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What a gong show and waste of everyone's time. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075230308545454080 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075230308545454080

What a gong show and waste of everyone's time. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075230308545454080 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075230308545454080 How can this man honestly think this sort of system could be higher capacity than a subway?

unmole 8y ago
I think the term you're looking for is "reality distortion field".
- noobermin 8y ago
  I don't understand this. HN is better than most forums but seriously, the level at which people's minds online turn off for Elon is staggeringly confusing.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
newnewpdro 8y ago
I thought it was obvious this would quickly become an expensive express option. It's not going to fix traffic for the masses, it's going to fix it for the rich.
- de_watcher 8y ago
  Tunnels under the cities in Switzerland are pretty useful for the masses... oh, wait, they're all rich.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    With snark but really though, isn't this the real issue? Are we trying to make transit better for everyone or just a few wealthy folk?
    - nickik 8y ago
      As with literally every other technology. It starts out as something for rich people and if it proves useful demand will grow, price will fall. Cars were a luxury once. The point is to make tunnel boring cheap and to build an system of dynamic individual or group transport. Rejecting the system because rich people use it first is socialist logic and has no place specially if its not done with government money.
npunt 8y ago
Sure it’s not density of subway but more tunnels will partially offset lower capacity. This is about lowering tunnel & ‘station’ construction by ~2 orders of magnitude. There’s also lots of room underground to build vs surface, so little constraint there. Lowering cost is Elon’s demonstrated strength (SpaceX rockets and Tesla batteries), so gotta factor that in. Small tunnels cost way less than subway tunnels, not factoring in improvements in boring ops. It’s all about shaving off 2x here and 5x there across the whole system to make it cheap enough to get benefits. Lower cost let’s you open up new routes to lower density areas. Means cars can get off the road from those areas which would otherwise contribute to traffic. This is like going from mainframes to personal computers - enabled by lower cost, more people can have access. LA metro has a tough job in their hands with handling their traffic and is likely behind this. It’s not trying to be or marketed as a direct substitution for subway, it’s another option that happens to compare favorably but be implemented in a different way and by different parties. Alternative comparison is to freeway which has 1 car every 2 seconds, and this claims 1 car a second on main path.
- PinguTS 8y ago
  > There’s also lots of room underground to build vs surface, so little constraint there. There are lots of constraints building underground. Because on ground level the buildings have been built with certain assumptions about the ground regarding the construction structure. When the underground now changes, then either the ground will collapse or the underground tunnels have to been build statically according to those requirements. That is the hard work of tunneling. Also maintaining the tunnels regarding ground water levels is hard. Changing ground water levels also has impact in the statics of the building on the ground. There are much more things to consider building and maintaining underground.
  - npunt 8y ago
    Agree I was being a bit dismissive on that for expediency sake. It’s not without issues, but it represents the best available location to build. I imagine small tunnels can partially mitigate these issues.
mikob 8y ago
Well even if it weren't higher capacity, it has other advantages -- no parking/leaving the car, potentially no ticket gates or waiting for a train... etc. Trying new ideas isn't a waste of everyone's time, it's research.
- em-bee 8y ago
  and if it doesn't work out, it can always be converted to rail
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Is that for sure? It looks like it'd be a tight fit for a train.
    - em-bee 8y ago
      right, it might not work for a regular sized train, but if it can fit a car, it can fit rails and a custom designed rail carriage with the same advantages of a regular train. it might not even need regular rails. there are trains that work with rubber wheels (paris subway had that for decades already), so it would really just be fancy busses with guide-rails. EDIT: pretty much the same idea is mentioned by several others in this discussion, so it seems not to be to far fetched. of course, given the popularity of public transportation in LA, it makes sense that they are going for the ability for people to use one vehicle from their home all the way to their destination. i just hope they focus on actually getting the most use out of the tunnels, even if their initial vision doesn't work out the way they intend.
    - Skye 8y ago
      There are trains that run in narrow tunnels in London (12 feet wide I think?). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Underground_is_nicknamed_The_Tube.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Undergrou...
      - xvilka 8y ago
        They have a huge problem with overheating because of the small gap between roof and a tunnel, it also reduces potential speed of the train.
reissbaker 8y ago
I'm not sure what you're purporting to show other than two people disagreeing with each other, without providing evidence... Sure, an individual subway car has "more capacity," but does a subway system have more capacity? For example, I rarely see BART trains come within five minutes of each other. A tunnel that allows cars within 10 seconds of each other could provide more capacity than a tunnel with higher-density trains spaced further apart. Average density across the tunnel system could be higher (aka more throughout) with autonomous vehicles even if individual transport units have lower density (SUVs instead of train cars). Off the top of my head, here are issues train cars face with managing density that autonomous vehicles wouldn't face: 1. Needing to stop at stations where few people are getting on or off, meaning that trains behind you must be at least (MAX_SPEED * STOP_TIME) behind you. With cheap tunnel boring + AVs, you can quickly and cheaply build tunnel branches that skip exits, so individual cars need less space between them (you branch off to exit; no need for extra rails or switching technology, since it's built into the cars). 2. Entrance/exit from the train car: with trains, any jerk can run in as the doors are closing, preventing the train from leaving, backing up the trains behind you and leaving a huge gap with trains in front of you. With AVs, you're already in the car. 3. Trains have fairly long stopping distances, increasing the distance needed between trains for safe operation. Some quick Googling indicated that an 8-car passenger train traveling at 80mph can take over a mile to come to a complete stop — it's hard to imagine a car with such long braking distances. That puts a pretty hard lower bound on how densely you can pack an ordinary subway tunnel. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but it would be more useful to give actual data and evidence than knee-jerk shutdowns. It's not obvious to me, a non-train-engineer (like many on this site!), that the dismissive tweet is particularly meaningful.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  This is already a solved problem. BART may have huge headways, but Vancouver's fully automated Skytrain can run at 75 second headways (!!!). There is no universe where an SUV holding 4 people is more space efficient than a Skytrain car.
  - reissbaker 8y ago
    75 seconds is really, really long. Cars on a highway don't leave 75 seconds in between each other; if a cutting-edge train does, that starts to imply that density issues do exist for subway systems. And how expensive was it to build the train? If you can build 3x the tunnels for AVs as you can train tunnels and trains for the same price, actual throughput dollar-for-dollar in infra spend would be much better with Boring Co tunnels. Update with data: it cost $2 billion to build 50 miles of Skytrain. Apparently this prototype Boring Co tunnel cost $10 million per mile. That's a 4x cost advantage for Boring Co mile-for-mile, and I imagine they'll try to strengthen that advantage even further; after all, that's their whole company's purpose: cheap, efficient boring.
tlrobinson 8y ago
I can think of several possible reasons: 1. most subways don't operate at 150 MPH 2. subways stop at every stop even if the majority of passengers aren't getting on or off 3. subways can't route individuals (or small groups) directly to their destination, including via normal roads
- dantheman 8y ago
  2. subways stop at every stop even if the majority of passengers aren't getting on or off except in new york where there are direct trains and local ones -- it's a good demonstration of why #2 is such a good idea.
twblalock 8y ago
It's not about capacity. It's about convenience. Subway systems are absolutely useless unless the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go. There is no point taking the subway when you need to walk several miles from the station to your ultimate destination. There are only a handful of cities in the United States dense enough for a useful subway plus local transit system to make sense. New York is one. Chicago is borderline. Los Angeles is far too spread out for such a system to work. On the other hand, if I can turn my car into a subway train and then get out of the tunnel and drive to where I want to go, that's actually useful.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    > Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter. No they are not. Scooters and bikes are a great way to arrive at your destination sweaty, and you are at great risk of being run over by cars. Multi-modal transportation only works if your coworkers don't care what you smell like. I won't take public transit unless it's more convenient than driving a car. Nor will most other sane people. Even in the countries with the best public transit, nobody uses it when it is more convenient to drive. It's wonderful for dense cities and it's worthless everywhere else. By "dense" I mean London, Paris, and Tokyo. Once you get even 10 miles outside the centers of those cities you will find that driving is better, and that's what people do.
    - noobermin 8y ago
      Are we talking about elonholes outside of cities now? I thought we were talking about cities. The scooters I'm talking about are electric so you won't sweat. e-bikes are also a thing and they are becoming more of a thing. Finally, I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable around people. Not everyone does and for the most part public transit smelling is a meme that doesn't square most of the time.

unmole 8y ago

I think the term you're looking for is "reality distortion field".

noobermin 8y ago
I don't understand this. HN is better than most forums but seriously, the level at which people's minds online turn off for Elon is staggeringly confusing.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

newnewpdro 8y ago

I thought it was obvious this would quickly become an expensive express option. It's not going to fix traffic for the masses, it's going to fix it for the rich.

de_watcher 8y ago
Tunnels under the cities in Switzerland are pretty useful for the masses... oh, wait, they're all rich.
- noobermin 8y ago
  With snark but really though, isn't this the real issue? Are we trying to make transit better for everyone or just a few wealthy folk?
  - nickik 8y ago
    As with literally every other technology. It starts out as something for rich people and if it proves useful demand will grow, price will fall. Cars were a luxury once. The point is to make tunnel boring cheap and to build an system of dynamic individual or group transport. Rejecting the system because rich people use it first is socialist logic and has no place specially if its not done with government money.

npunt 8y ago

Sure it’s not density of subway but more tunnels will partially offset lower capacity. This is about lowering tunnel & ‘station’ construction by ~2 orders of magnitude. There’s also lots of room underground to build vs surface, so little constraint there. Lowering cost is Elon’s demonstrated strength (SpaceX rockets and Tesla batteries), so gotta factor that in. Small tunnels cost way less than subway tunnels, not factoring in improvements in boring ops. It’s all about shaving off 2x here and 5x there across the whole system to make it cheap enough to get benefits. Lower cost let’s you open up new routes to lower density areas. Means cars can get off the road from those areas which would otherwise contribute to traffic. This is like going from mainframes to personal computers - enabled by lower cost, more people can have access. LA metro has a tough job in their hands with handling their traffic and is likely behind this. It’s not trying to be or marketed as a direct substitution for subway, it’s another option that happens to compare favorably but be implemented in a different way and by different parties. Alternative comparison is to freeway which has 1 car every 2 seconds, and this claims 1 car a second on main path.

PinguTS 8y ago
> There’s also lots of room underground to build vs surface, so little constraint there. There are lots of constraints building underground. Because on ground level the buildings have been built with certain assumptions about the ground regarding the construction structure. When the underground now changes, then either the ground will collapse or the underground tunnels have to been build statically according to those requirements. That is the hard work of tunneling. Also maintaining the tunnels regarding ground water levels is hard. Changing ground water levels also has impact in the statics of the building on the ground. There are much more things to consider building and maintaining underground.
- npunt 8y ago
  Agree I was being a bit dismissive on that for expediency sake. It’s not without issues, but it represents the best available location to build. I imagine small tunnels can partially mitigate these issues.

mikob 8y ago

Well even if it weren't higher capacity, it has other advantages -- no parking/leaving the car, potentially no ticket gates or waiting for a train... etc. Trying new ideas isn't a waste of everyone's time, it's research.

em-bee 8y ago
and if it doesn't work out, it can always be converted to rail
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  Is that for sure? It looks like it'd be a tight fit for a train.
  - em-bee 8y ago
    right, it might not work for a regular sized train, but if it can fit a car, it can fit rails and a custom designed rail carriage with the same advantages of a regular train. it might not even need regular rails. there are trains that work with rubber wheels (paris subway had that for decades already), so it would really just be fancy busses with guide-rails. EDIT: pretty much the same idea is mentioned by several others in this discussion, so it seems not to be to far fetched. of course, given the popularity of public transportation in LA, it makes sense that they are going for the ability for people to use one vehicle from their home all the way to their destination. i just hope they focus on actually getting the most use out of the tunnels, even if their initial vision doesn't work out the way they intend.
  - Skye 8y ago
    There are trains that run in narrow tunnels in London (12 feet wide I think?). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Underground_is_nicknamed_The_Tube.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Undergrou...
    - xvilka 8y ago
      They have a huge problem with overheating because of the small gap between roof and a tunnel, it also reduces potential speed of the train.

reissbaker 8y ago

I'm not sure what you're purporting to show other than two people disagreeing with each other, without providing evidence... Sure, an individual subway car has "more capacity," but does a subway system have more capacity? For example, I rarely see BART trains come within five minutes of each other. A tunnel that allows cars within 10 seconds of each other could provide more capacity than a tunnel with higher-density trains spaced further apart. Average density across the tunnel system could be higher (aka more throughout) with autonomous vehicles even if individual transport units have lower density (SUVs instead of train cars). Off the top of my head, here are issues train cars face with managing density that autonomous vehicles wouldn't face: 1. Needing to stop at stations where few people are getting on or off, meaning that trains behind you must be at least (MAX_SPEED * STOP_TIME) behind you. With cheap tunnel boring + AVs, you can quickly and cheaply build tunnel branches that skip exits, so individual cars need less space between them (you branch off to exit; no need for extra rails or switching technology, since it's built into the cars). 2. Entrance/exit from the train car: with trains, any jerk can run in as the doors are closing, preventing the train from leaving, backing up the trains behind you and leaving a huge gap with trains in front of you. With AVs, you're already in the car. 3. Trains have fairly long stopping distances, increasing the distance needed between trains for safe operation. Some quick Googling indicated that an 8-car passenger train traveling at 80mph can take over a mile to come to a complete stop — it's hard to imagine a car with such long braking distances. That puts a pretty hard lower bound on how densely you can pack an ordinary subway tunnel. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but it would be more useful to give actual data and evidence than knee-jerk shutdowns. It's not obvious to me, a non-train-engineer (like many on this site!), that the dismissive tweet is particularly meaningful.

Tiktaalik 8y ago
This is already a solved problem. BART may have huge headways, but Vancouver's fully automated Skytrain can run at 75 second headways (!!!). There is no universe where an SUV holding 4 people is more space efficient than a Skytrain car.
- reissbaker 8y ago
  75 seconds is really, really long. Cars on a highway don't leave 75 seconds in between each other; if a cutting-edge train does, that starts to imply that density issues do exist for subway systems. And how expensive was it to build the train? If you can build 3x the tunnels for AVs as you can train tunnels and trains for the same price, actual throughput dollar-for-dollar in infra spend would be much better with Boring Co tunnels. Update with data: it cost $2 billion to build 50 miles of Skytrain. Apparently this prototype Boring Co tunnel cost $10 million per mile. That's a 4x cost advantage for Boring Co mile-for-mile, and I imagine they'll try to strengthen that advantage even further; after all, that's their whole company's purpose: cheap, efficient boring.

tlrobinson 8y ago

I can think of several possible reasons: 1. most subways don't operate at 150 MPH 2. subways stop at every stop even if the majority of passengers aren't getting on or off 3. subways can't route individuals (or small groups) directly to their destination, including via normal roads

dantheman 8y ago
2. subways stop at every stop even if the majority of passengers aren't getting on or off except in new york where there are direct trains and local ones -- it's a good demonstration of why #2 is such a good idea.

twblalock 8y ago

It's not about capacity. It's about convenience. Subway systems are absolutely useless unless the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go. There is no point taking the subway when you need to walk several miles from the station to your ultimate destination. There are only a handful of cities in the United States dense enough for a useful subway plus local transit system to make sense. New York is one. Chicago is borderline. Los Angeles is far too spread out for such a system to work. On the other hand, if I can turn my car into a subway train and then get out of the tunnel and drive to where I want to go, that's actually useful.

noobermin 8y ago
Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter.
- twblalock 8y ago
  > Why not do "the stations are spaced very close together and there are other means of transit from the station to where you want to go." Scooters and bikes are a great way to do the latter. No they are not. Scooters and bikes are a great way to arrive at your destination sweaty, and you are at great risk of being run over by cars. Multi-modal transportation only works if your coworkers don't care what you smell like. I won't take public transit unless it's more convenient than driving a car. Nor will most other sane people. Even in the countries with the best public transit, nobody uses it when it is more convenient to drive. It's wonderful for dense cities and it's worthless everywhere else. By "dense" I mean London, Paris, and Tokyo. Once you get even 10 miles outside the centers of those cities you will find that driving is better, and that's what people do.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    Are we talking about elonholes outside of cities now? I thought we were talking about cities. The scooters I'm talking about are electric so you won't sweat. e-bikes are also a thing and they are becoming more of a thing. Finally, I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable around people. Not everyone does and for the most part public transit smelling is a meme that doesn't square most of the time.