6 ms·

It's like a train, but with monumentally less carrying capacity- it's basically special tunnels for taxis. This is a real head-scratcher and calls into question

It's like a train, but with monumentally less carrying capacity- it's basically special tunnels for taxis. This is a real head-scratcher and calls into question the basic competence of LV government.

jcranmer 3y ago
Actually, what it's closest to is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), which is a transit idea that has generally always underwhelmed every place it's been introduced, starting from Morgantown in 1975.
- jcrawfordor 3y ago
  It's kind of unimaginably worse... PRT has basically always assumed automation, with practical PRTs having very few implementation differences from AGT. But the Boring solution is manually operated, so it's going to have all the downsides of PRT (really more since the boarding time is worse) with the extra operating expense of paying an operator for each vehicle. I wonder if it would be possible to fit a commercial AGT like Mitsubishi Crystal Mover into the Boring tunnels. They're wide enough I think but I don't know if the height clearance is sufficient. And of course AGTs are always constructed with a fire egress walkway which wouldn't fit, but Boring seems to have already accepted that significant safety limitation.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > But the Boring solution is manually operated The intent is that it's supposed to be autonomous cars moving around, but it seems Elon vastly overestimated the speed with which autonomous cars can actually be delivered, so the manual operation is just a stopgap solution. Then again, it's pretty telling that he's struggling to recreate the features of systems developed 50 years ago.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      Wait, the LV underground Teslas have to be manually driven? An enclosed track like that is basically ideal for self driving, there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do it with their current tech.
      - brookst 3y ago
        "Six killed in self-driving car pileup under Las Vegas" would be such bad PR for all involved that even someone as tone deaf as Elon probably has some cold feet.
      - ianburrell 3y ago
        The current Teslas in Convention Center tunnel have human drivers. The original plan was to have automated pods but that would have cost money. It might be possible to drive Tesla automated, but it is probably not easy to disconnect the drivers seat.
        jandrese 3y ago
        Human drivers can't be cheap either, and they reduce the capacity of the vehicle by a whopping 25%. Or are the cars in self driving mode but still stuck with the driver alertness systems? That would be a terrible job, holding on the wheel of a self driving car in a tunnel all day long just to keep the self driving system from getting mad and stopping the car.
    - jcrawfordor 3y ago
      It's hard for me not to view the situation as intentional. Conversion of buses to guideway operation has been done by local shops in several cases around the world. If you look at the tunnel design it seems that the small side curbs may have been intended to support side guidewheels similar to what many AGTs use. It's hard to believe that introducing at least steering guidance would have been that big of a project, but when you look at the stations it seems pretty clear that there was zero consideration of any kind of existing guidance technology. Sure, some of this can be attributed to a very hand-wavey "we'll do it in software," but it's hard for me to believe that automation was every seriously planned when they didn't build out mechanical steering guidance and design the stations for it. That's well-established technology going just about to WWII and the early Boeing APM experiments, and with a track record of shops doing semi-custom conversions of existing vehicles. Ultimately I think Boring/Tesla would introduce automation to the Las Vegas tunnels faster if they just bought a commercial moving-block system like Cityflo and adapted the vehicles. The fact that they don't seem to be pursuing this makes me think that the automation goal was never serious outside of its potential as a marketing tool for Tesla, which they are perhaps ironically also failing to deliver.
xnx 3y ago
How would we feel about it if the tunnels were for bikes? Seems like that would have some benefits: sheltered from the weather, no interaction with multi-ton vehicles driven by inattentive drivers, etc.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  The small size of the The Boring Company's tunnels seems perfect for bicycles. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cycling-tunnel/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cycling-tu...
- kibwen 3y ago
  As a bicyclist, it might make sense, but not commonly. In rural or undeveloped areas, it's cheaper to just pave a bike path aboveground. In dense and developed areas, the sheer number of potential destinations means you'd need an unreasonable high number of points from which to emerge from the tunnel; better to just build protected bike lanes where bicyclists can transition to ordinary sidewalk-borne pedestrians by merely stepping off their bike. The only tunnel solution that makes sense would be a "highway" through a dense area with only few onramps/offramps, but that implies that you have a very high amount of urban density such that bike trips (which are usually under five miles) can't just be done using dedicated above-ground protected bike lanes. Or hell, an actual subway.
- bitsnbytes 3y ago
  Maybe not bikes but small electric vehicles such as golf carts would be great. Most wouldn't want to go to work all sweaty. It amazes me that a lot of these green cities haven't incorporated a small golf cart lanes as most people work within a range of a golf cart distance to travel. The cost would be a lot cheaper than a car, no need for insurance premiums(if so, very little) , and less maintenance than . Also could likely double the lane traffic within the equivalent car lanes. The consumer would be more than willing to get on board using and buying golf carts just for the financial benefit of it.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Isn't this the selling point of Bird/Lime/Citibike etc... personal mobility? With e-mobility you don't arrive all sweaty.
inconceivable 3y ago
you know, once the tunnels are built, they can be re-purposed later.
- RankingMember 3y ago
  Re-purposed for what? It's not like they're building them wide enough for anything but cars.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Those tunnels will turn into beatiful homeless shelters. Like catacombs from Demolition Man.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      Then just build homeless shelters. Cheaper, less excavation, and less dystopia.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Subways in the US cost about $1B per mile. The Boring Company is spending about $10M per mile. Subways have a capacity of about 50,000 people per hour. TBC's tunnels have a capacity of 4,000 people per hour. So 8% of the capacity for 1% of the cost. Even if the numbers are an order of magnitude out, it would still be attractive. 8% of the capacity for 10% of the cost would be fabulously useful in smaller cities like Vegas.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  And Las Vegas isn't paying a dime for it. The cost is carried by the boring company and all that Las Vegas does is give them permission to dig the tunnels
  - xracy 3y ago
    [citation needed]
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Isn't the question if 4,000 people an hour is sufficient? An electric scooter can possibly get 1/100th the cargo to a destination at 1/100th the price of a semi truck, but does that actually solve the problem?
- user568439 3y ago
  I have the impression that the Boring Company could reduce costs of subway mile significantly if they tried
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > Subways in the US cost about $1B per mile. No they don't. The most expensive subway in the country costs $1B per mile. Typical costs are much cheaper (and could be even cheaper, but that's another story).
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    To get down to TBC's cost/passenger, they'd need to come down to $120M/mile. Subways at $120M/mile would be pretty freaking awesome.
yowzadave 3y ago
Any chance the tunnels could later be re-purposed as subway tunnels once people realize that this approach doesn't work?
red-iron-pine 3y ago
Everything about LV is an affront to god and man. A city shouldn't be there, and it's having issues for that reason. That they want an overpriced loop that delivers little shouldn't come as a surprise.

It's like a train, but with monumentally less carrying capacity- it's basically special tunnels for taxis. This is a real head-scratcher and calls into question the basic competence of LV government.

jcranmer 3y ago

Actually, what it's closest to is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), which is a transit idea that has generally always underwhelmed every place it's been introduced, starting from Morgantown in 1975.

jcrawfordor 3y ago
It's kind of unimaginably worse... PRT has basically always assumed automation, with practical PRTs having very few implementation differences from AGT. But the Boring solution is manually operated, so it's going to have all the downsides of PRT (really more since the boarding time is worse) with the extra operating expense of paying an operator for each vehicle. I wonder if it would be possible to fit a commercial AGT like Mitsubishi Crystal Mover into the Boring tunnels. They're wide enough I think but I don't know if the height clearance is sufficient. And of course AGTs are always constructed with a fire egress walkway which wouldn't fit, but Boring seems to have already accepted that significant safety limitation.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > But the Boring solution is manually operated The intent is that it's supposed to be autonomous cars moving around, but it seems Elon vastly overestimated the speed with which autonomous cars can actually be delivered, so the manual operation is just a stopgap solution. Then again, it's pretty telling that he's struggling to recreate the features of systems developed 50 years ago.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Wait, the LV underground Teslas have to be manually driven? An enclosed track like that is basically ideal for self driving, there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do it with their current tech.
    - brookst 3y ago
      "Six killed in self-driving car pileup under Las Vegas" would be such bad PR for all involved that even someone as tone deaf as Elon probably has some cold feet.
    - ianburrell 3y ago
      The current Teslas in Convention Center tunnel have human drivers. The original plan was to have automated pods but that would have cost money. It might be possible to drive Tesla automated, but it is probably not easy to disconnect the drivers seat.
      - jandrese 3y ago
        Human drivers can't be cheap either, and they reduce the capacity of the vehicle by a whopping 25%. Or are the cars in self driving mode but still stuck with the driver alertness systems? That would be a terrible job, holding on the wheel of a self driving car in a tunnel all day long just to keep the self driving system from getting mad and stopping the car.
  - jcrawfordor 3y ago
    It's hard for me not to view the situation as intentional. Conversion of buses to guideway operation has been done by local shops in several cases around the world. If you look at the tunnel design it seems that the small side curbs may have been intended to support side guidewheels similar to what many AGTs use. It's hard to believe that introducing at least steering guidance would have been that big of a project, but when you look at the stations it seems pretty clear that there was zero consideration of any kind of existing guidance technology. Sure, some of this can be attributed to a very hand-wavey "we'll do it in software," but it's hard for me to believe that automation was every seriously planned when they didn't build out mechanical steering guidance and design the stations for it. That's well-established technology going just about to WWII and the early Boeing APM experiments, and with a track record of shops doing semi-custom conversions of existing vehicles. Ultimately I think Boring/Tesla would introduce automation to the Las Vegas tunnels faster if they just bought a commercial moving-block system like Cityflo and adapted the vehicles. The fact that they don't seem to be pursuing this makes me think that the automation goal was never serious outside of its potential as a marketing tool for Tesla, which they are perhaps ironically also failing to deliver.

xnx 3y ago

How would we feel about it if the tunnels were for bikes? Seems like that would have some benefits: sheltered from the weather, no interaction with multi-ton vehicles driven by inattentive drivers, etc.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
The small size of the The Boring Company's tunnels seems perfect for bicycles. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cycling-tunnel/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-longest-cycling-tu...
kibwen 3y ago
As a bicyclist, it might make sense, but not commonly. In rural or undeveloped areas, it's cheaper to just pave a bike path aboveground. In dense and developed areas, the sheer number of potential destinations means you'd need an unreasonable high number of points from which to emerge from the tunnel; better to just build protected bike lanes where bicyclists can transition to ordinary sidewalk-borne pedestrians by merely stepping off their bike. The only tunnel solution that makes sense would be a "highway" through a dense area with only few onramps/offramps, but that implies that you have a very high amount of urban density such that bike trips (which are usually under five miles) can't just be done using dedicated above-ground protected bike lanes. Or hell, an actual subway.
bitsnbytes 3y ago
Maybe not bikes but small electric vehicles such as golf carts would be great. Most wouldn't want to go to work all sweaty. It amazes me that a lot of these green cities haven't incorporated a small golf cart lanes as most people work within a range of a golf cart distance to travel. The cost would be a lot cheaper than a car, no need for insurance premiums(if so, very little) , and less maintenance than . Also could likely double the lane traffic within the equivalent car lanes. The consumer would be more than willing to get on board using and buying golf carts just for the financial benefit of it.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Isn't this the selling point of Bird/Lime/Citibike etc... personal mobility? With e-mobility you don't arrive all sweaty.

inconceivable 3y ago

you know, once the tunnels are built, they can be re-purposed later.

RankingMember 3y ago
Re-purposed for what? It's not like they're building them wide enough for anything but cars.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  Those tunnels will turn into beatiful homeless shelters. Like catacombs from Demolition Man.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Then just build homeless shelters. Cheaper, less excavation, and less dystopia.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Subways in the US cost about $1B per mile. The Boring Company is spending about $10M per mile. Subways have a capacity of about 50,000 people per hour. TBC's tunnels have a capacity of 4,000 people per hour. So 8% of the capacity for 1% of the cost. Even if the numbers are an order of magnitude out, it would still be attractive. 8% of the capacity for 10% of the cost would be fabulously useful in smaller cities like Vegas.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
And Las Vegas isn't paying a dime for it. The cost is carried by the boring company and all that Las Vegas does is give them permission to dig the tunnels
- xracy 3y ago
  [citation needed]
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
Isn't the question if 4,000 people an hour is sufficient? An electric scooter can possibly get 1/100th the cargo to a destination at 1/100th the price of a semi truck, but does that actually solve the problem?
user568439 3y ago
I have the impression that the Boring Company could reduce costs of subway mile significantly if they tried
jcranmer 3y ago
> Subways in the US cost about $1B per mile. No they don't. The most expensive subway in the country costs $1B per mile. Typical costs are much cheaper (and could be even cheaper, but that's another story).
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  To get down to TBC's cost/passenger, they'd need to come down to $120M/mile. Subways at $120M/mile would be pretty freaking awesome.

yowzadave 3y ago

Any chance the tunnels could later be re-purposed as subway tunnels once people realize that this approach doesn't work?

red-iron-pine 3y ago

Everything about LV is an affront to god and man. A city shouldn't be there, and it's having issues for that reason. That they want an overpriced loop that delivers little shouldn't come as a surprise.