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The current Vegas loop is a fun little novelty, like a roller coaster, but it’s so bad as a model for transportation. If we’re already digging the tunnels PLEAS
by jsf01 3y ago
The current Vegas loop is a fun little novelty, like a roller coaster, but it’s so bad as a model for transportation. If we’re already digging the tunnels PLEASE just make a subway. The teslas are so awkward, have to be steered in this small and curved space, require a driver, only fit a few passengers, and on and on. Vegas is in desperate need of higher volume train transportation between the airport, the Strip, and downtown—but I’m afraid this isn’t going to cut it.
- malablaster 3y agoHow is Vegas in desperate need of transportation between the airport and the strip? Of all the airports I’ve flown to Vegas was the closest to the downtown core and had the least traffic.
- vikingerik 3y agoYou still have to use a taxi/rideshare service, or rent a car. Compared to other cities, those methods are pretty cheap and accessible in Vegas... but it's still expensive and inconvenient compared to a real railway transit system.
- ghaff 3y agoPretty much. Although I'm not sure how useful it would be to have a public transit system from the airport even in the best case. Given how huge the casino complexes are, you'd pretty much need a stop at every casino (and you still might have a long walk to the front desk as is the case with the little loop train that already exists).
- achates 3y agoIt's not really more expensive. In Denver it's $10.50 per person to take the train from the airport to downtown. At the time of this post an Uber from LAS to the Bellagio is $11. If you have two people then the Uber is about half the cost per person of the train in Denver.
- xnx 3y agoTaxi/rideshare also takes you right to your hotel instead of a station.
- dangus 3y agoI would imagine that you could cut out 80% of the lanes of traffic on the strip if there was a dedicated train from the airport to the strip continuing to other points of interest for tourists. Maybe you could even make the strip pedestrian-only. The strip is basically a walking area like a theme park, except that it’s cut down the middle by an eight lane road and supplemented with overpasses. Cars get priority over people, who ironically mostly don’t have a car while they’re on vacation in Vegas. This is an avenue that’s already served by frequent double decker buses. The ridership volume is there at least for a light rail tram system.
- ghaff 3y agoYou might imagine that but I'm very skeptical that 80% or anything like that of the traffic on the strip is people going back and forth to the airport.
- supertrope 3y ago1/3 of urban core traffic is just people cruising around looking for free parking. Then consider how much is unlicensed taxi services like Uber. A lot of urban core traffic is self-inflicted through lack of public transit.
- ghaff 3y agoVegas doesn't really have an urban core as such and AFAIK, there really isn't free street parking near the Strip (and also AFAIK all the casinos now charge).
- voisin 3y agoTransit from the airport would stop at each casino. That would be the bulk of traffic (inter -casino traffic)
- ghaff 3y agoThere are a lot of casinos. You could have a shuttle that serves some subset of hotels. Maybe that even exists today. (There are actually a couple of limited trains today along the Strip.) But people by and large don't love that sort of thing because shuttle buses with a dozen or so stops can take a long time. Rail wouldn't be a lot faster.
- surfaceofthesun 3y agoOne issue is that Boring Company is digging tunnels that are 12 ft in diameter. They can be used for subways [1] but it's quite narrow by modern standards. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Deep-level_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Deep-level_...
- beowulfey 3y agoThats the width of most tunnels in the Tube. I always thought it made sense to have the tunnels be smaller
- pantalaimon 3y agoThere is also the Glasgow Subway [0] which uses 11 ft diameter tunnels [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway
- tobylane 3y agoWhat’s your thinking there? The bigger tunnel boring machines needed and the extra dirt excavated are cheap in the bigger picture. The trend is clear within London alone and globally, towards larger tunnels.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoHow are they cheap in the big picture? Average cost is a billion per mile in the US and the latest numbers out of New York are more than 5 billion per mile. Vegas hyperloop was <30 million per mile, so somewhere between 3% and 0.6% the cost per mile. Reportedly, in this expansion, private companies will carry the entire cost.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoMost of that high cost isn't due to the use of specific tunnel boring machines. In Europe they pay 1/6th of the US cost and still dig much wider tunnels with multiple tracks that support higher-capacity trains and safety features that the Vegas tunnels lack.
- osigurdson 3y agoIn animations of the intended final design, there will also be larger vehicles which can carry more people at once and will of course be automated. I don't think it will be materially different from a subway (train) in that regard where volumes are high. It will just be more flexible.
- Macha 3y agoThe concept animations of the convention center strip were similarly far from what was delivered. Real "skyscraper covered in parks" energy.
- latortuga 3y agoFor the love of god, why does there need to be yet another lane? It will emphatically not solve the problem. Driving teslas through a tunnel is not flexible, it's a recipe for induced demand and gridlock. Build a subway! High volumes of people get moved very efficiently. Moving small numbers of people in personal vehicles is a terrible idea. Flexibility is a bad feature here.
- osigurdson 3y agoSubways are not particularly efficient from a cost perspective. One of the main reasons for the Boring company’s existence is the extremely high costs associated with subway construction. They are trying to bring the costs down by one or two orders of magnitude. This is material.
- Ajedi32 3y agoYeah, I think the original vision for the Loop tunnels is a lot more practical and compelling than what currently exists in Vegas. The primary advantages over a subway are: 1. They're point-to-point, requiring no stops between origin and destination 2. They integrate with the existing road system, allowing point-to-point transportation even between destinations where the tunnels don't run 3. They're compatible with existing electric cars, allowing owners to take their own private vehicles directly to their destination without needing to transfer between cars or share a space with strangers 4. Small tunnel diameter reduces the cost vs larger subway tunnels Of those points, only #4 got implemented in the Vegas loop and even that is debatable. Plus a lot of other important features like automated driving and dedicated mass transit vehicles got left out, which greatly reduces the ridership capacity of the tunnels compared to what they theoretically could support.
- gonzo41 3y agoLet's hope there's never a fire.
- lttlrck 3y agoIt seems like an interesting and worthwhile experiment. It seems almost inevitable that if it works out, the drivers will be removed and they'll switch to tailor-made automated vehicles. It could start to make a lot more sense as a sort of point-to-point automated rail equivalent. Perhaps a regular metro would suit Las Vega better, but if that's out of reach why not give this a shot? It's Las Vega after all.
- airza 3y agoSince the first one cost about 47 million, it seems reasonable to guess the others will cost some multiple of that. The opportunity cost of several hundred million dollars seems... bad? Just have a subway!
- Rescis 3y agoSeveral hundred million dollars at best gets you a mile of subway in an American city: https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs... Experimentation with alternatives is desperately needed.
- stuaxo 3y agoHis whole thing for a while was how it was going to be cheaper to dig tunnels by using new techniques etc, that would equally apply to subways - but a feel like it was probably bullshit.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoThe new technology is smaller drills that make smaller tunnels. They are electric and can start at street level and dig themselves down.
- abduhl 3y agoThis is ridiculous misinformation. "Drills" come in every size already, from the 12-inch range all the way up to 60 feet in diameter. All modern "drills" that erect a liner behind them are electric - air quality and safety issues (along with the massive energy requirements) mandate the use of an umbilical from the surface and prevent the use of diesel or gas in the tunnel for these machines. None of Boring Company's "drills" are able to start at street level and dig themselves down, they require a ramp or shaft just like every other TBM. This is physics, the Boring Company has made no technological advances. They literally bought their TBM from someone else and put it in the ground with a new paint job.
- rayiner 3y agoYou’ll never be able to build 68 miles of subway in a place like Los Vegas given the cost structure that exists in America today. The next 1.5 mile phase of the second avenue subway in NYC is going to be $7.7 billion. DC desperately needs more downtown subway capacity to accommodate the new suburban lines it has built. It won’t happen. I think you can count the active subway expansion projects in this country on one hand. Outside somewhere like New York, a cheap low capacity system that goes more places is better than a high capacity subway that doesn’t go anywhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- abduhl 3y agoThe Second Ave. subway cost explosions are driven by a combination of union grift, overly litigious third parties, onerous design requirements driven by politics rather than engineering, and the requirement of building stations in the middle of New York. The problem in DC is similar but also impeded by the fact that Metro does not want to take responsibility for any new track (see the Purple Line fiasco). Your point still stands that America's approach to infrastructure (and underground in particular) is costly; however, those costs are not nearly as bad outside of major metropolitan cities. Underground work in the Vegas area is relatively inexpensive in my experience (I have worked on underground projects in all three of these locations within the last decade).
- rayiner 3y agoNew York and DC are especially bad, but LA still paid a billion dollars a mile for its recent subway expansion. If built as a subway, the 68-mile network would cost at least $50 billion. The gross domestic product of the entire Las Vegas region is just $136 billion. A $50 billion infrastructure project would be like New York City taking on a $750 billion infrastructure project. You could build a much smaller subway network. But at that point, the value proposition of the network in a sprawling city like Las Vegas evaporates. (Especially in a city as hot as Los Vegas, where long walks from subway stations to destinations will be miserable.) Baltimore is much denser than Las Vegas, and the one underground line has a ridership of just 2 million people annually. Limited subway networks that don’t go anywhere are worthless.
- cs702 3y agoYour assumption is that only small EVs will go through these tunnels in the future. I think that assumption is flawed. Tesla announced it wants to make high-passenger-count commercial EVs (akin to vans and buses): https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf EVs that carry 8, 12, or more passengers (perhaps by chaining the EVs) would significantly increase the efficiency and throughput of these tunnels. And then there's a big question mark on self-driving, which, if achieved, would significantly improve the economics.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago12 people would be about 5% of the capacity of a single NYC subway car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
- manuelabeledo 3y agoAre you suggesting that Tesla is planning to develop underground trains? That would make the whole thing even dumber than I firstly thought.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoSubways are incredibly expensive to build. The average subway cost in the US is approximately 1 billion per mile. Public transportation systems all over the country currently have huge budget gaps because ridership keeps going down. Meanwhile, this provides 68km of low throughput transport to the city, for the public price of zero. This is really making good the enemy of the perfect. Especially When the general public doesn't agree on the perfect, or want to pay for it.
- ghaff 3y ago>Public transportation systems all over the country currently have huge budget gaps because ridership keeps going down. The pandemic basically destroyed ridership in a lot of places. Boston--both the subway and the commuter rail--have crept back up to "only" being about 30% below pre-pandemic levels (and has probably been impacted by some disruptive long-deferred maintenance as well). But one of the consequences is reduced schedules which makes public transit relatively less attractive.
- thiht 3y ago> 1 billion per mile That seems incredibly high. My city in France just finished building a new subway line and the cost was ~100 million € per km (170 million $ per mile) Not sure why there's an order of magnitude difference?
- s1artibartfast 3y agoNow consider 7.7 billion for 1.5 miles: https://gothamist.com/news/cost-of-second-ave-subway-extension-to-east-harlem-balloons-to-77b https://gothamist.com/news/cost-of-second-ave-subway-extensi... Somewhat related: New York metro unveils $30M staircase https://nypost.com/2022/05/16/mta-unveils-stunning-30m-staircase-at-times-square-subway-station/ https://nypost.com/2022/05/16/mta-unveils-stunning-30m-stair... only slightly less egregious, BART completes $41 million pedestrian bridge: https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2022/news20220203 https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2022/news20220203
- JamesBarney 3y agoIt is incredibly high. The US is uniquely bad at building infrastructure at a cost that makes sense.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoOr Elmo could make an electric tram built just for these tunnels. Could use Tesla drivetrain to reduce design costs.