6 ms·

To state the obvious: Build two new tubes besides the existing ones, the take the existing ones out of service, renovate them, bam. Now you've got 4 (?) tubes

To state the obvious: Build two new tubes besides the existing ones, the take the existing ones out of service, renovate them, bam. Now you've got 4 (?) tubes and much fewer delays.

tootie 9y ago
I don't know if you read the article at all, but the governors of NY and NJ had an agreement with the Obama admin to jointly fund just one tunnel (total cost $30B) and Trump pulled the rug out from under them. Building tunnels under a river isn't simple.
- dhuramas 9y ago
  We should get Elon to do it.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    Elon doesn't believe in public transit. Too many plebes packed into too little space. He'd rather move people in their cars instead, and if there's anything New York City does not need it's more cars.
    - nashashmi 9y ago
      hyperloop?
      - InitialLastName 9y ago
        I can't find it at the moment, but he's been talking up hyperloop as a way to move pods with private cars in them. The Boring Company (a step towards Hyperloop, potentially), is talking about drilling holes small enough that only those pods would work.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Elon won't save you here. You gotta wait for his magic gridlock-reducing self-driving cars. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t... “I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.” “It’s a pain in the ass,” he continued. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.” When the audience member responded that public transportation seemed to work in Japan, Musk shot back, “What, where they cram people in the subway? That doesn’t sound great.”
    - gene-h 9y ago
      Well the thing to wait for is not Musk's self-driving cars, but Musk disrupting the tunnel boring machine industry. Sure, Musk might not like public transit, but his boring company could very well offer tunnel drilling services. Any improvement at all may cause other tunnel drilling companies to decrease prices. Of course, we really shouldn't be relying on Musk for things like this.
    - razorunreal 9y ago
      As much as I appreciate the guy, I don't think he thought this one through. A simple back of the envelope calculation would reveal just how hard it is to compete with a subway in terms of people per hour for a given width of road/track. Even bicycles, which are pretty compact, still need a safe stopping distance which wrecks the space efficiency. If you eliminate the stopping distances you probably also want to connect the vehicles to reduce crashes, and tada, it's a train.
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      Honestly I agree with his statements 100 percent. Mass transit done well is mediocre at best compared to individual transportation. Especially if someone else is driving. I would rather take an uberpool over the CTA any day of the week, it's simply faster and generally the same price
- yakitori 9y ago
  > Building tunnels under a river isn't simple. It's fairly simple as it is a 200 year old technology. It's not rocket science. What's not simple is how to divide the taxpayer money between the elites.
- isostatic 9y ago
  The cost of 14 miles of tunnels (and crossing the Thames and some smaller rivers, crossrail is under $2.5b. The entire project including half a dozen new stations entirely underground and a ton of electrification is $20b. That includes threading the line through a very congested underground area - tunnels within 12 inch of existing tunnels etc. The cost of the 2 mile branch of the pair of tunnels under the Thames was about $350m, cheaper per mile than the main tunnels. The jubilee line extension crossed the Thames 3 times and cost $5b for the entire project including new underground stations and 6 miles of new tunnels.
  - nshelly 9y ago
    While I think the US has massive cost overruns compared to other developed nations, and this fact makes a huge selling point to the public on a need for political reform, I think we should compare smaller projects to explain why. Let's compare one cost and time to fix a street light, or a train carriage in London, Paris, Seattle and NYC. Or even building a public playground. This would probably explain in detail how the cost of labor, planning parts, etc is so much more in parts of the US than overseas. Until US cities can do projects that are small than unfortunately it can't expect the public to really want to fund these larger, much more expensive projects.

To state the obvious: Build two new tubes besides the existing ones, the take the existing ones out of service, renovate them, bam. Now you've got 4 (?) tubes and much fewer delays.

tootie 9y ago

I don't know if you read the article at all, but the governors of NY and NJ had an agreement with the Obama admin to jointly fund just one tunnel (total cost $30B) and Trump pulled the rug out from under them. Building tunnels under a river isn't simple.

dhuramas 9y ago
We should get Elon to do it.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Elon doesn't believe in public transit. Too many plebes packed into too little space. He'd rather move people in their cars instead, and if there's anything New York City does not need it's more cars.
  - nashashmi 9y ago
    hyperloop?
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      I can't find it at the moment, but he's been talking up hyperloop as a way to move pods with private cars in them. The Boring Company (a step towards Hyperloop, potentially), is talking about drilling holes small enough that only those pods would work.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Elon won't save you here. You gotta wait for his magic gridlock-reducing self-driving cars. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t... “I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time.” “It’s a pain in the ass,” he continued. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.” When the audience member responded that public transportation seemed to work in Japan, Musk shot back, “What, where they cram people in the subway? That doesn’t sound great.”
  - gene-h 9y ago
    Well the thing to wait for is not Musk's self-driving cars, but Musk disrupting the tunnel boring machine industry. Sure, Musk might not like public transit, but his boring company could very well offer tunnel drilling services. Any improvement at all may cause other tunnel drilling companies to decrease prices. Of course, we really shouldn't be relying on Musk for things like this.
  - razorunreal 9y ago
    As much as I appreciate the guy, I don't think he thought this one through. A simple back of the envelope calculation would reveal just how hard it is to compete with a subway in terms of people per hour for a given width of road/track. Even bicycles, which are pretty compact, still need a safe stopping distance which wrecks the space efficiency. If you eliminate the stopping distances you probably also want to connect the vehicles to reduce crashes, and tada, it's a train.
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    Honestly I agree with his statements 100 percent. Mass transit done well is mediocre at best compared to individual transportation. Especially if someone else is driving. I would rather take an uberpool over the CTA any day of the week, it's simply faster and generally the same price
yakitori 9y ago
> Building tunnels under a river isn't simple. It's fairly simple as it is a 200 year old technology. It's not rocket science. What's not simple is how to divide the taxpayer money between the elites.
isostatic 9y ago
The cost of 14 miles of tunnels (and crossing the Thames and some smaller rivers, crossrail is under $2.5b. The entire project including half a dozen new stations entirely underground and a ton of electrification is $20b. That includes threading the line through a very congested underground area - tunnels within 12 inch of existing tunnels etc. The cost of the 2 mile branch of the pair of tunnels under the Thames was about $350m, cheaper per mile than the main tunnels. The jubilee line extension crossed the Thames 3 times and cost $5b for the entire project including new underground stations and 6 miles of new tunnels.
- nshelly 9y ago
  While I think the US has massive cost overruns compared to other developed nations, and this fact makes a huge selling point to the public on a need for political reform, I think we should compare smaller projects to explain why. Let's compare one cost and time to fix a street light, or a train carriage in London, Paris, Seattle and NYC. Or even building a public playground. This would probably explain in detail how the cost of labor, planning parts, etc is so much more in parts of the US than overseas. Until US cities can do projects that are small than unfortunately it can't expect the public to really want to fund these larger, much more expensive projects.