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i really appreciate what elon musk is doing, but to be clear, he's not strictly trying to make tunneling cheaper for mass transit. as i understand it, the high

i really appreciate what elon musk is doing, but to be clear, he's not strictly trying to make tunneling cheaper for mass transit. as i understand it, the high costs of transportation projects are a political problem not an engineering one. well-run subway projects have been completed at $50-100 million per mile, while most such projects in the US are 5 to 10 times that. that's attributable not to sticter safety standards or excessive land costs or public agencies being inefficient, even if those things do contribute at the margins. it's because so many constituencies laden these projects with deadweight costs (lawsuits, foot-dragging, overcharging, kickbacks, etc.). while his engineering leadership is exceptional and that contributes to lowering costs, elon adeptly sidesteps much of those constituent ladenings, perhaps through careful choice of goals and projects and sheer force of will. for all his faults, he seems to have the right blend of vision, skill, money, charisma, and motivation to bring these projects to completion without a lot of deadweight loss. so the boring company's technological advances just won't translate to cost reductions generally in underground transportation projects. even if a project uses the boring company for the tunneling, the large infrastructure contractors will find ways to extract their generous slice of pie. we need political/social/economic solutions to reduce these costs, not technological ones.

breck 7y ago
Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems. Won’t let me build a wire across your property—-no problem, I’ll go wireless...as an example
- clairity 7y ago
  > "Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems." sure, but what technology could be applied in this case? for instance, projects are often underbid and then overcharged over time, whether it's fixed bid or time and materials. fixed bid incentivizes subcontractors to cut corners. time and materials billing incentivizes subcontractors to be inefficient. and subcontractors find ways to cheat. people have tried complicated incentive systems to fix this issue (a kind of technological solution), but they seem to have mixed results (that is, not much better, for a lot more complexity in tracking and apportioning compensation). even if you could build a machine to monitor all the workers and perfectly pay them based on quality and efficiency, such dystopian conditions would most certainly meet heavy resistance. i mean, i love tech, but who'd want a machine controlling their lives?
  - breck 7y ago
    > sure, but what technology could be applied in this case? A big problem with tunnels has traditionally been land rights (less so than with highways/but still a problem). If your tunneling costs are 10-100x lower, suddenly landowners who would otherwise try to extract exorbitant prices have a lot less leverage because you have more freedom in where you build the tunnels and entry/exit points.
  - WilliamEdward 7y ago
    There's no magical new technology that will entirely subvert the political expense of this project, but they make it explicitly clear on the Boring Company website that they have vastly improved the mostly old and uninspired technology of the tunnel boring machine itself, which will save millions at least. So like, that answers your question.

breck 7y ago

Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems. Won’t let me build a wire across your property—-no problem, I’ll go wireless...as an example

clairity 7y ago
> "Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems." sure, but what technology could be applied in this case? for instance, projects are often underbid and then overcharged over time, whether it's fixed bid or time and materials. fixed bid incentivizes subcontractors to cut corners. time and materials billing incentivizes subcontractors to be inefficient. and subcontractors find ways to cheat. people have tried complicated incentive systems to fix this issue (a kind of technological solution), but they seem to have mixed results (that is, not much better, for a lot more complexity in tracking and apportioning compensation). even if you could build a machine to monitor all the workers and perfectly pay them based on quality and efficiency, such dystopian conditions would most certainly meet heavy resistance. i mean, i love tech, but who'd want a machine controlling their lives?
- breck 7y ago
  > sure, but what technology could be applied in this case? A big problem with tunnels has traditionally been land rights (less so than with highways/but still a problem). If your tunneling costs are 10-100x lower, suddenly landowners who would otherwise try to extract exorbitant prices have a lot less leverage because you have more freedom in where you build the tunnels and entry/exit points.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  There's no magical new technology that will entirely subvert the political expense of this project, but they make it explicitly clear on the Boring Company website that they have vastly improved the mostly old and uninspired technology of the tunnel boring machine itself, which will save millions at least. So like, that answers your question.