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There are many reasons Elon’s hyperloop will be in a tunnel, including safety, travel within the city center, and surprisingly much easier approvals. Utilities

There are many reasons Elon’s hyperloop will be in a tunnel, including safety, travel within the city center, and surprisingly much easier approvals. Utilities drill tunnels all the time, and so far for The Boring Company, getting approvals has been a matter of filing for a utility approval. There’s just so much less contention underground. Yes cost is an challenge, but so much easier to focus on one problem rather than to be faced with many, like an above ground hyperloop would have. “Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon

sharpercoder 9y ago
Exactly. Building landtunnels uses much more material. This material is expensive; a 100KM+ metal twin tube including foundation is fundamentally more expensive then a railway. Further, it seems to me the thermal expansion problem (to me the single biggest technical problem) is not an issue either. No wonder Elon Musk started The Boring Company. Once costs go significantly down to bore tunnels, most land on earth can be used to build a highspeed network on.
jcranmer 9y ago
> There’s just so much less contention underground. Except for all the utility conduits (only half of which are actually marked), gas pipes, steam pipes, water pipes, sewage pipes, forgotten tunnels (remember the Chicago flood?), subway tunnels, basements, foundations, and pilings. Sure, you could avoid a lot of that by going very deep, but you still have problems with ventilation and access shafts to deep tunnels. > “Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon The way to fix traffic hell is to accept that, if you live in a large city, space is at a premium, and your single-occupancy vehicle takes up 20 times the space as standing on a train.
- quotemstr 9y ago
  People obviously prefer SOVs to standing on trains. Why not give people what they want if we can develop technology to do it? The entire conversation surrounding city planning, whether the specific topic is transportation, zoning, or utilities, has take on a weird ascetic moralizing tone, where the subtext is that the modes of existence people choose for themselves is somehow "bad", that we need to accept limits, and that the accommodations and compromises consequently made are good for us. I don't share that mindset. To borrow an old phrase, better living through technology really is possible.
  - namelost 9y ago
    Where good public transport systems exist, people use the hell out of them. It is so much nicer to travel by train from point-to-point and not have to worry about parking.
    - anko 9y ago
      What if parking is done by the car via self driving technology? Would you still prefer the train?
      - gsnedders 9y ago
        In rush hour in plenty of cities, trains will almost always be quicker, because they can move more people per hour than the road network can. (If you look at some metro systems, you can get up to 60,000 passengers per hour on a single track; for a highway, 2,000 cars per lane per hour is considered good: if you're all in SOVs, you're talking 30 lanes in each direction to be comparable with a single train line.)
      - redial 9y ago
        What if the 'train' picks you up at the door and gets to your destination exactly when expected? would you still prefer to park autonomously blocks away?
      - namelost 9y ago
        At least where I live, parking is sparse and therefore expensive. That's a good thing, because parking space is a waste of land that could be put to a more productive use. So yes I still prefer the train. Buses are cool too!
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      I prefer solitude. Give me a compartment on that train and I'll reconsider my preference for automobile transportation.
      - xj9 9y ago
- aerovistae 9y ago
  Boy am I glad people are free to try things instead of seeking your permission....we'd still be on horses.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Except for all the utility conduits (only half of which are actually marked) You dont have these in Arabia. All you have at 30m depth is desert.
- icebraining 9y ago
  subway tunnels Well, that's the point, isn't it? These are like subway tunnels, which are a solved problem and implemented for decades - including multi-level tunnels. Musk just seems to want to make them cheaper and put some space-age motorail inside it.
- paulsutter 9y ago
  The Boring Company plans to support shared-use pods as well as cars, and between high density locations I would expect them to be more common. What is the ratio of empty space between trains on a subway? I guess you conveniently forgot that because you were swept away by righteous moralization Image of shared pod: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIUer4cIhek/WSzqVRLPgGI/AAAAAAAAtQI/Z4GZibsXt_cxmNJKWRxyFmHMltqR0n-PwCLcB/s1600/The-Boring-Company-Transit-Pod-2-.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIUer4cIhek/WSzqVRLPgGI/AAAAAAAAt...
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    > What is the ratio of empty space between trains on a subway? I guess you conveniently forgot that because you were swept away by righteous moralization What's the ratio of empty space between cars on a highway? Doing some math (2000 car/hr * 4.8m/car / 100 km/h), it comes out to empty space taking up about 90% of a highway at (throughput) capacity. Running the same numbers on NYC subway trains, a track at capacity would be about 85% empty. So subways on average, use more of their space than highways do.
    - paulsutter 9y ago
      And what does that have to do with the self-driving sleds on tracks used by the Boring Company? And you’re omitting speed from your throughout calculations: 200kph in town and 1000kph between towns. Look I love subways and have lived in Manhattan and Tokyo. But subways are weak sauce compared to The Boring Company’s tunnels
      - jcranmer 9y ago
        I have no idea what you're arguing. The legal rule for safety reasons is that vehicles, whether cars or trains, must remain far enough apart to be able to safely come to a complete stop before hitting the car in front of it if that car were to come to an abrupt halt. Thus, capacity actually goes down at higher speeds, and space utilization would go down as well.
- MPSimmons 9y ago
  This doesn't achieve the density of subways, but it isn't meant to. In the cases of low-density areas, it solves the last-mile problem by bringing the vehicle with the person on the sled. In the cases where it's high-density to high-density, the sleds can function as subway cars. The question in my mind is more of whether the perceived benefits from the improvements that Elon is planning in the process can be realized, and if they'll be enough.
- SomewhatLikely 9y ago
  The equation changes a bit when you take into account that you can only have one train per X miles of track, while you can have many cars per mile.

sharpercoder 9y ago

Exactly. Building landtunnels uses much more material. This material is expensive; a 100KM+ metal twin tube including foundation is fundamentally more expensive then a railway. Further, it seems to me the thermal expansion problem (to me the single biggest technical problem) is not an issue either. No wonder Elon Musk started The Boring Company. Once costs go significantly down to bore tunnels, most land on earth can be used to build a highspeed network on.

jcranmer 9y ago

> There’s just so much less contention underground. Except for all the utility conduits (only half of which are actually marked), gas pipes, steam pipes, water pipes, sewage pipes, forgotten tunnels (remember the Chicago flood?), subway tunnels, basements, foundations, and pilings. Sure, you could avoid a lot of that by going very deep, but you still have problems with ventilation and access shafts to deep tunnels. > “Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon The way to fix traffic hell is to accept that, if you live in a large city, space is at a premium, and your single-occupancy vehicle takes up 20 times the space as standing on a train.

quotemstr 9y ago
People obviously prefer SOVs to standing on trains. Why not give people what they want if we can develop technology to do it? The entire conversation surrounding city planning, whether the specific topic is transportation, zoning, or utilities, has take on a weird ascetic moralizing tone, where the subtext is that the modes of existence people choose for themselves is somehow "bad", that we need to accept limits, and that the accommodations and compromises consequently made are good for us. I don't share that mindset. To borrow an old phrase, better living through technology really is possible.
- namelost 9y ago
  Where good public transport systems exist, people use the hell out of them. It is so much nicer to travel by train from point-to-point and not have to worry about parking.
  - anko 9y ago
    What if parking is done by the car via self driving technology? Would you still prefer the train?
    - gsnedders 9y ago
      In rush hour in plenty of cities, trains will almost always be quicker, because they can move more people per hour than the road network can. (If you look at some metro systems, you can get up to 60,000 passengers per hour on a single track; for a highway, 2,000 cars per lane per hour is considered good: if you're all in SOVs, you're talking 30 lanes in each direction to be comparable with a single train line.)
    - redial 9y ago
      What if the 'train' picks you up at the door and gets to your destination exactly when expected? would you still prefer to park autonomously blocks away?
    - namelost 9y ago
      At least where I live, parking is sparse and therefore expensive. That's a good thing, because parking space is a waste of land that could be put to a more productive use. So yes I still prefer the train. Buses are cool too!
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    I prefer solitude. Give me a compartment on that train and I'll reconsider my preference for automobile transportation.
    - xj9 9y ago
aerovistae 9y ago
Boy am I glad people are free to try things instead of seeking your permission....we'd still be on horses.
mschuster91 9y ago
> Except for all the utility conduits (only half of which are actually marked) You dont have these in Arabia. All you have at 30m depth is desert.
icebraining 9y ago
subway tunnels Well, that's the point, isn't it? These are like subway tunnels, which are a solved problem and implemented for decades - including multi-level tunnels. Musk just seems to want to make them cheaper and put some space-age motorail inside it.
paulsutter 9y ago
The Boring Company plans to support shared-use pods as well as cars, and between high density locations I would expect them to be more common. What is the ratio of empty space between trains on a subway? I guess you conveniently forgot that because you were swept away by righteous moralization Image of shared pod: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIUer4cIhek/WSzqVRLPgGI/AAAAAAAAtQI/Z4GZibsXt_cxmNJKWRxyFmHMltqR0n-PwCLcB/s1600/The-Boring-Company-Transit-Pod-2-.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WIUer4cIhek/WSzqVRLPgGI/AAAAAAAAt...
- jcranmer 9y ago
  > What is the ratio of empty space between trains on a subway? I guess you conveniently forgot that because you were swept away by righteous moralization What's the ratio of empty space between cars on a highway? Doing some math (2000 car/hr * 4.8m/car / 100 km/h), it comes out to empty space taking up about 90% of a highway at (throughput) capacity. Running the same numbers on NYC subway trains, a track at capacity would be about 85% empty. So subways on average, use more of their space than highways do.
  - paulsutter 9y ago
    And what does that have to do with the self-driving sleds on tracks used by the Boring Company? And you’re omitting speed from your throughout calculations: 200kph in town and 1000kph between towns. Look I love subways and have lived in Manhattan and Tokyo. But subways are weak sauce compared to The Boring Company’s tunnels
    - jcranmer 9y ago
      I have no idea what you're arguing. The legal rule for safety reasons is that vehicles, whether cars or trains, must remain far enough apart to be able to safely come to a complete stop before hitting the car in front of it if that car were to come to an abrupt halt. Thus, capacity actually goes down at higher speeds, and space utilization would go down as well.
MPSimmons 9y ago
This doesn't achieve the density of subways, but it isn't meant to. In the cases of low-density areas, it solves the last-mile problem by bringing the vehicle with the person on the sled. In the cases where it's high-density to high-density, the sleds can function as subway cars. The question in my mind is more of whether the perceived benefits from the improvements that Elon is planning in the process can be realized, and if they'll be enough.
SomewhatLikely 9y ago
The equation changes a bit when you take into account that you can only have one train per X miles of track, while you can have many cars per mile.