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Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Wins Chicago Airport High-Speed Train Bid
- jonknee 8y agoInteresting tidbit in this RFP is the winner has to pay for it! So of course they chose a startup that hasn’t built anything and has no financing.
- annerajb 8y agoThe financing would be provided by somebody else not the boring company itself. Probably a private company will get some bonds based on the project and pay for operating cost and such. Though Elon musk said he did not want public money.
- dbasedweeb 8y agoElon says a lot of things, and some of them even turn out to be true. The ones involving money though, seem to be less likely. This could work though, I think it’s more likely to never get off the ground. At least it’s just a tunnel, and not that Hyperloop crap. I actually have some faith in their ability to dig a tunnel, and zero faith in making a vac-train feasible.
- timb07 8y ago> I think it’s more likely to never get off the ground It's a tunnel, duh.
- dbasedweeb 8y agoHeh, I walked face-first into that one. Touché.
- colordrops 8y agoYou are just going to trash one of the most accomplished engineering magnets on earth without any rationale to back up your assertion? And please don't just follow with "it's well known that it won't work".
- cozzyd 8y ago"engineering magnets" I see what you did there! 10,000 Gauss for you!
- djrogers 8y agoMagnate - magnets are very different things, and very rarely people. /pedant
- ScottBurson 8y agoI thought it was a reference to Musk's ability to attract engineers :-)
- dbasedweeb 8y agoSorry, I forgot to take my Kool-Aid today. I promise to be more respectful of the MuskFather in future. For yea, he did turn the water into wine, and there were many fishes and loaves. For he was really awesome at PR, and taking credit for the work of many. Better?
- SECProto 8y agoNo, your response is worse, not better. It adds nothing to the conversation. Your original post could have merit if you back some of it up. This response is just internet shit-talking, and the opposite of the goal of HN. I think this bid process was quite interesting and unusual. Build the infrastructure in exchange for the right to operate the system, with restrictions (must meet certain minimum departures, etc etc). I also thought it was interesting that Boring Co. won the bid, and now has exclusive negotiation with city officials for a year. So yeah, it might change in the next year or so, and whatever timelines they settle on might change (that's one very valid criticism of Musk), but I don't see any reason to think it won't happen.
- tcbawo 8y agoIf they build the tunnel at $20k/foot, the cost would roughly be $1.6B. The line will supposedly run every 30 seconds for 20 hours per day. That's 876k trips per year. If they charge $20/ride and it fits 16 people, it will generate $280M/year at 100% utilization, or 17% ROI. Maybe a more realistic number would be 40% utilization, which still gives a respectable 7% ROI.
- cozzyd 8y agoSurely the operating costs and rolling stock costs will be more than $0. Maybe they can sell motion sickness medicine at exorbitant prices.
- ComradeTaco 8y agoThe article claims service every 15 minutes during most of the day, which means it will be extremely unprofitable to build. This isn't meant to return it's investment, it's meant as an operational testbed for musk's vision.
- cozzyd 8y agoThe RFQ required that, but with only 8-16 people per vehicle, they'd have to go much more often to have any reasonable throughput.
- smnrchrds 8y agoThe 30 second figure is from The Boring Company: > Electric skates will leave each station as frequently as every 30 seconds. The Chicago Express Loop will operate 20 hours per day, every day of the week. Source: https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/ https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/
- ComradeTaco 8y agoAhh, I appreciate the correction! I thought they were going to have a single track tunnel with passing sidings based on the 1.6 billion dollar construction costs, which would limit frequency. Does Musk seriously believe he get two ~20 mile tunnels and terminals for $1.6 billion? I don't know if he's exceedingly ambitious or delusional, give that a underground that's depicted in the rendering would cost 1/4 of his budget.
- blocked_again 8y agoThe founder of the company did build one of the first payment systems on Internet, first reusable rocket and made electric cars mainstream.
- mortenjorck 8y agoIn Chicago, "no government funding involved" tends to be about as ironclad as the average "we take your privacy very seriously."
- cozzyd 8y agoIf this works I'll be surprised... but happy. But realistically, I'll probably still take the blue line to O'Hare unless Musk's toy accepts my monthly CTA pass.
- aerovistae 8y agoI would pay extra to skip that endless ride any day.
- JackCh 8y agoI'd be very surprised if they attempted to build anything other than an electric train. If they're trying some sort of "hyperloop" I would share your skepticism, but as I understand it the Boring Company is about boring tunnels more than anything else (at this stage anyway.) Is an Elon Musk company capable of boring a regular tunnel and putting a regular train in it? I don't know the current state of their boring machines, but it seems like it should be feasible.
- timb07 8y agoThe point of The Boring Company is to reduce the cost of tunnelling by digging narrower tunnels (designed for custom vehicles, not regular trains or cars) and using an electric tunnel boring machine.
- stephengillie 8y agoDoes this mean Chicago's current trains won't fit inside the new tunnels?
- cozzyd 8y agoCTA trains are 9.3 ft wide and 12 ft tall, so they won't fit in the 14 ft diameter tunnels. Also, the "Loop" won't provide electricity preferring instead to haul a battery with each car.
- dashundchen 8y ago
- tcbawo 8y agoHere is their project page: https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/ https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/
- what_ever 8y agoWhy does this need to have battery? The skates will be mechanically confined to a concrete track as they describe, wouldn't it be easier to power them as high speed rails are powered?
- cozzyd 8y agoEspecially since the Blue Line is parallel so they could probably share substations.
- ComradeTaco 8y agoI feel like this this project will eventually morph into an undersized subway.
- Pxtl 8y agoWhich seems like a reasonable concept - if the big cost of subways is wide-diameter tunnels, experimenting with narrow subways is worthwhile. A Subway with a limousine form-factor, for example. But it's absurd how many permutations will have to happen before we land there.
- ComradeTaco 8y agoIf you have the kind of nice geotechnical conditions that permit the use of tunnel boring machines then tunneling isn't actually very expensive. What's killer is the cost of subway stations, which need to be dug out manually.
- Pxtl 8y agoI thought cost-savings from a system that used narrower bores was the key to Musk's whole strategy? I thought that was the whole thing - by designing smaller hardware he could make underground transport affordable?
- keyle 8y agoIf you can shoot rockets into Earth's orbit and land them back, you should be ok and be surrounded by the right people to shoot some pods up and down a tunnel. :)
- rmason 8y agoDetroit's Mayor Mike Duggan wants a subway to run from the airport to downtown. He said he's waiting for Boring Co's project to finish in LA so he can check with the mayor to see if it's worthwhile. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/06/12/mayor-mike-duggan-elon-musk-underground-railway-tunnel-detroit-metropolitan-airport/695486002/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/20... Meanwhile Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, just slipped ahead of him in line ;<).
- cozzyd 8y agoDetroit can probably handle its demand for airport-downtown travel with a bus lane on one of its many freeways, if the freeways are even congested enough to warrant that... In fact, bus lanes on freeways would probably be a better solution for most of The Boring Company's applications...
- dx034 8y agoBuses on dedicated lanes have found to be cheaper and as fast as subways in some cities. But they're not as prestigious and it's harder to ensure that the next government won't destroy the system by opening it up for other vehicles. Trains make sense for longer distances (more efficient) but in cities, buses work as well and can be used more flexibly.
- skgoa 8y agoThat's not entirely what public transport companies have found. Busses don't scale as well as using entire trains. I have seen a bus route replaced by a tram, because they had to send double-length busses at every few minutes. Which in practice meant that you would see two or three of those busses arrive at the same time. A well-planned public transport system will use a mix of busses of diverse sizes in conjunction with trains/trams for trunk routes.
- rsynnott 8y agoThe big problem with fully segregated bus lanes vs subways is that they have a lower peak capacity. However, this Boring company thing has a peak described capacity of only 2k/hour, lower than even a BRT/segregated lane bus system. Real subways have far higher capacities, obviously.
- purplezooey 8y agoNo public financing? How will the builder make a return on the capital, from fares? Ugh. It will be expensive and risky now. Hope there is a public component of the operating entity.
- noobermin 8y agoIsn't this extremely risky of a thing to do? Give rights to a company that has developed nothing for a design that has not been implemented anywhere else? Every major city outside of the US in the world has solutions to this, mostly being direct express trains. Why do something different like this?
- Maybestring 8y agoAt least at this stage, Chicago isn't paying for it. So... why not?
- WillEngler 8y agoYeah. IMO the stakes aren't super-high because, as the journalist mentions, Chicago already has decently fast and consistent service via the Blue Line from downtown to ORD. Given that, it would be odd for CTA, Cook County, or the feds to throw money at getting marginal gains on an airport express line when there are much bigger wins to be had at lower cost by, eg, improving reliability of bus service in the South Side (https://southsideweekly.com/beyond-the-l-proposal-south-side-public-transit/ https://southsideweekly.com/beyond-the-l-proposal-south-side...). The express line is (imo) a silly issue for Rahm et al to be giving as much attention to as they are, but as long as we're just at the stage where Elon Musk is spitballing how to build a whiz-bang tunnel of the future and Illinois tax money isn't going to it ... sure, go for it
- cozzyd 8y agoRahm's audience isn't city residents (most of whom won't use this train) but companies that might choose their HQ's partially based on such considerations.
- WillEngler 8y agoThat's useful to foreground and I agree that's his target. There is a reasonable argument to be made that a constellation of policies targeted at courting big businesses will bring more of the likes of McDonald's, Caterpillar, Boeing, etc to downtown Chicago, and this will help lift all boats. Meanwhile, it's unclear how much finite political capital and staffer attention this project burns that could have been, eg, directed towards tracking down funding for the Red Line expansion. Maybe they can walk and chew gum. More likely they can only chew like three sticks of gum and I wish this weren't one of those sticks. (Not that you were making a claim either way. I'm just riffing on your post.)
- maym86 8y agoI don't get it. Aren't there lots of companies around the world that already have this equipment and have done this kind of work for years? Drilling holes for trains is nothing new. What does Musk's company offer that is different? Is it just branding and marketing to make drilling holes the next big thing? Is there really that much margin in drilling tunnels that they can just undercut competition while using the same equipment and technology and still make money?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cozzyd 8y agoOther companies probably had more realistic cost and service projections. Or maybe this is a sick marketing move by Rahm and in a year they'll pick some well-established contractor.
- starpilot 8y agoSpaceX was completely unrealistic. Like we in the aerospace industry thought it was a joke and sat smugly with their string of spectacular failures in the mid '00s. My friend at NASA JSC launch operations especially. Now, he does launch ops at SpaceX.
- philliphaydon 8y agoI don't know a lot about SpaceX but I think I read somewhere he wanted to buy a rocket, and the price given to him was insane, so he looked up how to make a rocket and figured he could do it for less than the cost of buying one, and then after reducing costs decided it also needed to be reusable.
- icelancer 8y agoThat's more or less what happened. The supplier of the rockets were Russian and they basically screwed with him. And now, SpaceX.
- paulie_a 8y ago> "I suspect it's going to evolve a few times before anything concrete gets done" That is a nice way of saying bribes, navigating institutional corruption and then of course dealing with organized crime. This is Chicago so good luck.
- paulsutter 8y agoThe negative nonsense here is surely astroturf but from whom? “Without tunnels we’ll be in traffic hell forever” -Elon Musk Better electric transportation is an unalloyed good.
- cozzyd 8y agoSome of us are concerned about burying more money underneath Block 37 ( https://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/How-Chicago-Spent-400M-On-a-Subway-Superstation-to-Nowhere-293754431.html https://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/How-Chicago-Spent-... )
- paulsutter 8y agoThere’s no public money being spent here
- cozzyd 8y agoIf this were Germany or Japan, I might believe that. But this is Chicago so please forgive me for being a bit skeptical.
- dayaz36 8y agoI've been saying for years there is obvious astroturfing on HN just like on reddit. Every time I mention it it's dismissed as a conspiracy theory..
- compcoffee 8y ago>Every time I mention it it's dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Being as how myself and other people I know have been those accused of "astroturfing" for expressing any skepticism towards Musk's projects, I know it's a conspiracy theory.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoHaving seen the success of Musks's other projects I have high hopes for this. But I'm not seeing anything overly negative here, just some healthy scepticism and questions?
- crocal 8y agoFor those wondering « WTF », the project is fully financed by the contractor. The risk taken by the City is zero. Worst case scenario they rebid after the Boring company crashes and burns. For Musk, the business equation thus relies on the costs of construction to be correctly balanced with future revenues obtained from operating the line over the next decades. If you do it right like Hong Kong MTR, it’s a cash cow. If not, well, it’s Eurotunnel.
- PunchTornado 8y agowhat's wrong with the Eurotunnel? they turn a profit every year.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoThey went into bankruptcy protection after running over budget. Needless to say the original shareholders didn't do very well.
- tim333 8y agoOriginal shareholder here. This is true although I get freeish travel to this day. At least the government didn't have to bail it out and Eurostar did well which is a separate company from Eurotunnel.
- bbarn 8y agoWorst case scenario, they rush to break ground, bore half the tunnel, and Musk's financial house of cards collapses, now leaving us with another Chicago Spire sized mess underground.
- crocal 8y agoThis is not as unusual as you may think. Examples abound in such mega projects where a major civil works contractor default and another one walks in to pick up the mess. In addition, the path of the tunnel will be decided in details and subjected to various authorizations so mess will be limited. Delays will occur but, regardless what Elon thinks, there are plenty of reaaaaally good tunnel makers on this planet that will happily come and finish the job.
- ghaff 8y ago>Elon Musk's Boring Co. is the winner in a bid to build a multibillion-dollar high-speed express train to Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport. The result gives the young company a big boost in legitimacy as it tries to get transportation projects underway in Los Angeles and Washington. So, basically, they've won the right to make a proposal to finance their own construction of an airport link--which understandably just about no one else was interested in doing.
- Proven 8y agoA Ponzi entrepreneur always relies on gov business and/or subsidies
- lvh 8y agoChicago already has two rail systems that go in that direction. One, the CTA Blue Line, literally connects O’Hare and the Loop. The other, Metra, goes most of the way to the airport already. The El (that’s the blue line) already has absurd capacity problems. Chicago airport transit, at both Midway and O’Hare, is already pretty great compared to similarly sized airports: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/planes-trains-and-taxis-when-to-take-public-transit-from-the-airport/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/planes-trains-and-taxis... In conclusion, maybe we should have more trains on the El, express and otherwise, or invest in Metra to get to the airport, instead of betting on an unproven, totally new, single-use kind of transit?
- bunderbunder 8y agoThat was somewhat my first thought - "Why not just upgrade the Blue Line to a 4 track system so they can run express trains on it?" I wouldn't be at all surprised if they could halve the El service's time from the loop to O'Hare by having a train that only has stops at major connection points - Clark & Lake, (maybe) Logan Square, Jefferson Park, Cumberland, and O'Hare. But, of course, the Blue Line runs down the middle of I-90 between Jefferson Park and Cumberland, so there's probably not really any room to expand to a 4-track system.
- dominotw 8y ago> Why not just upgrade the Blue Line to a 4 track system Is think they are limited by the space available to expand.
- nat 8y agoI hate this so much. First, nobody who's lived in Chicago for more than about thirty minutes can possibly believe that this will end up being free to the city. At some point, somehow, we're going to pay. Second, we already have a perfectly fine train to O'Hare! This is an incredibly marginal improvement, and only benefiting a group that already has plenty of options. The existing train systems are focused entirely on an outdated model of exclusively bringing people to and from downtown. And huge swathes of the city don't even get that.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoNew trains are difficult because of right-of-way - everything's built up by now, no room on the surface. Boring a tunnel can be a way out. Why all the resistance? If this one works out, Chicago may get their 'huge swathes' on a workable underground transit system.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI'm sure there are civil engineering issues I haven't thought of, but it seems like there would be a lot less tunnel to bore if they take the existing line that already goes from downtown to O'Hare and just convert it from being partially underground to being completely underground.
- MisterTea 8y agohow do you do that without service interruptions?
- bunderbunder 8y agoYou don't. Don't worry, blue line people are used to it.
- lakechfoma 8y agoA little OT but what is it called when a rail system is setup purely to ferry people to and from the heart of the city? Philadelphia is the same way. New York on the other hand is more of a spaghetti mess. I wonder if that interconnection does things for the city too, like encourage growth in more areas.
- kennydude 8y ago> Electric pods for sure That's not very exciting at all. Heathrow has them already, and even further back the Morgantown PRT from 1975...
- tim333 8y agoNot 150mph pods.
- tqi 8y agoAs the article notes - the Blue Line currently runs from the Loop directly to Ohare in about 40 minutes for $5 (though realistically more like 50 minutes). I am not sure how much more I would be willing to pay for the trip to only take 20 minutes... $10 at most?
- crisdux 8y agoBusiness travelers would pay a lot more than $10. They already do pay a lot more to avoid taking the train. During peak times the Blue Line to Ohare takes more than 40 minutes. Also the ride is fairly unpleasant.
- bunderbunder 8y agoNitpick: Loop to O'Hare is only $2.50. It's just the return trip that costs $5. I'd probably keep using the El for my own purposes, but I could see business travelers liking this option. They're already taking cabs, which charge more like $30 or $40 to get downtown (IIRC) and can probably take as much as an hour to make the trip if traffic is bad.
- tqi 8y agoFair point. It just seems like a very of a narrow market for high speed public transit over such a short distance. A large % of the travel time to O'Hare is not spent on the train/in a cab. As a former consultant, I agree that business travelers would be willing to pay the cost whatever it was. However unless my hotel/office was right near a stop or traffic was unusually bad, I think it would take less time to get a cab from wherever I happened to be than to schlep over to the stop, wait for a train to arrive, take the train, and then walk all the way over to the terminal.
- jaclaz 8y agoAs said earlier on similar boring company related topic, the metro in (say) Tolouse (France) or Turin (Italy) has been made using small tunnels (and unmanned carriages, Matra VAL system) several years ago already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12935974#12937599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12935974#12937599 Not exactly "news" and for the moment at least the boring company bought a used TBM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15002501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15002501
- alexlrobertson 8y agoI'm not sure where they got the price of $5 for the current CTA train to the airport. http://www.rtachicago.org/index.php/plan-your-trip/travel-tips/paying-for-your-ride http://www.rtachicago.org/index.php/plan-your-trip/travel-ti... > CTA "L" train fare $2.50 More realistically there's a single-ride ticket for $3. > Single-Ride Ventra Tickets cost $3, which provides up to 2 transfers within 2 hours
- Parker16 8y agoThe cost from any station to O'hare is $2.50. However, the cost from O'Hare to downtown is $5.00 https://www.transitchicago.com/fares/ https://www.transitchicago.com/fares/
- tim333 8y ago>15 miles and a $40 taxi ride away. >...the city set a goal of connecting downtown with the airport in 20 minutes or less, with service every 15 minutes for the majority of the day. It also requested that fares be below the current rates for taxis and ride-share trips. This seems technically rather undemanding. My local train service does 16 miles in 12 mins from St Albans to West Hampstead using some very run of the mill electric trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thameslink,_Southern_and_Great_Northern_franchise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thameslink,_Southern_and_Great...