27 ms·
Dugout Loop
- SlyShy 8y agoI feel extremely curious about the construction costs given that the proposal says the Dugout Loop will transport just 250,000 a year at $1 fares. I suppose if it works the press alone could make the investment worthwhile.
- rococode 8y agoI imagine they're planning to lose money on it to help push it through whatever regulators are in the way. Once they have a working proof-of-concept in a city as big as LA, it'll be a much smoother process to expand to other cities because they can just say "I mean, it worked great in LA!".
- indecisive_user 8y agoAnd also, if it's reducing traffic congestion and car emissions, state governments might be willing to subsidize future projects.
- hkmurakami 8y agoThink of it as a pilot project for your first client. Typically you bill a very low price that doesn't really even cover the bills, even in a SW Project.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoAlso, they are assuming they’ll be able to use the digging experience to lower the cost of digging.
- swagasaurus-rex 8y agoThey also discussed ways to monetize selling the earth they excavate. Construction lego-like blocks was the concept they floated.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Gustomaximus 8y agoQuestion 1: From some key statements; > The fares are not finalized but will cost around $1. > it could be possible to increase ridership per game to 2,800 per game > Between games and events Dugout Loop would transport 250,000 people per year. >The Boring Company. This project will be 100% privately funded and will require zero taxpayer dollars. Say we assume full capacity, 2 events a day and travel both ways. With these metrics the annual revenue is: $4,588,000. There's no way that covers the investment. So what else is happening to make this financially viable? maybe private car use of the loop lift at a premium? stadium co-funding to promote events? Question 2: 2 of the image look like single line tracks. Are they assuming as its a stadium that all traffic will go one way, then the other later? 2 tunnels? There must be something about this... ...Anyway never been to a city where the underground/metro isnt a great way to get around so keen to see this space develope.
- hkmurakami 8y agoThis is a pilot. Doesn’t have to be financially viable on its own. Paves way for future projects and proves utility for the community.
- mozumder 8y agoIt's not anywhere close to self-funding a real public transport system. How do they expect to make money as a private enterprise if these are the numbers they propose? Public transportation is supposed to lose money, not make it, hence the "public" part. It's paid for by tax dollars, because it is impossible for private companies to make money from it. Even the private rail systems around the world are largely subsidized pubicly during construction, with only operations being privatized.
- cloudwalking 8y agoIf you read further down the page it says this Dodger loop will be their first test track, to replace a previously proposed test track in Sepulveda. It's not meant to make money, it's to prove it works. The money will be made in future systems.
- apsec112 8y agoIf you're going to do all the work to tunnel under LA, why not just build a conventional subway? A conventional subway would carry orders of magnitude more people - 250,000 people a year is a few percent of the traffic that even a lightly used subway line carries.
- issa 8y agoI feel like the article covers the advantages. But, most notably, the tunnel is much cheaper and faster (to build).
- apsec112 8y agoAt this stage of a project, claims like that should be regarded as pure speculation. Elon Musk is not known for rigorously meeting deadlines. But even assuming that all the claims are accurate, what good does it do to build it more quickly if you have to kill >95% of the project value?
- erikpukinskis 8y agoNo, smaller tunnels are objectively cheaper.
- michaelt 8y agoSmaller diameter tunnels mean lower cost of boring, certainly. But some of the costs of satisfying external stakeholders, like buying land; getting approval from regulators, politicians and the local community; and so on would be independent of tunnel size. IMHO the main reason not to install a conventional metro line is Musk wants to demo something going 150mph, and I've never seen a metro line going that fast.
- jcranmer 8y ago> IMHO the main reason not to install a conventional metro line is Musk wants to demo something going 150mph, and I've never seen a metro line going that fast. It may seem counterintuitive, but higher speeds mean less throughput. Most metro systems are concentrated on trying to move high numbers of people, so bumping train max speeds to 150mph just makes no sense. The sweet spot for speed appears to be around 50-70mph, which most metro trains will do when they're cruising between stations. But anyways, anyone who is complaining that local mass transit ought to be going 150mph is someone who hasn't looked at why local mass transit can't go 150mph or is someone who doesn't want the "mass" in "mass transit".
- mdorazio 8y agoWait, so there's no low-pressure component to this project? If I'm reading correctly it's basically a series of high-speed electric shuttles in the tunnel rather than anything like the hyperloop concept.
- almost_usual 8y agoIt’s 3.6 miles. Why over engineer it?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 8y agoI had assumed that if they were going to the trouble of digging a multi-mile tunnel they would use it as a test bed for key hyperloop technologies. It's obviously not going to make any money, so it seems like it's more of a proof of concept to help pitch bigger projects to cities in the future. But as-is, this has lower passenger capacity per minute and more failure points than a fast lightrail system.
- traek 8y agoThis is unrelated to the Hyperloop concept.
- acjohnson55 8y agoIt's actually related. The tunnels are meant to be forward compatible with Hyperloop. Just no vacuum for short distances.
- piinbinary 8y agoWith a ~4 minute travel time, the tunnel is probably short enough that going faster isn't worthwhile.
- issa 8y agoThis technology and the practice of putting transportation underground sounds too good to be true. I'm really curious to see how this plays out. If it works as promised, this will be revolutionary.
- NegativeLatency 8y agoLike a subway?
- chx 8y agoThe big idea here is to use small electric vehicles instead of a huge ass train pulling hundreds, thousands of people and speed up.
- refoundglory 8y agoLike.........a subway. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon_Metro_Line_D https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon_Metro_Line_D
- Iv 8y agoThe big idea is to make tunnels cheaper than they are. This will be a test for Musks' boring machines. We shall see.
- NegativeLatency 8y agoTrains are pretty efficient. I wouldn’t bet against them.
- ianburrell 8y agoBut why? The smaller tunnels are the same diameter as the London Underground deep tube tunnels. Which run standard, if smaller, electric trains that can carry in two trains as many people as this will carry per day.
- zajd 8y agoBecause rich white people hate public transit
- incadenza 8y agoThis would be an amazing step in the right direction, unless I’m missing something. Of course, this isn’t a heavy commuter route. In the absence of decent surrounding public transit it seems unlikely to make any real dent in traffic.
- skgoa 8y agoWhat you are missing is that having hundreds of Model X based mini-busses going through this tunnel is less efficient (both in costs and energy) than having one subway train carry the same number of people. Now, if you want to be charitable, you could say that the Boring Company will bore a huge number of tunnels all across LA and install a huge number of stations. That would enable people to enjoy the advantages of individual transport (i.e. being able to go point-to-point) while still removing traffic from the surface streets. But that's not what is happening here. So far they are just doing a super inefficient mini-subway.
- jcranmer 8y ago> So far they are just doing a super inefficient mini-subway. The term you're looking for (and that Boring Company is avoiding) is "personal rapid transit."
- rococode 8y agoWhenever I read about high speed underground tunnel travel, I always feel a little weird because it just doesn't feel safe to me - even though I'm sure the people working on this are more than capable of running the numbers. I hope I'll be proven wrong because hyperloop transport is a super futuristic thing that would be cool to see. I wonder if folks back in the early 1800s felt the same way about trains? This project sounds like it was designed to lose money for the sake of good publicity. I'm sure if it works out well for LA, we'll quickly see efforts to establish similar systems in other major cities with LA as the precedent before refocusing on profitability. If we're all riding in Boring Company trains to work 30 years from now, remember it started here! haha
- dingaling 8y ago> wonder if folks back in the early 1800s felt the same way about trains Londoners were quite scathing about the first underground electric transit service in 1890, mostly due to its small cramped coaches that they called 'padded cells' 128 years later, we have... Better batteries.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoWhen high speed steam locomotives were first invented, critics stated that women would not be able to travel on such trains because the high acceleration could cause their uterus to prolapse.
- kyberias 8y agoI like this from their FAQ: "Our goal is to defeat the snail in a race."
- schiffern 8y ago> 2,800 per game or event (5% of Stadium capacity) Why not use bus-size vehicles? Assuming the same speed and following distance, moving from 16 to 80 passengers would increase system capacity by 5x, meaning four stations could serve 100% of Dodger Stadium capacity (vs 20). This part of their plan never made sense to me.
- Iv 8y ago> The electric skates are based around the Tesla Model X platform and are propelled by multiple electric motors. I guess they needed to demonstrate that they have a working tech in-house for this first iteration. I am sure that if it is successful, they can make plans to improve the skates' capacity but it makes sense that they make minimal commitments while Tesla doesn't have a larger model.
- schiffern 8y agoSo this is best understood as a breadboard for some later, Tesla Semi-derived system? Interesting take.
- thawab 8y agoThe tickets are $1 per person. I think the boring company wants a real implementation, they are not looking for profits out of this. Less people/ smaller cars are better to manage and work with.
- notatoad 8y agoi imagine part of the plan is to purposely under-size this for the sake of being able to brag about operating at full capacity.
- NuclearFishin 8y agoOne question I couldn't see answered in the FAQ is what happens if one of the electric skates breaks down? Given each of the skates is independently driven, the chance of failure would be magnified by N, for N skates within a tunnel. Seems like failures could be quite common and would affect the entire tunnel?
- mdekkers 8y agoSeems like failures could be quite common How did you come to this conclusion?
- NuclearFishin 8y agoIt's more of a guess than a conclusion. Because the tunnel is linear, the failure of a single skate affects the entire line, so running, say, 100 skates concurrently would make overall failure 100 times more likely. One option is to make the skates incredibly fault-tolerant, but that seems to go against the simple / cheap ethos that this system seems to be going for.
- kibibu 8y agoJust to make this more concrete, if your skate platform breaks down just once every 10 years, then banging 100 skates in the tunnel will see this breaking down at about once a month or so.
- secabeen 8y agoIf you have a flat failure curve, sure. If you have the more traditional bathtub curve, after the initial problems, failure rates should be much lower.
- indecisive_user 8y agoHow is that problem any different than other single track transportations (subway, train, trolley)?
- viburnum 8y agoMusk is full of shit and it's having real-world consequences. His vaporware is creating excuses for people to not do transit projects.
- issa 8y agoWhat was the excuse in the US for not doing high-speed transit projects in the 50 years before Musk came on the scene?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- erikpukinskis 8y agoWe don’t want to interrupt the freight schedules, so we just stopped doing passenger rail almost altogether.
- jcranmer 8y agoWhere are there viable routes for high-speed rail in the US? And did you forget about the CAHSR project?
- erikpukinskis 8y agoMusk is full of vim and vigor and it’s having real-world benefits. His delivered products and projects are creating a scaffold for others to accelerate their own sustainable transport projects.
- LAMike 8y agoHow much does is cost the Boring Company to dig a one mile tunnel? I think they need to get it down to 10M to be viable worldwide
- ddmma 8y agoFlying cars could wait, the future is deep underground
- CrazyCatDog 8y agoThe fact that it shares a platform with three Tesla X, implies that The Boring Company add Tesla can pass along overhead and licensing fees between them... That could prove helpful if only one of them is public. Smells like a smart move.
- spyckie2 8y agoTo be fair, it seems like the transportation supply constrained - 20,000 people coming/leaving a stadium and only 2800 will have access to a 4 min shuttle ride away from a densely trafficked area. It sounds like a great situation to prove a lot of things, including market demand, and also to improve logistics in many areas like queues, scaling demand, emergency procedures, etc.
- chabes 8y agoHopefully it's being designed with consideration for earthquakes, which are inevitable in the region
- deadmutex 8y agoThe link explicitly addresses this.
- azernik 8y agoIt would be fabulously illegal for them not to do so in California.
- JauntyHatAngle 8y agoFrom the link: Tunnels, when designed properly, are known to be one of the safest places to be during an earthquake. From a structural safety standpoint, the tunnel moves uniformly with the ground, in contrast to surface structures. Additionally, a large amount of earthquake damage is caused by falling debris, which does not apply inside tunnels. Some examples: 1994 Northridge Earthquake: no damage to LA Subway tunnels 1989 Loma Prieta (Northern California) Earthquake: no damage to tunnels, which were then used to transport rescue personnel 1985 Mexico City Earthquake: no damage to tunnels, which were then used to transport rescue personnel
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- latchkey 8y agoThere is several other proposals for projects around the US here: https://www.boringcompany.com/projects/ https://www.boringcompany.com/projects/ The gallery page has a lot of great pictures and video as well. The tunnels are safe from an electrified 3rd rail and the tunnel / skate design can change over time (likely more easily than railway systems). Consider that this design, once proven, can be licensed and extended worldwide.
- dev_dull 8y ago> Construction of the tunnel and the two loop lifts is expected to last up to 14 months (likely much less). Call me skeptical. Seattle tried to build a tunnel and it took... wait is it still happening?? I’d like to know what they’re doing differenty in their digging process.
- secabeen 8y agoSmaller tunnel is the big one, I think. The seattle tunnel is 57-feet wide. The Boring Company tunnel is 14-feet wide.
- brian-armstrong 8y agoSF also has a giant hole in the ground that is years out from being done. Even if the Boring project runs 3x as fast and 1/4 as expensive it'd still cost hundreds of millions and take a few years
- jv22222 8y agoThe goal was to make the boring machine as fast as Gary the snail. Maybe they did that. Also, the machine builds the tunnel reinforces as it goes. https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Elon-Musk-think-he-can-bore-5-10x-faster-than-any-of-the-thousands-of-tunneling-projects-across-dozens-of-countries https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Elon-Musk-think-he-can-bore-5...
- apexalpha 8y agoDoesn't every tunnel boring machine do this?
- paxys 8y agoCan't really compare public projects to a privately funded one.
- marssaxman 8y agoSeattle tried to build the largest-diameter highway tunnel ever constructed, digging through a bunch of century-old fill material used to extend the shoreline with an enormous, one-of-a-kind tunnel boring machine. The tunnel was eventually completed, after years of delay, and WSDOT is currently building out a double-decker, multi-lane highway within its shiny new monster tunnel. At the same time as this boondoggle megaproject was going on, Seattle also built five ordinary subway tunnels for its light rail network, using the same bog-standard railway-sized TBMs which have been used successfully all over the world for years, and these projects were completed on time and within budget. The premise of the Boring Company is that useful transportation infrastructure can be accomplished more cheaply by constructing even smaller, simpler tunnels with standardized tunneling machines. Their tunnels are literally just concrete tubes with concrete floors, and they are saving even more money by skipping the enormously expensive underground stations necessary with a traditional subway by using "skates" small enough to be shuttled back to the surface in an elevator. The Seattle project was enormously ambitious; the Boring Company plan is clearly designed to be as boring as possible.
- notatoad 8y agoTesla is being investigated by the SEC? quick, better find something new to announce.
- chuckdries 8y agoThey keep calling it public transportation, but say it will be funded by the boring company? So is it going to be publicly owned and privately operated?
- viburnum 8y agoIt's just dumb vaporware and it's going nowhere.
- kirrent 8y agoOxford at least defines public transportation as that which is merely accessible by the public that runs on fixed routes. There is certainly oodles of public transportation throughout the world which is privately funded and owned.
- solatic 8y agoBy that definition, airlines are public transportation.
- andrei_says_ 8y agoI love the Q&A format; the writing is excellent: clear, elegant, to the point. I wish I could see similar writing on more company/project websites. As for the project itself, I have zero interest in being a consumer in the sports industrial complex so I’m questioning if this is the best route from the perspective of the city’s needs.
- trainmew 8y agoI don't get it. How does this improve on the underground subway? I'm unconvinced that making the tunnels smaller means that the construction costs will be significantly cheaper and faster. Further, the electric skates make no sense from an operational or RAMS perspective: 1. They're smaller so you need a lot of them, which means wear and tear = possibility of failure is higher; 2. They're inefficient in terms of energy use (gotta charge those batteries first) vs third rail that supplies continuous redundant power; 3. How are the electric skates driven? Autonomous? If they're relying on cameras to do autonomous driving, any disruption in the tunnel lighting will kill them all dead. 4. Lighting those tunnels continuously will not be cheap. 5. If the electric skates are driven independently, how will others behind know if one has broken down in front? 6. How do you maintain headway if the electric skates don't know positions of those in front of them? How do you make sure they don't collide if all you have is a camera? 7. Emphasis on average speed is weird, no passenger actually cares about the average speed of the carriages carrying them, only the frequency between those carriages that they can get onto to get to their final destination. 8. How do those electric skates know they've reached their destination and open the doors for passengers to get off? The illustration shows tightly packed electric skates. Do they travel up the loop lifts and then exit? How will these loop lifts be operated? This doesn't seem any different from a regular subway, only smaller tunnels, and smaller carriages carrying passengers, without any rail and other wayside equipment. Why not a battery-electric bus?
- txcwpalpha 8y ago>How does this improve on the underground subway? It's cheaper. >I'm unconvinced that making the tunnels smaller means that the construction costs will be significantly cheaper and faster. It's not just about the tunnels being smaller - it's also about the fact that the dugout tunnel is a simple tunnel lined with basic concrete and some lighting elements. It doesn't require the same, expensive stuff that a subway tunnel requires, like train tracks, high-voltage electrical systems to power the train, etc. The stations also make a big impact - the fact that the dugout vehicles are small and can take an elevator to the surface, where the 'station' is, means that you can avoid the very costly construction of a huge underground train platform. >4. Lighting those tunnels continuously will not be cheap. A string (even a long one) of high-intensity LED lights doesn't require much electricity. The costs of lighting the tunnel is probably one of the least costly parts of this whole project. >5. If the electric skates are driven independently, how will others behind know if one has broken down in front? >6. How do you maintain headway if the electric skates don't know positions of those in front of them? How do you make sure they don't collide if all you have is a camera? Just guessing here, but if it's a closed system and you have control over all the vehicles in it, then it won't be difficult to have the vehicles talk to each other (or a centralized hub) to be aware of each vehicle's locations and any breakdowns that occur (similar to how current metro systems monitor train locations and breakdowns). >8. How do those electric skates know they've reached their destination and open the doors for passengers to get off? The illustration shows tightly packed electric skates. Do they travel up the loop lifts and then exit? How will these loop lifts be operated? The vehicles being able to know how to get to the station and open their doors is probably not really a concern. This is already done in automated subway systems all over the world. It's not hard to have the vehicle be smart enough to drive to a specific 'dock' and then look for a specific trigger to know when to open its doors. Hell, my $100 roomba can park itself in a similar manner. As for the rest of your questions about the skates, my impression is that this is meant to be a proof-of-concept for cheap, barebones tunnels that self-powered, self-driving vehicles can use. If successful, I can see it being scaled up to use vehicles that are more bus- or train-sized (while still utilizing cheap barebones tunnels) that would help address concerns about efficiency, rate of failure, throughput, etc.
- fyhn 8y agoI really like the website design. I can just skim over the Qs on the left and read the As I'm interested in on the right. Somehow it feels better than having everything in one column.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- King-Aaron 8y ago> Passengers will load into electric skates, which access the Dugout Loop tunnel from the surface via a ramp or elevator. So on the Western Terminus, the 'skates' are parked in a holding lot above the track, then individually lowered via an elevator onto the track as needed. What I don't understand is why this design is advantageous to just having all the skates in a lot next to/on the same level as the track, and passengers just use an escalator to go down to the skate-parking level? In my mind that would be more efficient, surely. Both cost efficient and mechanically efficient.
- leot 8y agoUnderground space is more expensive than above.
- King-Aaron 8y agoRidiculously, I hadn't considered that.
- usrusr 8y agoReally depends on where you are. When you want to ferry people between huge parking lots, sure, go for it. But ferrying people between parking lots is a band-aid at best, compared to a real transit system. Also, if above-ground space at the connected points is sufficiently cheap, you will usually find most of the connection to be cheaper above-ground as well.
- leot 8y agoThe amount of skepticism here from those who otherwise have nothing to contribute to solving this problem is, at best, asinine. Is there some kind of glut of initiative and capital being directed to genuinely ambitious "zero to one" projects? If not such harping is utterly pointless. Maybe this project will fail. Who cares? This has historically been a hard problem. Let 1000 flowers bloom.
- bsaul 8y agoOn the other hand, SV ecosystem is crippled with "fake it until we make it" mentality, and people doing PR stunts just to raise money and have fun while the illusion stands. I do agree Elon has proved numerous time he isn't this type of guy, but we've seen failed projects, vaporwares and even crooked CEOs so often that you really can't blame the community for having a higher than normal level of skepticism.
- Grue3 8y ago> Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers. > The fares are not finalized but will cost around $1. > Initially, Dugout Loop will be limited to approximately 1,400 people (approximately 2.5% of Stadium capacity) per event. Based on City and community feedback, it could be possible to increase ridership per game to 2,800 per game or event (5% of Stadium capacity). Is this guy for real? That is shockingly low-density. The fair market price wouldn't be anywhere near $1, otherwise the tickets will sell out instantly. What this venue clearly needs is an actual metro station in its vicinity.
- pxtail 8y agoMany commenters seems to cling to the fact that this doesn't make sense. Yes ,in current form it won't be profitable at all but I think that this is only test and true value of this kind of transport system reveals itself if one takes into consideration connected network of tunnels. I guess that there are also other factors - for certain locations it could be more difficult (or just impossible) to build road, tunnel is good alternative in this case.
- tigershark 8y agoIn which form a system that can carry only ~100 times less passengers would be viable?