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What I'm not clear about is how BC plan to overcome American cities tendency to sprawl. It seems there's a huge risk of building tunnels at enormous expense whi
by kristianc 9y ago
What I'm not clear about is how BC plan to overcome American cities tendency to sprawl. It seems there's a huge risk of building tunnels at enormous expense which travel between places where people, at some indefinite point in the not too distant future, no longer really travel to.
Either that, or you build tunnels in highly concentrated places like Manhattan that just act as a supplement to existing metro networks. What am I missing here?
- erikpukinskis 9y agoIsn't that true of any capital expenditure? You make a model, cross your fingers, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you make it up on the margin.
- kristianc 9y agoI guess but I'm making the presupposition that Elon Musk is smarter than me, therefore he wouldn't have overlooked this, and am curious to know what I'm missing or what my mental model of how American cities grow and sprawl is failing to take account of.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoIt takes decades for a population center to empty. Plenty of time to recoup an investment. If he starts with low hanging fruit, like transit between deadlocked parts of LA he'll be making money. Maybe eventually he gets down into boondoggle territory, but I don't see why that should be a concern. As part of a larger fund, a few boondoggles are no problem—learning experiences.