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This 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
by issa 8y ago
This 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
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for continuing to post flamebait and unsubstantive comments, and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoWhy indeed. If someone were to propose a new airline that used 50 Cessna Caravans instead of one 737, people would rightly claim they've gone off their rocker. But Elon is on record being no fan of public transport: "I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people (...)" [1] So I think its fair to say they're sacrificing capacity/efficiency for the sake of comfort and "the premium experience". [1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t...
- txcwpalpha 8y agoFrom my perspective, this could serve as a decent proof of concept for building cheap, barebones tunnels (the tunnel for this project is literally just a concrete lined tunnel with lighting - no additional costs like laying tracks, providing electrical third rails for the trains, etc) that self-driving vehicles can easily use. If this works well enough for something like a car-sized, self-driving, self-powered vehicle, I could see it being scaled up to use bus- or train-sized vehicles, while still utilizing the cheap, barebones tunnels.
- Patrick_Devine 8y agoThere are two ways to increase throughput of any metro or train system. Increase the length of the train, or decrease the headway between trains. In this case, The Boring Company is reducing the headways to probably 10-15 seconds.
- tigershark 8y agoAnd why this should be a big idea instead of a stupid one? All the passengers that they plan to transport in a day (and even more) are moved in a minute by two Crossrail trains. I can’t really see the advantage of taking 1440x the time to move the same amount of people...
- erikpukinskis 8y agoLike a tiny subway in a smaller tube.
- skgoa 8y agoIt's exactly the same size as the London Underground.
- issa 8y agoHave subways been successful in moving all transportation underground? No. Because they are too expensive, too slow to build, and therefore have extremely limited points of entry/exit. This (specifically a car that can ride on an electric skate) has the potential to combine the best of both worlds.
- legolas2412 8y agoIf the high capacity subways are not economical, this will never be too.