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The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done
- mzkply 7y agoPerhaps the timing makes sense, similar to high-rises and how they have their concrete structure complete a very long time before anyone can actually move in.
- pro-duct 7y agoThis sounds comically obvious, but WOW that was fast. Really impressed that they are delivering on some of their promises, given Musk's history of over-optimism. Sincerely wishing them the best of luck, because if they can pull this off, there will be other cities making deals with them (please San Francisco I'm begging you)
- abduhl 7y agoThe article is confusing. It says that they are supposed to deliver two tunnels - are both going on at the same time? It also says that they’re 6 football fields in: 1800 ft. This is only 35% of the stated mile length for the tunnel. Under what metric is this tunnel or project 50% complete?
- jessriedel 7y agoThis article from 10 days ago says "About 1,900 feet of the 4,300-foot-long tunnel has been dug in the seven weeks since the project’s kickoff". https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/conventions/boring-co-s-1st-las-vegas-convention-center-tunnel-nears-halfway-point-1929443/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/conventions/boring-co... So I think the Teslarati article just rounded 4,300 feet up to "a mile" (=5,280 feet). 1900/4300 = 44%.
- rainyMammoth 7y agoAlso good to note that Teslarati is an "Elon Musk fan boy" blog. Anything that you read there is usually lacking critical sense. They probably rounded 44% to 50%
- WhitneyLand 7y agoThe Strip, McCarran airport, and downtown are not within one or two miles of each other. They are further apart than that so there must be something else to it. The Strip itself could use the whole length of the tunnel, so whatever this is connecting to is going to be more limited then it might sound from the article.
- mzkply 7y agoIt's just from one end of the LVCC to the other.
- jandrese 7y agoThat sounds silly until you've walked from one end of the LVCC to the other.
- ghaff 7y agoThe expansion of the LVCC made me vaguely curious about what types of shows use it given that all the IT shows I'm familiar with use the Venetian/Sands or, if they're a bit smaller, The Mandalay Bay. I haven't been there since Comdex days. It looks as if it's things like Kitchen and Bath Builders, World of Concrete, etc. So maybe things that are more oriented towards a mega show floor and less to speaking rooms.
- nrp 7y agoCES is the key one. It occupies all of LVCC and Sands, with spillover and unofficial meeting rooms taking up basically all of the strip. It's not clear what CES is going to do with another full hall though. The show is already kind of a mish-mash of industries.
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- ghaff 7y ago
- irascible 7y agoLooking forward to sheltering in this when the shit hits the fan!
- technofiend 7y agoStated opening date isn't until 2021, so they're doing the first 90% of the project which is drilling then the second 90% which is finishing the infrastructure, installing stations, etc. It's interesting to see but not exactly a milestone just yet.
- mdszy 7y agoSo they're halfway through digging the tunnel, not halfway through doing all the other things to make the tunnel actually as useful as musk is claiming. This all just seems like subways from first principles but probably worse.
- neltnerb 7y agoThough if they really dug that much tunnel under a city in such a short time, maybe there's an actual innovation in a better way to make subway tunnels? I think putting cars in these tunnels is silly and that subways are obviously the best answer personally, but I'm also watching two new light rail lines being put in next to my house. It does not seem quick (though they're elevated). It'd be lovely if those tracks were somehow underground faster and cheaper than above ground. I'm happy enough it's finally happening, but if it could be done economically in a way that reclaimed the land the rail lines are on to make a park or more housing? And without trains driving by my windows on both sides? Maybe the boring machine itself is somehow better than what we dig tunnels now.
- retrovm 7y agoNo, it's just a lot smaller. A 12-foot-wide tunnel is, shockingly, much cheaper than a 21-foot-wide tunnel. It also has essentially zero capacity, much like a hyperloop. If you want to punch useless holes in the earth, Elon Musk is your man without a doubt.
- jjeaff 7y agoAccording to an analysis I saw on youtube somewhere, they were able to find companies that dig similar sized tunnels (Boring Co. is just using off the shelf tunnel digging equipment.) They were running comparable if not a bit slower than similar projects that have been done many times before.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoThis is the most important factor - the amount of people such a tunnel can move is borderline insignificant, compared to a proper subway with a train.
- sambroner 7y agoI don't know much about tunneling speeds, but this seems much faster than Big Bertha in Seattle although for a much smaller volume (the tunnel is narrower) and (I'm assuming) less complex location. Big Bertha - 3.5 years, ~1.75 miles, 1.5 m/yr Boring - .15 years, .35 miles, 2.33 m/yr
- hobofan 7y agoThe two projects are on such opposite ends of the spectrum that it really makes them incomparable. Big Bertha was the second biggest boring machine ever built, and also in a risky location. On top of that it was built by a company with no experience in building boring machines anywhere close to its size.
- CydeWeys 7y agoYour units are confusing me. Meters per year? Surely they're faster than that?
- jchw 7y agoGuessing they are talking about construction time? edit: Oops I accidentally misunderstood your questioning. Surely that must be miles per year.
- snazz 7y agoMiles
- Jernik 7y agoThey used miles and years right before that, so I'm not sure how it is confusing that m/yr is miles/year
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoIt's confusing because the way the units are represented is inconsistent.
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- hnburnsy 7y agoHere is great Vegas blog that broke the news on the tunnel in Vegas. https://vitalvegas.com/elon-musks-tunnel-project-is-underway-at-las-vegas-convention-center/ https://vitalvegas.com/elon-musks-tunnel-project-is-underway...
- altacc 7y agoIsn't this just describing building a small but fancy subway system? Honest question: what's the novel "wow" factor that I'm missing?
- mdszy 7y agoThe "wow" factor is that Musk's name is associated with it. Nothing more.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoIsn’t the Tesla just an electric car? Musk as a company leader means a lot. I’m sure a lot of other people had the idea for a “Tesla” before there was Tesla. Or the idea of self-landing rockets.
- CydeWeys 7y agoThere's a big difference between an ICE car and a BEV. There's no difference between a tunnel and a tunnel.
- elsonrodriguez 7y agoThere's also no difference between a rocket and a rocket, until you figure out how to make one cheaper than the other.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoThe difference between one that falls into the ocean and one that brings itself back down into orbit and lands safely is one is cheaper than the other?
- elsonrodriguez 7y agoI guess the better analogy is "an orbit is an orbit". We don't care about the orbit as much as we care about the rockets in the case of SpaceX, because what the rockets mean for our ability to explore space. In the case of Boring, a tunnel is a tunnel, but if they can make them cheap and fast, that opens up a bunch of possibilities for improving transit.
- TaylorGood 7y agoI recently learned about the amount of homeless living in tunnels under the Las Vegas strip (1). I would imagine the depth for Boring Co is significant in comparison to these runoff tunnels right beneath the surface, but still popped into my mind.. 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRrxFX1wfFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRrxFX1wfFg
- mc3 7y agoELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Otherwise do I submit this to HN? https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling. I think tunnels are the future though for cities. But I'd prefer trains to be running in them, or roads that only allow electric public transport. Edit. In 1988 they started work on the Channel Tunnel UK to France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel - I am still in awe that they did this! I like the vision, bean counters be damned. If he made a tunnel like that it'd be news.
- s_dev 7y agoHN isn't exlusively for "tech news" but for anything that is of interest to nerds/intelligent people. You can of course submit any tunneling articles/media you think are interesting. Just look at the abundance of Atlas Obscura articles -- few are tech based.
- m4rtink 7y agoWhile we are at it, I really recommend checking out all the base tunnel projects currently in progress or recently completed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_tunnel Massively cool cutting edge technology, even before Elon involvement. ;-) There is also a huge amount of interesting videos on Youtube about these projects, all the way from the initial tunnel boring/blasting all the way to final outfitting (imagine installing rails & electric equipment in a 57 km long tunnel - no wonder it took 6 years of multi shift daily work, etc.).
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoAll very impressive. But most impressive to me is this: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel >>A 2002 report by Michitsugu Ikuma described, for the undersea section, that "the tunnel structure appears to remain in a good condition." The amount of inflow has been decreasing with time, although it "increases right after a large earthquake".
- rainyMammoth 7y agoThis is a textbook study case for the Dunning Kruger effect
- bane 7y agoI wish Musk could provide a clearer vision for why this is important (cheap subways for any city that wants one!). Instead we get weird tiny bumpy tunnels and car elevators.
- WilliamEdward 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs Here is an analysis of why Musk's tunnels are ridiculous. I used to believe in them too, so you can trust that this completely changed my opinion. Facts are more important than magic, people.
- martamoreno2 7y agoIs this for real? They are basically getting orgasms just because someone drills a tunnel, which is indeed revolutionary for public transportation... And it transports a whopping 4500 people per hour, will you think of that! That is almost as much as a normal, 100 year old subway train can do in a few minutes.
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- m463 7y agoDon't subways and other rail projects routinely cost a billion dollars? https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...
- aris85 7y agoLol silly White Worlder, this is a Black Project what you are unaware is that Elon is using Nuclear Tunnel Boring Machines (NTBM) no wonder they keep you blind and living under the veil
- asdff 7y agoAbout as much capacity as a bus lane for point of reference. I wonder what is cheaper: a can of paint, or boring into the living earth?
- adrianN 7y agoIn terms of political capital it's probably cheaper to bore a tunnel than to take away a lane for cars.
- ilitirit 7y agoI don't know a lot about the background of this project or the region. Why has it taken this long for a tunnel to be built in LV? Was/is it not considered necessary?
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- aris85 7y agoWhat they don’t mention is the tunnel from Las Vegas to Dreamland, soon JANET flights will be a thing of the past
- lucas_membrane 7y agoThe article says that two one-mile lengths will be constructed and that now they have completed more than 6 football fields (say 600 meters). That is not quite 20% of two miles, so the math may be more leading edge than the shovel. The article also says that the equipment has been underground "for months," so it doesn't get me thinking that tunnels are ready to conquer widespread problems on a large scale soon.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoIf the tunnel was 0% done on November 15, and is 50% done today, why isn't the tunnel opening before 2021? If this is actually their rate of progress, the tunnel should be ready by March.
- kenneth 7y agoThe Boring Company's FAQ is actually pretty helpful in understanding why their approach is innovative. In short: Small autonomous vehicles instead of big subway cars means you can change the model from one of big stations with big heavy trains that must speed up and slow down constantly to let people in and out, to one with smaller pods that go directly from a specific origin to a destination, travels mostly entirely at their top speed, never have to slow down for stops or other vehicles, etc. Also, the tunnels for this can be smaller and therefore exponentially cheaper to dig. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
- Traster 7y agoSorry, maybe I'm missing something, but everything we know about urban planning is that large high capacity vehicles doing fixed routes are way more efficient than individual point to point travel. Cars aren't as efficient as busses, busses aren't as efficient as trains. Or to put it another way - using your logic everyone should just be flying in private jets.