5 ms·

If 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

• cozzyd 8y ago
  Surely the operating costs and rolling stock costs will be more than $0. Maybe they can sell motion sickness medicine at exorbitant prices.
• ComradeTaco 8y ago
  The 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 ago
    The 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Ahh, 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.
      • tcbawo 8y ago
        That $1.6 billion was my back of the envelope estimate based on costs I found in the news. Apparently, there is a unnamed source quoted in the Tribune that the cost would be under $1 billion. Also, these skates are the width of an electric car, so one tunnel 28 feet wide should suffice for bidirectional traffic.
        • ComradeTaco 8y ago
          If your goal was to cut costs and your largest single expense was boring, you would choose two 14' bores over a single 28' bore, because a 28' bore has a cross section twice as large as the combined cross section of two 14' bores and variable costs for boring are roughly based on cross sectional area One of the only things that I can agree with Musk in regards to this project is that larger tunnels are more expensive.
          • Scarblac 8y ago
            Wouldn't you need a third tunnel for emergency escape / access?
        • fyfy18 8y ago
          If they can really do it for that price, that’s impressive. In London one of the tube lines is being extended by 3.2km and it will cost $1.6b (£1.2b): https://www.london.gov.uk//press-releases/mayoral/nle-tunnelling-to-start-in-march https://www.london.gov.uk//press-releases/mayoral/nle-tunnel... London is relatively easy to tunnel in, and as it’s an extension existing rolling stock will be used (so no development or purchase costs).
• pgwhalen 8y ago
  To add some data: there were almost exactly 4 million riders that boarded at the O’Hare L station last year 8 million fares (assuming the number getting on is similar to the number getting off) is an estimate for the current public transit load from downtown-ish (big ish). Obviously they would like to canabalize many riders who don’t currently ride the train as well. https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/2017_CTA_Annual_Ridership_Report.pdf https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/2017_CTA_Annual_Ri...
  • cozzyd 8y ago
    But a large fraction of those are probably people who work at O'Hare and they sure as hell won't be paying $40 each way when they can pay $105/month for a CTA pass.
    • pgwhalen 8y ago
      For sure, just putting out the data so people can add their own assumptions. Personally I’m quite the skeptic.