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A think we both really agree on the solution, just coming from slightly different perspectives. Boring is expensive. That is why Elon Musk wants to develop new

A think we both really agree on the solution, just coming from slightly different perspectives. Boring is expensive. That is why Elon Musk wants to develop new systems and thinks a factor of ten in cost reduction is not to hard, with smaller tunnels being the biggest easy gain. With your cars on trains idea you almost get what I am saying, but why do you need the cars to go onto trains? Just get the vehicles to run close together and you have the density of a train. Imagine a tunnel with cars going at 100mph and 40ft of space per car. One gets a rate of 13200 cars per hour. BART at peak does about 60,000 people per hour. If you mixed this tunnel with buses and cars with various amounts of people in them you could get a great throughput. Like you said, charge by the total space taken up by the vehicle. Bus rides pay a $1 each while the single person in a huge car pays $20. You don't need taxes. People will pay for transportation, just not many want to pay for others peoples transportation. Cities have a lot of their value in allowing millions of people to potentially interact with millions of others. Restricting when and where people can meet really diminishes the vitality and value of the urban life.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
$20 per car, 13,200 cars per hour, eight hours a day gets you $770,880,000 a year. The Big Dig in Boston cost $14 billion, but some estimates put it at more like $22 billion when all is said and done. So if you run your big cars through the tunnel for twenty years, you'll pay for one small tunnel. But fine, Musk can get it down to 1/10th - but the Big Dig is 3.5 miles, and you need to effectively replace highways. Unless everyone in their big car pays up front for decades of highway use (this is HN, so maybe we can use an ICO, why not), you're going to need cash up front - the kind of cash that governments that want their constituents to live in a nice place and prosper therein are willing to provide. (Someone double check my math and assumptions, please, I'm neither a civil engineer, nor a city planner, nor an economist.)
- njarboe 9y ago
  Tunneling in the US is really expensive but many projects have been done for a billion per mile (China is like $100 million per mile). The Big Dig is the highest priced tunnel ever done and not the expected cost of tunneling. If we could do $100 million per mile from San Francisco to Palo Alto (~45 miles), that is $4.5 billion. Charge the $20 each and make ~$1 billion a year. This would be a no brainer. Even at $1 billion a mile and $45 billion total it would almost make sense financially in the current low interest environment. For keeping people sane in the Bay Area, it would definitely be worth it.
icebraining 9y ago
With your cars on trains idea you almost get what I am saying, but why do you need the cars to go onto trains? Trains - or Elon Musk's "skates" - allow you to use existing cars, without having to wait for the whole fleet to go electric and self-driving, but sure, in the future they could not be needed. An advantage that does hold even for future cars is saving their batteries for outside travel.
- njarboe 9y ago
  Yes, the skates are good for moving non-electric cars with electric cars in tunnels. I think it is a great idea you have to equate and call these closely-packed individual vehicles trains. Trains are a morally good way to travel while using a car is a morally bad way to travel. We all want to be morally good, right?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    It's not a word trick, I'm talking about actual trains that carry cars. They're pretty common in Europe: http://l450v.alamy.com/450v/d4pmtj/passengers-and-railroad-workers-prepare-to-leave-a-motorail-train-d4pmtj.jpg http://l450v.alamy.com/450v/d4pmtj/passengers-and-railroad-w...

pavel_lishin 9y ago

$20 per car, 13,200 cars per hour, eight hours a day gets you $770,880,000 a year. The Big Dig in Boston cost $14 billion, but some estimates put it at more like $22 billion when all is said and done. So if you run your big cars through the tunnel for twenty years, you'll pay for one small tunnel. But fine, Musk can get it down to 1/10th - but the Big Dig is 3.5 miles, and you need to effectively replace highways. Unless everyone in their big car pays up front for decades of highway use (this is HN, so maybe we can use an ICO, why not), you're going to need cash up front - the kind of cash that governments that want their constituents to live in a nice place and prosper therein are willing to provide. (Someone double check my math and assumptions, please, I'm neither a civil engineer, nor a city planner, nor an economist.)

njarboe 9y ago
Tunneling in the US is really expensive but many projects have been done for a billion per mile (China is like $100 million per mile). The Big Dig is the highest priced tunnel ever done and not the expected cost of tunneling. If we could do $100 million per mile from San Francisco to Palo Alto (~45 miles), that is $4.5 billion. Charge the $20 each and make ~$1 billion a year. This would be a no brainer. Even at $1 billion a mile and $45 billion total it would almost make sense financially in the current low interest environment. For keeping people sane in the Bay Area, it would definitely be worth it.

icebraining 9y ago

With your cars on trains idea you almost get what I am saying, but why do you need the cars to go onto trains? Trains - or Elon Musk's "skates" - allow you to use existing cars, without having to wait for the whole fleet to go electric and self-driving, but sure, in the future they could not be needed. An advantage that does hold even for future cars is saving their batteries for outside travel.

njarboe 9y ago
Yes, the skates are good for moving non-electric cars with electric cars in tunnels. I think it is a great idea you have to equate and call these closely-packed individual vehicles trains. Trains are a morally good way to travel while using a car is a morally bad way to travel. We all want to be morally good, right?
- icebraining 9y ago
  It's not a word trick, I'm talking about actual trains that carry cars. They're pretty common in Europe: http://l450v.alamy.com/450v/d4pmtj/passengers-and-railroad-workers-prepare-to-leave-a-motorail-train-d4pmtj.jpg http://l450v.alamy.com/450v/d4pmtj/passengers-and-railroad-w...