4 ms·
Have to wonder if Elon’s boring company is the solution. The state can say you don’t own the ground underneath and just tunnel straight from sf to la
by bushbaba 6y ago
Have to wonder if Elon’s boring company is the solution. The state can say you don’t own the ground underneath and just tunnel straight from sf to la
- masklinn 6y agoThe cost would actually make sense if it were all tunnels. Japan's newest Shinkansen route will be 90% tunnels, and it's estimated at $90bn for 180 miles. Tunneling is expensive as hell.
- Pxtl 6y agoI wonder if you could lower cost by switching to narrower tunnel gauge. Also, if it's all tunnel you could evacuate some of the air to lower resistance... Oh crud Hyperloop finally makes sense to me.
- bobthepanda 6y agonarrower tunnel gauge either means less capacity or comfort, or sometimes both. part of why Concorde was retired was because the seats themselves were not actually comfortable, and it could not compete with more spacious business class on traditional airliners with innovations like lie flat beds.
- ghaff 6y agoI'm not sure the timeframes quite line up. Lie-flat seating was coming in when the Concorde was retired (after an accident and in the wake of 9/11) but I'm not sure how widespread it was. But, yes, I've been in a Concorde (not flown in one) and the seating is, at best, modern domestic--non lie-flat--business class. I actually think this is something that a lot of modern supersonic travel fans miss. If you're willing to spend the money that supersonic travel will cost you can travel very comfortably. And 12-24 hours of time spent relaxing comfortably is not actually a problem for most people.
- bobthepanda 6y agoBA, one of the two Concorde operators, started using lie flat beds in 1999. Six hours vs three in a Concorde for JFK-LHR is totally a worthwhile trade for a cheaper fare if the six hours are mostly during sleeping hours anyways. There were definitely other problems (the aircraft was a dinosaur, with parts no longer made and a three-person crew; there was no reasonable replacement program on the horizon; the fuel costs of supersonic were hard to justify with the oil prices of the 2000s) but yeah, at some point Concorde's proposition became less and less appealing. FWIW the biggest supersonic contender these days, Boom, is specifically targeting room and per-mile costs for a modern business-class cabin of 50 people, which is a lot more workable from a business perspective. That being said, the money is not really in transatlantic (where you can sleep for 6-8 hours anyways) but in transpacific, because 12+ hours in a plane is a slog no matter how comfy the seat is.
- Pxtl 6y agoThe narrow tunnel-gage of Boring Company is designed for cars... presumably it'd be possible to have a train vehicle with a form-factor more like stretch minivan than a bus. Lots of moving parts because many many more doors to open-close than a traditional bus or subway. But still, if stop-to-stop times are under half an hour, is it okay to seal someone in stretch-minivan-like train car without a bathroom for half an hour? I dunno. It does mean that non-stop from LA to San Jose would be right out though. Being conservative and assuming a 300km/h vehicle, you'd want at least 3 stops along the way if people are completely trapped in the vehicle without even being able to stand up, much less relieve themselves.
- bobthepanda 6y agoCars, being a mostly private affair, are not subject to the public access regulations of public infrastructure. The bathroom is an obvious problem, and it also ties into problem # 2; the Americans with Disabilities Act. Cars and even minivans are not compliant with ADA without very expensive modification. Airplanes can afford long dwell times and dedicated personnel for people with disabilities, but as designed Boring Company/Hyperloop stuff can't accommodate this in a reasonable way.
- bobthepanda 6y agoThis is not how Western property rights work. And most of the cost of tunnels is the requirement for emergency access and ventilation; the small demonstration tunnel in Vegas lacks these features, and so was cheaper. To compare, the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland requires emergency cross connections every 325m and access shafts to the surface. The cross connections are perpendicular to the main tunnel and short in length so they have to be dug out more or less with workers anyways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel#/media/File:Nrla_scheme.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel#/media/Fi...
- spookthesunset 6y agoNot just emergency access and ventilation but the stations aren’t cheap or quick to build either. The tunnel itself is almost always the “easy” part.
- bushbaba 6y agoFrom sf to la wouldn’t need stops in between. At most you’d need 1-2 stops in between. I could totally see this as cheaper than dealing with every land owner in between the train’s path
- bobthepanda 6y agoYou still need to deal with every land owner in the path. Property rights don't stop at the surface of the earth.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- underwater 6y agoEmergency access isn't necessary for Boring Company tunnels. They're so narrow that no one is getting out of a vehicle in an emergency in the first place.
- conception 6y agoAs long as all you want is just a tunnel... https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-b1832455 https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/elon-musk-boring-compan...
- nradov 6y agoThe Boring Company will at best only achieve a small reduction in tunneling costs. This wouldn't fix the economics of passenger rail in California.