8 ms·

Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America

105 points by danso 4y ago

danso 4y ago
Paywall seems to be down on this article. Here's the first grafs/opening anecdote for convenience: > ONTARIO, Calif.—The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020. To the local transportation authority, it felt like finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. > Officials had started planning for a street-level rail connection between booming Ontario International Airport and a commuter train station 4 miles away, with an estimated cost north of $1 billion. For just $45 million, Mr. Musk’s Boring Co. offered to instead build an underground tunnel through which travelers could zip back and forth in autonomous electric vehicles. > Dazzled by Boring’s boasts that it had revolutionized tunneling, and the cachet of working with the billionaire head of EV maker Tesla Inc., the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dumped plans for a traditional light rail and embraced the futuristic tunnel. > When it came time to formalize the partnership and get to work, Boring itself went underground—just as it has done in Maryland, Chicago and Los Angeles. Boring didn’t submit a bid for Ontario by the January 2022 deadline. > The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to “solve soul-destroying traffic,” only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure, according to former executives and local, state and federal government officials who have worked with Mr. Musk’s Boring. The company has struggled with common bureaucratic hurdles like securing permits and conducting environmental reviews, the people said. > “Every time I see him on TV with a new project, or whatever, I’m like: Oh, I remember that bullet train to Chicago O’Hare,” said Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack. Boring had backed away from its proposal for a high-speed tunnel link to the airport there. > Mr. Musk and Steve Davis, president of Boring, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Ha, forgot about all this. The Chicago one seemed perfect for Boring Co. They already did the complicated expensive stuff - the stations were built and sit "ready". An electrical substation is there - unlimited power available on-site. All they need are the tunnels. And if Boring Co can't manage that, what can they do?
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    They already did the complicated expensive stuff - like build it. It's called the blue line. Nothing has ever been more obviously fake than that tunnel, when a functional 24h subway already runs the exact route and then some.
    - fishcrackers 4y ago
      an express system to and from the airport would be nice, sort of like the heathrow express blue line to the loop is a lot of stops and takes almost a hour would people actually use it/is it worth it? who knows
- deleted_account 4y ago
  Jalopnik had an article supposing Musk’s Hyperloop was just a ploy to subvert California's high-speed rail project.[1] Hanlon's razor seems applicable here, but that's not necessarily more flattering for Boring. Seems like a case where the hard part of deploying underground infrastructure in major metropolitan areas isn't actually digging through the dirt. [1] https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    As an example for your last point, boring the tunnels for London's Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) began in May 2009 and was finished by June 2015. But the line didn't open until May 2022.
    - WeylandYutani 4y ago
      Amsterdam is infamous. A swamp with centuries old buildings that are classed as monuments. But on the positive side: subway systems are long term projects. After a few decades everyone but historians will have forgotten the cost and hardships. I'm sure Crossrail will be used by millions of people every year.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Peoe need to stop waving around Hanlon's Razor. Ya know, if you'd just let stupidity qualify as malice like it should, maybe there'd be an actual decrease in the amount of it that goes unresolved.
    - deleted_account 4y ago
      I feel like stupid is at least quantifiable. We just tolerate a lot of stupid.
  - dahdum 4y ago
    > subvert California's high-speed rail project. HSR is doing a fine job subverting itself. Even if it completes in the optimistic case of 20 years, autonomous electric vehicles are likely to be mainstream. Some possibility of electric planes capable of the SFO/LAX route. With CA's push to renewables and electric vehicles, CO2 differences aren't likely to matter. HSR will be the slower, lower end, option at a higher price just like Amtrak is now.
- retox 4y ago
  >The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020 >Boring didn’t submit a bid for Ontario by the January 2022 deadline Doesn't seem surprising while the world was in the grips of covid with an uncertain end date.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dumped plans for a traditional light rail The key purpose of Boring Co pretending to be interested in building in Ontario was always to torpedo this project.
kramerger 4y ago
Behind paywall, but I believe it has already been leaked that this was Elons way of sabotaging public infrastructure projects that he considered a danger to his car company.
- asdff 4y ago
  Elon seems so paranoid. No potential Tesla customers are going to see the california high speed rail project and say that because of this project they are now out of the market for a Tesla which they will mainly be using for sub 20 minute trips around town.
  - Herbstluft 4y ago
    > Elon seems so paranoid. Honestly, I would just call him malicious, not paranoid. He has made it clear that he hates public transport, as in the idea of using it (in that it is crowded and such...). This is of course funny because we all know that Musk has never in his life used a regular city Bus or even a train. I think it is safe to assume that he would do something like this not for monetary profit, but simply out of spite. We are talking about a guy that pays tens of thousands of dollars just for the attempt to discredit and harass a rescue diver he doesn't like... [1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-16/musk-reveals-detective-probed-man-who-sued-over-pedo-guy-tweet https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-16/musk-reve...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - steveridout 4y ago
      > we all know that Musk has never in his life used a regular city Bus or even a train I’m skeptical, and this CNBC article quotes Elon refuting it: > According to Musk, he does, in fact, "actually love trains, most subways and London buses." From https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/elon-musk-versus-twitter-on-the-topic-of-public-transportation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/elon-musk-versus-twitter-on-...
chrisco255 4y ago
Maybe Boring Co. isn't ready to scale to multiple cities at once. They did accept the Vegas 29 mile tunnel deal and have completed four stops of it, starting with the convention center: https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/01/vegas-loop-boring-company-station-opening-news/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/01/vegas-loop-boring-company-...
- shagmin 4y ago
  Even in that case instead of the original high speed skates allowing your car to go 600mph in the tunnels, it's taxis going 35 MPH in tunnels... so underwhelming.
  - ckdarby 4y ago
    Max allowed 10 months ago was 40 MPH and the reasoning is the tunnels are connected to each other with off areas where they connect. Nobody wants to trust drivers doing 90 MPH with vehicles ahead at an absolute stop trying to get out at their connection area.
    - moistly 4y ago
      Guanajuato will throw all y’all for a real loop, then.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    There's little need to go 600 in a stretch of just a mile or two. The tunnel has a limited length and is nowhere close to finished. The 600 mph figure was quoted by hyperloop, which is a proposal by Musk but not an actual business owned by him. Boring Co is building tunnels for electric cars. They will not have a top speed of 600 at any point. Certainly if hyperloop tech gets built at practical scale in the future and if tunnels are needed for parts of it, it would make sense to use boring co for that leg. But the original design of hyperloop was above ground in elevated tubes.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
I’m consistently surprised when people don’t evaluate Elon musks companies (sans Twitter which IMO was a bipolar mania induced fiasco) in the only lens that matters - the creation of the end to end infrastructure for building a persistent colony on mars. The boring companies only purpose is to provide the tools for living on a planet with no magnetosphere. The rest of this is just how to secure funding and apply R&D in preparation. It’s not like he’s not been transparent about this. Sadly he’ll be too busy conducting code reviews on check mark images to succeed in his vision.
- popilewiz 4y ago
  You're consistently surprised that people don't evaluate Musk's companies based on his unrealistic pipedream of a Martian colony instead of their real worth (or damage) to the public? That is surprising, indeed.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    No, he's surprised that people don't look at Musk's actions with those companies based on his unrealistic pipedream. There is nothing illogical about assuming someone may be somewhat crazy and then looking at their actions stemming from their crazy motivation.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Saying that's "the only lens that matters" is a specific value judgement. Other people can value other things like the viability of that vision, competence to achieve it, impact of the means used along the way, financial return of the intermediate steps, entertainment value of incidental shitposting, etc etc. Other people aren't required to use your values to evaluate whether they consider a venture successful and you aren't required to use theirs. FWIW I don't know why that would be a surprise to you. Further musk doesn't strike me as particularly honest in his self-representation. Saying things isn't quite the same as transparency; it can nearly be in cases where the speaker is especially trustworthy but I don't see that to be the case here.
  - 4y ago
eiiot 4y ago
I still don't understand why people (or cities) are excited about the Boring Company when subways and other forms of public transportation have existed for hundreds of years, and are much more efficient at their job (solving traffic).
- asdff 4y ago
  Because the people who are excited about the boring company clearly do not understand anything about how a typical subway functions. For the cities, they do know better, they often compared these projects against the cost of rail transit, they just got fleeced by Boring company that straight up made up numbers apparently about project costs with no intention to deliver. Like it would be a comparison of a 1 billion dollar light rail or a supposedly 48 million dollar underground right of way, that's damn attractive for cities.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  It was very cathartic to see the traffic jam in the LA boring loop. "He Fixed Traffic" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NiM_p8n5A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NiM_p8n5A
  - beezle 4y ago
    man that would make me totally claustrophobic trapped in the car
  - mindracer 4y ago
    That tunnel is way to narrow, what happens in the event of an emergency or breakdown?
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      That's probably going to be a very rare scenario. It is not as if Teslas spontaneously catch on fire out of nowhere
- vwoolf 4y ago
  Then you are evidently not paying attention: https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kvk/why-the-us-sucks-at-building-public-transit https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kvk/why-the-us-sucks-at-b... or https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgym5j/heres-how-the-us-can-stop-wasting-billions-of-dollars-on-each-transit-project https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgym5j/heres-how-the-us-can-.... Costs are currently prohibitive and we're suffering terrible, self-inflicted wounds in the form of costs.
pedalpete 4y ago
https://archive.ph/mMXqb https://archive.ph/mMXqb
gamblor956 4y ago
It's even worse than you think: "Boring says it can improve tunneling speeds with fully electrified machines and by digging continuously, rather than stopping to assemble sections of the tunnel wall" Boring Co has so few people who know what they're doing that they don't even know why tunnel walls are built continuously as the tunnel is bored. (Hint: it's done to avoid cave-ins!) Boring Co's "speed improvements" are literally just from ignoring the safety considerations and logistics behind why their competitors all do things the way they do. This is like crypto re-discovering financial history, except that Boring Co's mistakes could literally kill someone. And I hope Elon's in the tunnel when the walls finally collapse on this face.
binarynate 4y ago
Now that I live in a city with a good train system (Chicago), a plan to alleviate traffic in large cities by boring tunnels for more cars sounds incredibly inefficient, and clearly driven by Musk's incentive to sell cars.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I live in the Loop and don't own a car, but when I rent one, Lower Wacker Drive is kind of magic... (I think it helps that GPS doesn't work down there so lots of people are scared to use it).
- midoridensha 4y ago
  There's no way to alleviate traffic in large cities with cars; it just isn't possible as long as you require everyone to have a car. Making roads wider just brings more cars as people move farther away and have to drive more, making more traffic and more calls to make more and wider roads, etc.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    And you would have to create parking space for all those cars. Cities have very expensive land. I suppose you could turn central park into a parking lot.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Even that wouldn't work, because then how do you get from Central Parking Lot to the building in Manhattan that you want to go to? To many NYC car-friendly, you need to demolish most of the buildings so you can put huge parking lots around the ones that remain. Then the roads won't be wide enough, so you'll need to demolish more buildings to make wider roads. Pretty soon, there won't be anything there besides roads, parking lots, and a handful of buildings, and no one will want to go there, they'll want to go someplace else that has more buildings and things to do, and then the traffic in that place will be too much and people will complain.
diebeforei485 4y ago
Whatever. Let them work things out in Las Vegas first before getting into complicated paperwork-heavy projects elsewhere. Anything in California is ultimately going to go to the bidder with the most experience navigating CEQA bureaucracy.
- quantified 4y ago
  But they offered to do it, wtf? Not being asked.
  - diebeforei485 4y ago
    They didn't submit a bid. It's fairly typical for the bidding process to be designed to favor political allies - we saw this in the space industry prior to SpaceX for example.
Veedrac 4y ago
From Reddit, > Originally, TBC submitted an unsolicited proposal to build a tunnel for the county. This tunnel would cost $45 million (fixed). TBC pitched the idea, and the board was sold, but wanted to expand the project. They split it into 3 phases, the first of which would be environmental impact assessments and other project management tasks. This was awarded to another contractor (not TBC), who designed a system involving a 24 foot diameter tunnel, effectively shutting TBC out of bidding (TBC uses 12 ft diameter tunnels). It is this project, designed by another contractor and completely unrelated to the thing TBC proposed, that blew up to a $500 million estimate. Part of the contract was that this company who did the proposal would also oversee the engineering of the final project, which is something TBC presumably wasn't interested in so they didn't bid. https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/z75yc0/comment/iy6dguh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/z75yc0/comme...

105 points by danso 4y ago

Paywall seems to be down on this article. Here's the first grafs/opening anecdote for convenience: > ONTARIO, Calif.—The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020. To the local transportation authority, it felt like finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. > Officials had started planning for a street-level rail connection between booming Ontario International Airport and a commuter train station 4 miles away, with an estimated cost north of $1 billion. For just $45 million, Mr. Musk’s Boring Co. offered to instead build an underground tunnel through which travelers could zip back and forth in autonomous electric vehicles. > Dazzled by Boring’s boasts that it had revolutionized tunneling, and the cachet of working with the billionaire head of EV maker Tesla Inc., the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dumped plans for a traditional light rail and embraced the futuristic tunnel. > When it came time to formalize the partnership and get to work, Boring itself went underground—just as it has done in Maryland, Chicago and Los Angeles. Boring didn’t submit a bid for Ontario by the January 2022 deadline. > The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to “solve soul-destroying traffic,” only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure, according to former executives and local, state and federal government officials who have worked with Mr. Musk’s Boring. The company has struggled with common bureaucratic hurdles like securing permits and conducting environmental reviews, the people said. > “Every time I see him on TV with a new project, or whatever, I’m like: Oh, I remember that bullet train to Chicago O’Hare,” said Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack. Boring had backed away from its proposal for a high-speed tunnel link to the airport there. > Mr. Musk and Steve Davis, president of Boring, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Kon-Peki 4y ago
Ha, forgot about all this. The Chicago one seemed perfect for Boring Co. They already did the complicated expensive stuff - the stations were built and sit "ready". An electrical substation is there - unlimited power available on-site. All they need are the tunnels. And if Boring Co can't manage that, what can they do?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  They already did the complicated expensive stuff - like build it. It's called the blue line. Nothing has ever been more obviously fake than that tunnel, when a functional 24h subway already runs the exact route and then some.
  - fishcrackers 4y ago
    an express system to and from the airport would be nice, sort of like the heathrow express blue line to the loop is a lot of stops and takes almost a hour would people actually use it/is it worth it? who knows
deleted_account 4y ago
Jalopnik had an article supposing Musk’s Hyperloop was just a ploy to subvert California's high-speed rail project.[1] Hanlon's razor seems applicable here, but that's not necessarily more flattering for Boring. Seems like a case where the hard part of deploying underground infrastructure in major metropolitan areas isn't actually digging through the dirt. [1] https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460 https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-cali...
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  As an example for your last point, boring the tunnels for London's Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) began in May 2009 and was finished by June 2015. But the line didn't open until May 2022.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    Amsterdam is infamous. A swamp with centuries old buildings that are classed as monuments. But on the positive side: subway systems are long term projects. After a few decades everyone but historians will have forgotten the cost and hardships. I'm sure Crossrail will be used by millions of people every year.
- salawat 4y ago
  Peoe need to stop waving around Hanlon's Razor. Ya know, if you'd just let stupidity qualify as malice like it should, maybe there'd be an actual decrease in the amount of it that goes unresolved.
  - deleted_account 4y ago
    I feel like stupid is at least quantifiable. We just tolerate a lot of stupid.
- dahdum 4y ago
  > subvert California's high-speed rail project. HSR is doing a fine job subverting itself. Even if it completes in the optimistic case of 20 years, autonomous electric vehicles are likely to be mainstream. Some possibility of electric planes capable of the SFO/LAX route. With CA's push to renewables and electric vehicles, CO2 differences aren't likely to matter. HSR will be the slower, lower end, option at a higher price just like Amtrak is now.
retox 4y ago
>The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020 >Boring didn’t submit a bid for Ontario by the January 2022 deadline Doesn't seem surprising while the world was in the grips of covid with an uncertain end date.
gamblor956 4y ago
the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dumped plans for a traditional light rail The key purpose of Boring Co pretending to be interested in building in Ontario was always to torpedo this project.

kramerger 4y ago

Behind paywall, but I believe it has already been leaked that this was Elons way of sabotaging public infrastructure projects that he considered a danger to his car company.

asdff 4y ago
Elon seems so paranoid. No potential Tesla customers are going to see the california high speed rail project and say that because of this project they are now out of the market for a Tesla which they will mainly be using for sub 20 minute trips around town.
- Herbstluft 4y ago
  > Elon seems so paranoid. Honestly, I would just call him malicious, not paranoid. He has made it clear that he hates public transport, as in the idea of using it (in that it is crowded and such...). This is of course funny because we all know that Musk has never in his life used a regular city Bus or even a train. I think it is safe to assume that he would do something like this not for monetary profit, but simply out of spite. We are talking about a guy that pays tens of thousands of dollars just for the attempt to discredit and harass a rescue diver he doesn't like... [1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-16/musk-reveals-detective-probed-man-who-sued-over-pedo-guy-tweet https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-16/musk-reve...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - steveridout 4y ago
    > we all know that Musk has never in his life used a regular city Bus or even a train I’m skeptical, and this CNBC article quotes Elon refuting it: > According to Musk, he does, in fact, "actually love trains, most subways and London buses." From https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/elon-musk-versus-twitter-on-the-topic-of-public-transportation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/elon-musk-versus-twitter-on-...

chrisco255 4y ago

Maybe Boring Co. isn't ready to scale to multiple cities at once. They did accept the Vegas 29 mile tunnel deal and have completed four stops of it, starting with the convention center: https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/01/vegas-loop-boring-company-station-opening-news/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/01/vegas-loop-boring-company-...

shagmin 4y ago
Even in that case instead of the original high speed skates allowing your car to go 600mph in the tunnels, it's taxis going 35 MPH in tunnels... so underwhelming.
- ckdarby 4y ago
  Max allowed 10 months ago was 40 MPH and the reasoning is the tunnels are connected to each other with off areas where they connect. Nobody wants to trust drivers doing 90 MPH with vehicles ahead at an absolute stop trying to get out at their connection area.
  - moistly 4y ago
    Guanajuato will throw all y’all for a real loop, then.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  There's little need to go 600 in a stretch of just a mile or two. The tunnel has a limited length and is nowhere close to finished. The 600 mph figure was quoted by hyperloop, which is a proposal by Musk but not an actual business owned by him. Boring Co is building tunnels for electric cars. They will not have a top speed of 600 at any point. Certainly if hyperloop tech gets built at practical scale in the future and if tunnels are needed for parts of it, it would make sense to use boring co for that leg. But the original design of hyperloop was above ground in elevated tubes.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

I’m consistently surprised when people don’t evaluate Elon musks companies (sans Twitter which IMO was a bipolar mania induced fiasco) in the only lens that matters - the creation of the end to end infrastructure for building a persistent colony on mars. The boring companies only purpose is to provide the tools for living on a planet with no magnetosphere. The rest of this is just how to secure funding and apply R&D in preparation. It’s not like he’s not been transparent about this. Sadly he’ll be too busy conducting code reviews on check mark images to succeed in his vision.

popilewiz 4y ago
You're consistently surprised that people don't evaluate Musk's companies based on his unrealistic pipedream of a Martian colony instead of their real worth (or damage) to the public? That is surprising, indeed.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  No, he's surprised that people don't look at Musk's actions with those companies based on his unrealistic pipedream. There is nothing illogical about assuming someone may be somewhat crazy and then looking at their actions stemming from their crazy motivation.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
Saying that's "the only lens that matters" is a specific value judgement. Other people can value other things like the viability of that vision, competence to achieve it, impact of the means used along the way, financial return of the intermediate steps, entertainment value of incidental shitposting, etc etc. Other people aren't required to use your values to evaluate whether they consider a venture successful and you aren't required to use theirs. FWIW I don't know why that would be a surprise to you. Further musk doesn't strike me as particularly honest in his self-representation. Saying things isn't quite the same as transparency; it can nearly be in cases where the speaker is especially trustworthy but I don't see that to be the case here.
- 4y ago

eiiot 4y ago

I still don't understand why people (or cities) are excited about the Boring Company when subways and other forms of public transportation have existed for hundreds of years, and are much more efficient at their job (solving traffic).

asdff 4y ago
Because the people who are excited about the boring company clearly do not understand anything about how a typical subway functions. For the cities, they do know better, they often compared these projects against the cost of rail transit, they just got fleeced by Boring company that straight up made up numbers apparently about project costs with no intention to deliver. Like it would be a comparison of a 1 billion dollar light rail or a supposedly 48 million dollar underground right of way, that's damn attractive for cities.
cuteboy19 4y ago
It was very cathartic to see the traffic jam in the LA boring loop. "He Fixed Traffic" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NiM_p8n5A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NiM_p8n5A
- beezle 4y ago
  man that would make me totally claustrophobic trapped in the car
- mindracer 4y ago
  That tunnel is way to narrow, what happens in the event of an emergency or breakdown?
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    That's probably going to be a very rare scenario. It is not as if Teslas spontaneously catch on fire out of nowhere
vwoolf 4y ago
Then you are evidently not paying attention: https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kvk/why-the-us-sucks-at-building-public-transit https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kvk/why-the-us-sucks-at-b... or https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgym5j/heres-how-the-us-can-stop-wasting-billions-of-dollars-on-each-transit-project https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgym5j/heres-how-the-us-can-.... Costs are currently prohibitive and we're suffering terrible, self-inflicted wounds in the form of costs.

pedalpete 4y ago

https://archive.ph/mMXqb https://archive.ph/mMXqb

gamblor956 4y ago

It's even worse than you think: "Boring says it can improve tunneling speeds with fully electrified machines and by digging continuously, rather than stopping to assemble sections of the tunnel wall" Boring Co has so few people who know what they're doing that they don't even know why tunnel walls are built continuously as the tunnel is bored. (Hint: it's done to avoid cave-ins!) Boring Co's "speed improvements" are literally just from ignoring the safety considerations and logistics behind why their competitors all do things the way they do. This is like crypto re-discovering financial history, except that Boring Co's mistakes could literally kill someone. And I hope Elon's in the tunnel when the walls finally collapse on this face.

binarynate 4y ago

Now that I live in a city with a good train system (Chicago), a plan to alleviate traffic in large cities by boring tunnels for more cars sounds incredibly inefficient, and clearly driven by Musk's incentive to sell cars.

cozzyd 4y ago
Don't get me wrong, I live in the Loop and don't own a car, but when I rent one, Lower Wacker Drive is kind of magic... (I think it helps that GPS doesn't work down there so lots of people are scared to use it).
midoridensha 4y ago
There's no way to alleviate traffic in large cities with cars; it just isn't possible as long as you require everyone to have a car. Making roads wider just brings more cars as people move farther away and have to drive more, making more traffic and more calls to make more and wider roads, etc.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  And you would have to create parking space for all those cars. Cities have very expensive land. I suppose you could turn central park into a parking lot.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Even that wouldn't work, because then how do you get from Central Parking Lot to the building in Manhattan that you want to go to? To many NYC car-friendly, you need to demolish most of the buildings so you can put huge parking lots around the ones that remain. Then the roads won't be wide enough, so you'll need to demolish more buildings to make wider roads. Pretty soon, there won't be anything there besides roads, parking lots, and a handful of buildings, and no one will want to go there, they'll want to go someplace else that has more buildings and things to do, and then the traffic in that place will be too much and people will complain.

diebeforei485 4y ago

Whatever. Let them work things out in Las Vegas first before getting into complicated paperwork-heavy projects elsewhere. Anything in California is ultimately going to go to the bidder with the most experience navigating CEQA bureaucracy.

quantified 4y ago
But they offered to do it, wtf? Not being asked.
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  They didn't submit a bid. It's fairly typical for the bidding process to be designed to favor political allies - we saw this in the space industry prior to SpaceX for example.

Veedrac 4y ago

From Reddit, > Originally, TBC submitted an unsolicited proposal to build a tunnel for the county. This tunnel would cost $45 million (fixed). TBC pitched the idea, and the board was sold, but wanted to expand the project. They split it into 3 phases, the first of which would be environmental impact assessments and other project management tasks. This was awarded to another contractor (not TBC), who designed a system involving a 24 foot diameter tunnel, effectively shutting TBC out of bidding (TBC uses 12 ft diameter tunnels). It is this project, designed by another contractor and completely unrelated to the thing TBC proposed, that blew up to a $500 million estimate. Part of the contract was that this company who did the proposal would also oversee the engineering of the final project, which is something TBC presumably wasn't interested in so they didn't bid. https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/z75yc0/comment/iy6dguh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/z75yc0/comme...