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The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle right

The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle right now to get basic funding for proven conventional public transit services which would dramatically make life better for everyone. Musk dropping the promise of Hyperloop (with no interest on following up on the idea) has provided ammo for transit cynics and opponents of public transit to seed doubt, delay and derail the public transit conversation by inquiring why investment in conventional tech is necessary when Hyperloop is surely on the horizon. Even keen pro public transit futurists may find that they're accidentally injuring progress in public transport doing the same thing. The Boring Company's "cars in tunnels (maybe on sleds?) idea", which Musk is following up on, is even more dangerous and has worse impacts on cities. For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels. This is precisely the wrong solution at a time when municipal governments are more interested in reducing car use, because they understand very well the benefits in pivoting toward creating denser, more walkable, cities and are currently engaged in making this shift.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
One thing I don't understand about the "induced demand" thing - surely there must be a limit to this? If you keep expanding roads, at some point you must hit the situation in which your capacity is greater than the number of people even remotely interested in traveling the road... I suppose the limit might be quite high, but I've never seen it discussed at all.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  In discussions of supply and demand, something that isn't often discussed is the real, physical limits of supply creation in terms of construction time, costs, manpower and such. Demand is more flexible. This reality is also frequently ignored in the housing conversation when people advocate the solution to high prices is to simply add more supply, as if it's a given that supply could be created fast enough to overtake demand. I find that no one really ever does the work, taking into account the friction of real life on supply creation, to figure out if that's likely to be the case.
- ComradeTaco 9y ago
  There is a functional limit for induced demand! But it effectively can't be reached in urban and suburban areas because cars scale really poorly. Cars don't scale well for three main reasons: (1) Cost. Building roads and highways inflicts both huge upfront capital costs and maintenance costs. A typical highway line has a throughput of 2,000 cars per hour. (2) Real Estate. Building the level of roads necessary to meet induced demand+ would take up an extremely large amount of land that can only be used for vehicles. (3) Local Roads. Local roads can only absorb so much capacity and they have functional throughput limits. If you wanted to make them faster, homeowners couldn't have driveways. If you really wanted to, you could possibly make a city where driving is king and there is effectively no congestion. It would just be absurdly expensive and hostile to everyone who doesn't have access to car.
  - pas 9y ago
    Only cost is important for tunnels, because there's still space sufficient for hundreds of layers of tunnels below cities.
    - jcranmer 9y ago
      Only if you build tunnels that no one can get to. Road tunnels still need to obey grade and (horizontal and vertical) curvature restrictions. For example, every story down you push a tunnel, every city block longer an access ramp needs to be. And the deeper you make tunnels, the more difficult ventilation and pumping becomes.
      - zootam 9y ago
        theoretically one could avoid vertical curvature issues by connecting the tunnels with large shafts, similar to elevators in skyscrapers.
        chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
        This may slow down traffic, based on the vertical speed of the elevators and how quickly people in cars can board the elevator. I'm not sure which one would be quicker: having a really long access ramp (long because of the tunnel's depth), or having to wait in line to board an elevator that moves quite slowly.
- dagss 9y ago
  The limit is very high because it is not just the current pooulation, but all the new housing that is also induced. Where people live is a functon of transportation.
ComradeTaco 9y ago
I believe personally that the Hyperloop is vaporware that will exist only seasonally on the cover of Popular Mechanics. If somones actually produces even a semi-functional hyperloop testbed maybe I'll sing a different tune.
picosat 9y ago
I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts. Musk's propositions should and will coincide with years of statistical analysis before actual implementation to prevent exactly what you're talking about. Hyperloop could be to the detriment of a lot of cities, but that doesn't mean there aren't implementations that can improve transportation time, congestion, and quality of life. The attitude that pursuing futuristic transportation technologies will hinder ALL cities seems detrimental to human progress. What brought about our "proven" public transit systems, like subways, to begin with? Developing Hyperloop or the Boring Company doesn't need to mean replacing current infrastructure or stopping municipal efforts. It means we could put our brightest engineers towards some of humanity's most annoying problems (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB913090787638355000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB913090787638355000), forcing them to pay attention to municipal data along the way. If analysis indicates that tunnels would be detrimental to New York, then by all means, let's not build tunnels in New York. But if other analysis indicates that Los Angeles, a city incredibly dependent on cars for transportation (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nobody-walks-in-la-the-rise-of-cars-and-the-monorails-that-never-were-43267593/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nobody-walks-in-la-the...), might actually benefit from such an idea, we should pursue it. Don't be so quick to reject an idea before proper analysis has been done to understand the impact. It's the innovative ideas that end up actually improving humanity, and believe it or not, a lot of the things we consider to mundane today, sewers, subways, roads, skyscrapers, were at one time innovative and new.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts. Before pursuing innovation, it's worth knowing what came before you. The sheer number of people who speculatively re-invent bus lines when thinking about what Uber/Lyft could do in the future is proof of this.
alphapapa 9y ago
> For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels. In other words, "You can't build more roads. If you build more roads, people will drive more, and then there'll be more cars on the road. And we can't have more cars on the road. So you can't build more roads." Am I missing anything?

TeMPOraL 9y ago

One thing I don't understand about the "induced demand" thing - surely there must be a limit to this? If you keep expanding roads, at some point you must hit the situation in which your capacity is greater than the number of people even remotely interested in traveling the road... I suppose the limit might be quite high, but I've never seen it discussed at all.

Tiktaalik 9y ago
In discussions of supply and demand, something that isn't often discussed is the real, physical limits of supply creation in terms of construction time, costs, manpower and such. Demand is more flexible. This reality is also frequently ignored in the housing conversation when people advocate the solution to high prices is to simply add more supply, as if it's a given that supply could be created fast enough to overtake demand. I find that no one really ever does the work, taking into account the friction of real life on supply creation, to figure out if that's likely to be the case.
ComradeTaco 9y ago
There is a functional limit for induced demand! But it effectively can't be reached in urban and suburban areas because cars scale really poorly. Cars don't scale well for three main reasons: (1) Cost. Building roads and highways inflicts both huge upfront capital costs and maintenance costs. A typical highway line has a throughput of 2,000 cars per hour. (2) Real Estate. Building the level of roads necessary to meet induced demand+ would take up an extremely large amount of land that can only be used for vehicles. (3) Local Roads. Local roads can only absorb so much capacity and they have functional throughput limits. If you wanted to make them faster, homeowners couldn't have driveways. If you really wanted to, you could possibly make a city where driving is king and there is effectively no congestion. It would just be absurdly expensive and hostile to everyone who doesn't have access to car.
- pas 9y ago
  Only cost is important for tunnels, because there's still space sufficient for hundreds of layers of tunnels below cities.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    Only if you build tunnels that no one can get to. Road tunnels still need to obey grade and (horizontal and vertical) curvature restrictions. For example, every story down you push a tunnel, every city block longer an access ramp needs to be. And the deeper you make tunnels, the more difficult ventilation and pumping becomes.
    - zootam 9y ago
      theoretically one could avoid vertical curvature issues by connecting the tunnels with large shafts, similar to elevators in skyscrapers.
      - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
        This may slow down traffic, based on the vertical speed of the elevators and how quickly people in cars can board the elevator. I'm not sure which one would be quicker: having a really long access ramp (long because of the tunnel's depth), or having to wait in line to board an elevator that moves quite slowly.
dagss 9y ago
The limit is very high because it is not just the current pooulation, but all the new housing that is also induced. Where people live is a functon of transportation.

ComradeTaco 9y ago

I believe personally that the Hyperloop is vaporware that will exist only seasonally on the cover of Popular Mechanics. If somones actually produces even a semi-functional hyperloop testbed maybe I'll sing a different tune.

picosat 9y ago

I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts. Musk's propositions should and will coincide with years of statistical analysis before actual implementation to prevent exactly what you're talking about. Hyperloop could be to the detriment of a lot of cities, but that doesn't mean there aren't implementations that can improve transportation time, congestion, and quality of life. The attitude that pursuing futuristic transportation technologies will hinder ALL cities seems detrimental to human progress. What brought about our "proven" public transit systems, like subways, to begin with? Developing Hyperloop or the Boring Company doesn't need to mean replacing current infrastructure or stopping municipal efforts. It means we could put our brightest engineers towards some of humanity's most annoying problems (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB913090787638355000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB913090787638355000), forcing them to pay attention to municipal data along the way. If analysis indicates that tunnels would be detrimental to New York, then by all means, let's not build tunnels in New York. But if other analysis indicates that Los Angeles, a city incredibly dependent on cars for transportation (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nobody-walks-in-la-the-rise-of-cars-and-the-monorails-that-never-were-43267593/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nobody-walks-in-la-the...), might actually benefit from such an idea, we should pursue it. Don't be so quick to reject an idea before proper analysis has been done to understand the impact. It's the innovative ideas that end up actually improving humanity, and believe it or not, a lot of the things we consider to mundane today, sewers, subways, roads, skyscrapers, were at one time innovative and new.

ubernostrum 9y ago
I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts. Before pursuing innovation, it's worth knowing what came before you. The sheer number of people who speculatively re-invent bus lines when thinking about what Uber/Lyft could do in the future is proof of this.

alphapapa 9y ago

> For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels. In other words, "You can't build more roads. If you build more roads, people will drive more, and then there'll be more cars on the road. And we can't have more cars on the road. So you can't build more roads." Am I missing anything?