to bring the reactor closer to the dig site. Also, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core for prior art /s
- gosheroo 9y agoUsing the grid there must be a lot of transformers and cabling involved. Plus with massive amounts of power in situ one might be able to process the waste rock differently (e.g. if it's looser material with fissures, compress it against the sides of the tunnel or perhaps even melt it rather than removing it. Admittedly I'm rather ignorant of soil and rock physics.)
- resf 9y agoNuclear reactors require a heatsink, usually a large amount of water. If you put a nuclear reactor underground, you have to pump water back up. This takes a lot of energy. Whereas, electrical energy travelling through cables is not affected by gravity.
- gosheroo 9y agoWhat if you used the heat to melt rock?
- politician 9y agoPut a rocket on it; converting the thrust to electrical energy to drive the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-_xfTUs3R0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-_xfTUs3R0 (These things are pretty inefficient, but it'd be a way to wrap SpaceX into this new company along with Tesla.)
- dennyabraham 9y agoAn automated electric tunneling system that can recycle material into building components sounds incredibly useful to prep mars for colonies.
- rocky1138 9y agoHave you ever read up on Mars lava tubes? The idea of using them to start colonies makes a lot of sense to me.
- dennyabraham 9y agoI have! These would be good for expanding existing cave systems as well as building planned structures where lava tubes aren't naturally occurring or are exposed to the atmosphere
- cperciva 9y agoI'm rather surprised that "are you boring yet?" isn't in the FAQ.
- rdruxn 9y ago"This is not a new concept, as buildings have been constructed from Earth for thousands of years including, according to recent evidence, the Pyramids." Classic Musk snark. Love it.
- deftnerd 9y agoI'm more interested in the nuances of tunneling, like how they'll handle water seepage and flooding. Flooding is actually a huge problem with climate change causing larger and more frequent major weather events. After Hurricane Sandy, it took almost a week to reopen the subway tunnels. I can just imagine the kind of kinetic force that'll occur if a sled carrying a car slams into a section that has a few feet of water. Airflow and humidity are other concerns. Airflow is necessary to keep passengers safe. Controlling humidity is important for keeping the infrastructure from degrading more quickly. Any good paints or fabrics or metamaterials that could be used as a tunnel liner that only allow water to wick in one direction (from tunnel internals to surrounding soil)?
- joatmon-snoo 9y agoThere's a Quartz piece about how Musk conceives all of his ventures that goes into some detail about the considerations behind The Boring Company, but the issue you mention is one of the ones where the technology still needs to advance, I believe.
- dcosson 9y ago> it took almost a week to reopen the subway tunnels. More like a few years collectively - a section of the G was closed every weekend for many months, the R was closed for a year, the L closes in 2019 for over a year.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
- tim333 9y ago>To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D There are other methods. Public transport on trains of course or more high tech maybe semi self driving cars platooning ( http://www.tech-faq.com/vehicle-platooning.html http://www.tech-faq.com/vehicle-platooning.html ) which could almost be done with present tech.
- fatninja 9y agoWhen everyone thinks about flying cars, this is a good thought. At least things won't fall in my head when I go out for a burrito.
- joering2 9y agoThat's like comparing oranges to apples. And planes, indeed fly over your head all the time; there is probably hundred of thousands of them in the air as we speak - how many of them are falling on your head? If I have a choice of an autonomous emergency parachutte -deployed landing done by my mid-air broken aircar, and being stuck in the heart of Earth with no air and very high temperature literally feeling like a needle in someone's body, I chose the falling cars.
- discodave 9y agoThe old strategy of hiding your outlandish claim in an assertion in the first sentence! "To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D" The word "must" is a very strong one here, there are other options: * Reduce the amount of travel that people need to do (remote work, online shopping). * Reduce the density of cities (enabled by remote work or longer commutes with better internet access). * Increase public transport options (higher passenger density). * Encourage cycling. I feel like only somebody who lives in LA would make the "must" assertion and not think about all the other options... oh wait: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/6e27fcba-309d-494e-b87d-c73fb8bb1750 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/6e27fcba-309d-494e-b...
- m3kw9 9y agoAll those things you propose are controlled by individual companies or the government. Musk is only doing what he thinks he can to reduce traffic.
- cft 9y agoMusk is proposing a technology. You are proposing social(ist?) ideas.
- klipt 9y agoDarn those socialist Wall Street bankers and their well functioning New York subway!
- zild3d 9y agowhy is one superior to the other in your opinion? If it solves the problem, it solves the problem
- xpaqui 9y agoIs socialism the new communism? I once saw a socialist on the street didn't eat my children.
- flashman 9y agoThe "problem of soul-destroying traffic" will exist for as long as driving remains the best all-round option. It's induced demand: build more roads > capacity increases > driving becomes easier > traffic increases until driving is as hard as it was. Add a congestion charge or tolls, and a proper public transport network. The solution is not more roads, it's fewer cars.
- otto_ortega 9y agoIt troubles me that my mind keeps interpreting "boring" as an adjective and not as a verb every time news about this company pop out... Leaving that aside, I believe the logistics about getting the cars on and off board of the electric sled will (in most scenarios) defeat the gains on speed once the cars are inside the tunnel. For public transportation it may be a good idea, IF they are able to deliver all those technological breakthroughs... Also, is 14 feet small enough for some people to get claustrophobic feelings?
- RangerScience 9y ago> The Boring Company is investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build structures. This is not a new concept, as buildings have been constructed from Earth for thousands of years including, according to recent evidence, the Pyramids. Yesssss.
- Fricken 9y agoSo in the concept video it shows passengers loading on to a sled at surface level that can hold maybe a dozen people, and then it descends on an elevator 50 metres to the tube and goes down the line. This sounds cost effective compared to a full on underground subway station, which really aren't cheap to build even if you 10x the cost of tunneling, but it isn't good for much unless all those passengers intend to also get off at the same stop, which isn't really something that happens. So if one of those dozen passengers wants to get off, then all 12 will have to go all the way back up to the surface and back down again, which could end up being cripplingly slow.
- iamacynic 9y ago> that can hold maybe a dozen passengers there's no reason this system couldn't carry a bus. musk markets to the elites first, then uses that to subsidize the mass market solutions.
- LandoCalrissian 9y agoOr how about trains underground...
- iamacynic 9y agoyes, imagine that, subterranean.. rail.. ways.... a type of 'sub-way'. possibly even a private one.
- econnors 9y agoI think you're right that stops will be longer, but it's my understanding they'll also be less frequent and they'll cover greater distances than a regular subway track (in say, NY). So you'll end up getting there faster and not have the stress of driving in traffic.
- Fricken 9y agoFor a conventional subway at rush hour, there's 1000s of people getting on or off every hour at any given station, which isn't feasible if you're only loading a dozen people at a time. The alternative being to build proper underground stations, which are a big part of that 'billion dollars per mile' subway construction cost. And this reminds me of Musk's Hyperloop whitepaper, where he estimated it would cost 10 billion to run an evacuated tube from LA to SF, which was ridiculous. There's all this reality that he failed to factor in to his calculations, and once you've addressed the full costs relative to people moving capacity, all of the sudden Hyperloop doesn't look so great compared to conventional high speed rail, and his Boring concept starts looking more and more like conventional subway.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Animats 9y agoSo, the key ideas are: - Smaller diameter tunnels. 14' is suggested. This is slightly larger than the deep London Tube lines. - Electrically powered TBMs. Those exist. However, often the business end of the machine is hydraulically powered. Musk is probably thinking of going all electric, at least for the cutter head. After all, he has lots of experience with high-torque electric motors. - Do cutting and tunnel ring assembly simultaneously. Some TBMs already do that. Those exist; they're called double-shielded TBMs. Issues glossed over: - Soil variability. Very different techniques are required for different soils. Sometimes the soil has to be "conditioned", adding something to make it solid enough it can be drilled through.[1] This is the biggest practical problem in tunneling. Too much water is the usual problem. - The back end. TBMs are long machines. The front end does cutting and ring assembly. The back end, which can be several hundred feet long, is mostly material handling. There's usually a two-track narrow gauge railroad behind the TBM, carrying ring segments forward and dirt backwards. It's constantly being extended with new track sections. That's part of the TBM's job. Here's a good overview of TBMs design, from Machine Design.[2] [1] http://www.therobbinscompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FastEPBAdvance_NAT2014.pdf http://www.therobbinscompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/... [2] http://www.machinedesign.com/archive/art-digging-hole http://www.machinedesign.com/archive/art-digging-hole
- erentz 9y agoYeah this is all very odd and everyone is lapping it up. He claims to want to reduce tunneling costs by a factor of 10, but starts by quoting a very high benchmark of $1 billion per mile which is quite easy to beat. Then he reduces diameters to something much smaller than all the expensive mega projects, into the range of something where technology is well established and costs are already 1/10th of his quoted $1 billion per mile. But then for some reason the solution has to involve putting cars into these tunnels. If what he thinks he is on to is viable with cars in those tunnels, it's even more viable with trains carrying 1,000 passengers each coming every 3 minutes. So why aren't we building these subways with trains? The largest part of the problem to solve here for the US is not the technology of tunneling. It's the process of engineering and building infrastructure like this that seems to become way more expensive in the US compared to places like Spain. I do believe he could reduce costs by vertically integrating the whole thing. But then we should ask why don't we do that anyway?
- danp 9y agoAlong these lines, there was just an interesting latimes article a couple days ago about a subway tunnel currently being bored in downtown LA which provides some insight into the current process: http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-metro-tunneling/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-metro-tunneling/
- libeclipse 9y agoBut what to do with all the dirt?
- thatwebdude 9y agoI laughed at "disposal". Perhaps they aren't fully aware of the volume disturbed soil takes up. Logistics of moving it could be a cost not necessarily considered.
- vacri 9y agoIndependent of the tunnel, a network of sleds able to move vehicles at one sled per vehicle... is going to be ludicrously expensive and the maintenance costs will be huge. Current roads don't need sleds, sled tracks, elevators, switching and management, safety gear etc, and that's even before we get to the usual tunnel needs of ventilation, pumps, and lighting. It seems a bit odd to be proposing very high maintenance infrastructure at a time when the US is famously facing a huge problem in not being able to afford maintenance for its existing infrastructure.
- cmac2992 9y ago>By placing vehicles on a stabilized electric sled, the diameter can be reduced to less than 14 feet. Interesting. No chance of large commerical vehicles in tunnels at that size.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoNothing carrying objects more than 14 feet in their shortest dimension (minus whatever the sled wheels take up), but that is only a very small portion of commercial traffic.
- jl6 9y agoI wish them the best of luck but I can't help feel the entire premise of the company is based on a pun.
- thatwebdude 9y ago"When dad jokes go too far, Musk edition."
- ktta 9y agoUhh, this isn't going to be the panacea many are making it out to be here. This will not come close to accommodating the current capacity of freeways. The tunnel is being planned to be 14 feet wide, which is how it suddenly becomes viable. That's around two 'stabilized electric sleds' in one tunnel. Current freeways are 8+ lanes and you'll have to consider how the specifics of group travel are going to be worked out. Can anyone who've done their own research comment on the throughput once there are interconnected tunnels?
- zild3d 9y ago"A large network of road tunnels many levels deep" It's not just one tunnel...
- ktta 9y agoSee I don't know what specifics they're talking about when they say 'a large network'. It'll obviously be more efficient to dig a wider tunnel than multiple tunnel on a single route. So, unless I'm wrong, to me it looks like it'll only be one tunnel, with one track to and one track back. How many people do you think can be transported in a direction in a 'sled' in one lane? I'm talking about one point to another point throughput not the complete network. I'm betting the numbers will be very underwhelming.
- njarboe 9y agoThe car in the video looks like Model S size. About 16 feet long. Add 2 feet on each end for an even 20 feet for the sled. At 125mph one gets 660,000 feet per hour. So if you can pack the cars next to each other, the maximum is 33,000 cars per hour. So 33,000 people per hour with each person getting a space that would rent in SF for $1000/month. Pack that sled space with people at the same density as a train at rush hour (50?) you get 1.65 million per hour. Mix and match your people density and sled packing to determine your own rate. Seems like in reasonable scenarios you could get train like rates with one tunnel. Bart says at peak commute it does 60,00 per hour. Maybe other systems do better, but those BART trains are full.
- rebootthesystem 9y agoPart of me keeps waiting for someone with the right clout and means to attack the elephant in the room: Change the rules of the road. Our roads can move far more cars per unit time than they do now. This is easy to see if you drive around Los Angeles for a fair amount of time. I drive the 405 corridor with some frequency and I can say it has gotten worst over the last few years. Yet, the one common theme you see every day consists of these characteristics: - Cars driving everywhere at whatever speed they want - Cars driving slowly on the left - "Synchronized" driving, where two cars drive equally slow side-by-side - People who can and want to drive faster have to zig-zag through traffic - The carpool lane is inhabited by people who do nor carpool Just because a car has more than one person it doesn't mean they are carpooling. - The carpool lane has buses going slow and sometimes (often) empty - No penalty for slowing down when going uphill and causing backup It's insane, there are no penalties for going slow and causing backups that trigger massive oscillations that lead to the entire freeway going through these nodes where speed grinds down to zero. This wave travels backwards and it can be triggered by slow or insecure drivers. I've seen in time and time again. If I were to generalize, the rules of the road are not designed or evolved to optimize flow. You can't even say they are optimized for safety because there is nothing safe about a moron going 55 on the fast lane while people are swerving all over the place to get around him. What we need is a new mentality: Caltrans and CHP need to work together to optimize flow, not get in the way of it. The carpool lane is a disgrace. It takes-up 20 to 25 percent of the road's capacity for no gains whatsoever. We need a layered system where slow drivers get out of the way and don't impede others. I am not saying go full autobahn but there's merit to the idea that slow drivers should not be allowed to impede others. I've watched the 405 grind to a halt because of a few (two or three) drivers who manage to lock-up an area. It always gets worst before it gets better. Tunnels? Sure. But first fix the real problem. This is where self driving cars might do an amazing job. We will be able to extract far more capacity out of the existing infrastructure by increasing speeds and layering them from right to left.
- shriphani 9y agoI love the punchy writing style of the FAQ - so full of Elon's spirit and go-getter attitude! I hope these guys do a great job!
- hoorayimhelping 9y ago>* A large network of road tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city* heh, sorry Miami, Orlando, Tampa and I'm sure many others.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago>A large network of road tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). A large network of highways many lanes wide would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding lanes).
- lorenzorhoades 9y agoThe difference is that it takes up existing infrastructure to do that. A freeway/Roadway in itself takes up huge amount of spaces from the city. A tunnel under the city would only take space at the "exit" points.
- lucb1e 9y ago> Secondly, increase the speed of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). TBMs are super slow. A snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil TBM. Our goal is to defeat the snail in a race. I can imagine them at parties: "So what do you do for a living?" "Our company is trying to win a race from a snail." "Hahah-- wait you're serious? What kinda company is that?" "The Boring Company."
- nickik 9y agoSpaceX actually does the same.
- arcticbull 9y agoThis feels a lot like the Shanghai Maglev [1]. Gets you between the airport and part of downtown for a relatively high fee. Built because they could, and wanted to show off. Not particularly useful, but cool. It'll be interesting to see what this turns into in reality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train
- abakus 9y agoMake these tunnels cycling only, and sell electric bikes specially designed for such tunnels, and provide resting/charging stations in the tunnel. Higher throughput, even smaller tunnels.
- lomereiter 9y agoThis page forced me to find and install autoConvert Chrome plug-in, so that I can read the text without stopping to wonder what 14 feet is.
- arcticbull 9y agoAll due respect, I'd rather just bring in the Hong Kong MTR corporation and let them run the entire LA public transit system instead as they do in Stockholm and Melbourne, among others (https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/consultancy/railwayoperation.html https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/consultancy/railwayopera...).
- rtpg 9y agoThere's some interesting stuff in here, I'm excited to see what comes of it. But I'm a bit worried about the thought process in the intro: > A large network of road tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels) this is untrue in the general case. Notably, if everyone wants to drive to the city center, then there will be congestion, because at one point you must get to the destination. It's not just volume, but throughput that causes congestion. When the traffic flow isn't spread out nicely, your traffic can only go as fast as the weakest link. You know what has higher throughput than cars? trains
- lorenzorhoades 9y agoI think people are missing the strategic importance here. Tesla is going to be in the game of self driving cars. Once self driving cars happens, there is no longer going to be anyone who buys cars, they will simply hail a ride using the self-driving Telsa(Uber, Lift, Google) network. Soul-Crushing-Traffic is going to be optimized heavily, using certain algorithms and the inter connectivity of the cars. However, one HUGE advantage that Tesla cars are going to be able to have are these tunnels. I think this is of huge strategic importance, because they can reduce the cost for transportation across cities, because they don't have to deal with all the traffic. As discussed in plenty of places on hackernews, ride-hailing is going to be a commodity similar to the airline or ocean transport industry. It will be solely based on cost. If Tesla can make the cars at cost, owns the self-driving tech, are all electric with a huge network of free fuel, and have tunnels that allow you to bypass traffic then they will own the future transportation industry, while everyone else tries to catch up.
- simonh 9y agoI don't see how the tunnels can be commercially viable just carrying Teslas. That's a tiny fraction of traffic. Apart from anything else I can't see cities granting permits for exclusive tunnel systems like that, which don't benefit the broader public.
- stevewilhelm 9y ago> cities granting permits for exclusive tunnel systems The Internet cable in a very narrow tunnel under the public street in front of my house is owned by a private company.
- lorenzorhoades 9y agoI think you missed the first point I made. Tesla will be THE biggest ride-sharing service once it gets to scale with self-driving cars. Why would you buy a car in a large city if it'll be 2.50 to get to work in a self driving, all electric car? In California there are toll roads all over the place. How are the tunnels different from a normal toll freeway? Tesla could allow use of the tunnels for a fee. This fee will be the deciding factor between whether I take uber, google, lift or tesla. I am going to take whatever offer is cheaper. I'm suprised there isn't an app out there yet that lets you compare prices for your destination through various ride hailing services, but i'm sure there will be one in the future.
- sathishmanohar 9y ago> No. Once a TBM is below a certain depth (approximately two tunnel diameters – or 28 feet in this case), the tunneling process is almost impossible to detect, especially in soft soil. They missed an important FAQ, Will this tech increase bank heists?
- agjacobson 9y agoThis is a little crazy. Because of too much surface traffic, let's bore tunnels and develop sleds. The problem is: inefficient use of the existing infrastructure, 1 person per car, and the like. This wii be improved by the sharing of vehicles, and the driving of vehicles in formations by filing flight paths, using driverless technology. Cars are a highly unattractive investment anyway, a $50,000 car sits unused 23 hours a day. I am also skeptical that right of way, permits, and local governments could ever be satisfied by this scheme. And one pleasure of driving is looking out the window. You want to go in tunnels? By yourself? Oh you will work? Nahh.
- cmarschner 9y agoAgree with the first point - if the final goal is to move people around at low costs in terms of construction/maintenance, land use, and environmental factors, the low ratio of "transported human" vs. "transported metal" makes cars the worst of all choices. This can also only alleviated for so long by making roads more congested in a more efficient way. In the end, roads are still a massive waste. Some of your other points make too many assumptions of maintaining a status quo. E.g. automated cars will make sharing schemes more feasible. You can either hop on an uber-like car to get home, or lease your car out in the 96% of the time it sits idle. Unfortunately (depending on the right price) I think this will make car travel more attractive compared to other forms of transport. One can think of a lot of sharing schemes - individual cars, minibuses, or large busses like we have today - with different price points. Overall costs of motorized travel is likely to fall. So I would think that overall we will see that vehicle use will go up (at the expense of walking on foot, for example) and use of parking lots will go down. In fact if traffic wasn't as cyclic as it is one wouldn't need any parking lots at all. Also, if you can really get to the 130 or so MPH in the tunnel, then travel time will not be such an issue. The main fallacy of the whole initiative, however, is that it is based on status quo of the structure of cities. Compare the urban sprawl of a post-WW2 US city with those of a medieval town. The main difference was that travel was slower, and faster travel was incredibly expensive (mostly unreachable due to lacking technology). It led to a much more efficient use of resources. If anything we need to redesign our cities based on these old principles in order to reduce overall resource consumption.
- aMayn 9y agoTunnel construction/operation is silent to anyone on the surface. I am pretty sure the neighbours of the Copenhagen metro construction sites would wholeheartedly disagree.
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- stijnsanders 9y agoWall bricks from earth from the dig? I still think they should buy from https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ and press them from molten reclaimed plastic.
- praptak 9y ago"To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D" This is not very convincing. Solving congestion by building more roads isn't exactly a new idea. Its track record isn't that glorious either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand Not to sound too negative but how about some evidence on why it will work this time?
- pjscott 9y agoThe induced demand argument applies to marginal increases in capacity on already-congested roads. If you make enough extra capacity, eventually you run into limits in how much demand can be created. For example, if you check out the city streets at 3 AM, you'll typically find that there's a lot more capacity than people are using. These guys are quite ambitious in the scale of the tunneling they want to do.
- jlebrech 9y agoIf he reduced the tunnels even more by a factor or 20 instead he could put schweebs in the tunnels. http://shweeb.com/ http://shweeb.com/
- jheriko 9y ago"Tunnel construction/operation is silent to anyone on the surface." so... nothing like the tube then? :P
- rimher 9y agoUnfortunately this is never going to work in Rome, where there's a whole underground city already
- Gravityloss 9y agoHow can a company produce something coherent like this? Usually it's really hard to understand what a company is doing from their web page because it's hidden behind so much meaningless marketing speak "We help you solve problems and be awesome!".
- beefsack 9y agoGiven the name of the company and how that FAQ reads, I feel there's a good chance it's satire.
- mwexler 9y agoWhat a great title. Before clicking, I fully expected to see things like "Why should I keep working here?" and "Will anything, ever, happen here?" and other questions about working in a boring, mind numbing job... Real topic is much more important, but still, I think we also need a real "Boring Company" FAQs list.
- arikrak 9y agoCosts can be reduced greatly even without any technological innovation. NYC and LA spend ~10x more per km of subway than what some European cities spend. (E.g. NYC's $2.2B/km vs. Paris's $230M / km. [1]) So try to replicate what foreign cities are doing and you get significant savings. However since either way digging tunnels will be expensive, it seems inefficient to try to do this for cars. It would be more reasonable to just build a better subway system. Especially if in the future there will be automated fleets of self-driving cars waiting for you at each subway stop... [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...
- jqueryin 9y agoMy theory is that these tunnels are truly being built to support the Hyper Loop. It's only a matter of time before they acquire one of the companies that did all of the R&D work.
- logicallee 9y ago> Since concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, there is no way this is even close to being correct. For a point of comparison, "Airlines account for about 2 percent of global emissions". just how much concrete does this guy think is being produced. come on. He probably misreported a figure that said concrete production accounts for 4.5% of all construction-related greenhouse gas emissions.
- SteveGregory 9y agoConcrete production actually does have crazy CO2 emissions. Wikipedia says it's up to 5% globally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...
- logicallee 9y agoThat's shocking. The Wikipedia page gives a 2002 reference (for the sentence you cite), so I guess in order of magnitude it must be correct. It seems to say that the reason for this is that it must be heated to absolutely insane temperatures, which is, obviously, energy-intensive. 5% is huge though. I still have trouble believing it. I wish I could see a pie chart with the major sources of CO2 emissions. After things like cars, planes, factories, POWER GENERATION, etc, I would have thought those were the major ones. if you Google "pie chart of co2 emissions" it's hard to see where just concrete fits in. Oh well.
- 6d6b73 9y agoThe problem with this idea is not with throughput of the tunnels, but with the shafts that lead to the tunnel. Lowering one car to the tunnel will take time, and unless there is some kind of elevator with multiple carts you will only be able to lower one car at a time. Let's say that the shaft is 20m height and let's allow 2 meters for each car. We could get ~ 10 cars "stored" in the elevator, but if it takes one minute to load and unload the car it will take ~10 minutes for the car to get to the tunnel. One shaft will be able to load only 60 cars/hour. This will not solve any traffic problems and it actually may make the traffic around the shafts worse (depending on how many cars are waiting to go into the tunnel, and how large "the Boring Station" is. There are two solutions either load/unload cars faster - possible but unlikely, or have more elevators connected to each tunnel. The problem with the second solution is that these cars have to safely join the rest of the cars that are currently in the tunnel. If you have 10 elevators, each unloading one car a minute, you would need a system that allows one car to join the traffic every 6 seconds. If the cars are traveling at 125mph the sleds would need to have a pretty good acceleration to get to that speed as quickly as possible, or you would need longer adjacent tunnels.
- IanDrake 9y ago>Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won't fall on your head. Anyone from Boston can tell you that's not true. I don't think this sort of hyperbole helps the case for tunneling.
- steve-benjamins 9y agoAs an aside, I love that The Boring Company is a Squarespace website :D
- bischofs 9y agoWhen you make traveling easier for people, more people will do it - induced demand. Why can't anyone grasp this concept? You want to create autonomous cars so that basically 100% of the population can be on the road at any given time and you expect traffic to go away because you built some single lane tubes?
- neillyons 9y agoI love how Elon is just fucking going for it. No time to waste.
- pythonaut_16 9y agoI've been a little skeptical of Tesla lately but I love how quickly The Boring Company has gone from a tweet that seemed more like a joke than a real plan, to a hole in the company parking lot, to now actually working on prototypes and real plans. Also SpaceX is killing it. I'm not a Musk fanboy but IMO he's 2/3 right now in the companies he's working on and Tesla still has a decent shot of bringing that back to 3/3
- meggar 9y agoIsn't this basically the same design as the Circuits of Time from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?
- mcculley 9y agoOne question I don't see answered in the FAQ is "Who owns the tunnels?" Does the Boring Company own them? The municipality? How does one go about getting permission to tunnel below property owned by other entities?
- radiorental 9y ago> out of sight and won't fall on your head Tunnels are known for quite the opposite: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/us/11cnd-boston.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/us/11cnd-boston.html
- nmeofthestate 9y agoI'm no starry-eyed admirer of The Boring Company, but it's funny how many peoples' argument here seem to be: "The Boring Company's plan to alleviate traffic congestion is flawed and non-optimal. It would make more sense to replace American cities with high-density ones and build mass transit instead".
- mangodrunk 9y agoWhy is that funny? I see a proposal that requires cars as something that at best maintains status quo. A walkable/bikeable city seems far better to me than one that is made for cars. Roads are for cars instead of people. All that parking is for cars.
- crush-n-spread 9y agoYeah but people don't want that! No one is going to invest in getting rid of roads or giving away bicycles. That serves no one but the poor. People will invest in an underground transport network that solidifies Tesla's advantage. Think about what will actually work, what is actionable. Getting rid of cars is completely unactionable. Tunnels are. So Elon does tunnels.
- nmeofthestate 9y ago>Why is that funny? Replacing existing cities with new ones is non-trivial.
- kerbalspacepro 9y agoI have to assume that the same set of people complaining about high rent prices because of NIMBYism are not the same people dismissing this solution, which has the subtext of being NIMBY-proof. But they're probably the same.
- sroussey 9y agoDoesn't the $1B/mile include station costs? That's the real killer for subways.
- Kluny 9y agoWhoever wrote this, I'd like them to evaluate my life and write me a mission statement as well.
- schlipity 9y agoCouldn't we have a problem with tunnels that cross a tectonic plate? During an earthquake, if one plate moves up or down and the adjoining doesn't move, wouldn't that sheer the tunnel closed?
- adamsea 9y ago"To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D" I question this. Does anyone know why/how The Boring Company came to this conclusion?
- solarengineer 9y agoAll of Elon's ideas and actions: tunnels, hyperloop, solar, AI, electric cars, space launches and travel - are useful for getting to other planets and settling there. The investigation and ideas can be proved out in parallel here on Earth, and then applied in other planets.
- hung2201 9y agoI believe digging tunnels on earth is Elon's way to practice on earth. The machine will be use to dig tunnel in Mars in the future.