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I think the basic story of the Boring Company is that they assumed that they would be able to optimise or disrupt what is actually a mature and optimised indust

I think the basic story of the Boring Company is that they assumed that they would be able to optimise or disrupt what is actually a mature and optimised industry (tunneling) and completely failed to do so. Literally the only “innovation” is that they made the tunnels a bit cheaper by removing space for emergency egress… Apart from that, the capacity is laughable and always will be, as long as it uses cars or pods. There’s a reason the kind of transit systems that can move hundreds of thousands of people a day (in tunnels only about double the size) use trains that can fit so many people (up to 1500 per train for large systems like Crossrail in London) - with small pods you will never get the throughput with any kind of safety margin between them. I’m all for innovation and re-thinking the conventional wisdom, but the Boring Company just didn’t actually ever seem to have any really practical ideas that would make something better than the kind of mass transit we see in Asia and Europe…

wahern 2y ago
One of Musk's original points was that cost of tunneling isn't linear with diameter--double the size more than quadruples the price, or something like that. But then the insistence on using electric cars seems... counter productive. The London and Budapest subways use very narrow tunnels, about the size of Musk's tunnels. Their engineering is considered anachronistic, but given the cost formulas for tunneling one wonders if planners are being short-sighted or stubborn by insisting on larger tunnels. A subway with narrow cars is better than no subway at all. But then there's probably considerations, like handicapped accommodations (i.e. large wheel chairs) that make London or Budapest-sized subway cars a non-starter today, at least in the U.S., notwithstanding that it'd likely still be far cheaper to build a narrower subway and then pay for private, on-demand road transport for those physically unable to use the subway.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  And Musk's actual results were a tunnel that was more expensive and slower to build per km than the channel tunnel. And this one isn't built under the sea straddling two countries with entirely different legal systems, but under a tiny patch of desert in a very permissive legal environment. And the Channel tunnel probably carried more people through in its first few months than the LVCC will have transported in its first few decades. It's a monumental flop on every possible level.
  - Veedrac 2y ago
    > more expensive and slower to build per km than the channel tunnel Channel Tunnel: ~$22B / 31mi ~ $700m/mi LVCC: $47m / 1.7mi ~ $28m/mi ??
    - orwin 2y ago
      You're correct, but eurotunnel cost was 4.6B in 1985 English pound, which seems to be half of $22B. I think the 22B figure is the total project cost, including the not-tunnel part. Your point is correct though, I don't see where eurotunnel can be cheaper than... Any tunnel in fact. [edit] you could also compare total costs: 22B for the eurotunnel, 106 for the Las Vegas loop. It's around the same difference proportionally.
      - Veedrac 2y ago
        As far as I'm aware LVCC cost $53m, which includes tunnels and stations. Where did you get $106m?
        orwin 2y ago
        Sorry, I don't find it back, but I remember distinctly reading about 106 millions for 2.2 miles (and not 53 for 1.7). It was quite recent (like two weeks ago). Aren't they opening new tunnels/stations? Maybe the difference in our data is there. It was just pedantery anyway, the cost are still an order of magnitude below the eurotunnel. [edit] weirdly I can't find cost nowhere. Everywhere it is said that it cost LVC 52.5 millions to build the first 3 stations and 1.7 miles, now there is 5 stations and 2.2 miles, they upgraded all the cars and the cost is still reported as 52.5 millions. There is also no report on what cost what either, this is really obfuscated. I don't care about the exact labor/material cost, but I'd like to know if the subterranean station did cost as much as the tunnels? less? How much? What about the outside stations? Did you find anything yourself ? I was never interested in that company, now I find the lack of transparency baffling.
        2y ago
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  I mean, it makes sense since the diameter is 1 dimensional while the boring area grows quadratically...
  - floxy 2y ago
    I'm not up to speed on tunnel boring. Do they really grind away the whole cross-sectional area, instead of doing something like a hole-saw? Where you only machine away some of the circumference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_saw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_saw
    - immibis 2y ago
      No matter what, the amount of material removed is the volume of the tunnel.
    - dhosek 2y ago
      So you cut a one meter-deep circle in a chunk of rock. How do you get that circle removed? The back is still attached to the rock behind it.
      - floxy 2y ago
        Bore deep enough that the weight of the cantilevered piece breaks off. Or use additional leverage to break that chunk off.
        thecopy 2y ago
        And then falls on the drill, making it stuck and bends the attachment. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine
- Arainach 2y ago
  >One of Musk's original points was that cost of tunneling isn't linear with diameter--double the size more than quadruples the price Ignoring all the other challenges of scale, this would surely make sense because the area of a circle scales with the square of the diameter...
- pornel 2y ago
  Glasgow Subway operates in tunnels with a 11ft diameter — smaller than Musk's 12ft tunnels, and they have driverless trains in operation now.
- twic 2y ago
  Except in a subway systems, the cost of the stations dominates the cost of the tunnels. So a small saving on the tunnelling itself doesn't make much difference. Check out the December 2018 forecast costs for Crossrail [1]. 3676 million for seven stations, plus "station tunnels east", the construction of the station tunnels at Liverpool Street and Moorgate. 1708 million for running tunnels. 439 million for portals and shafts. 956 for tracks and electrics. [1] https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/crossrail-huge-cost-hikes-on-stations-and-tunnels-revealed https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/crossrail-huge-cost...
  - wahern 2y ago
    Without a doubt there's been tremendous inflation for the cost of stations, even ignoring the marginal cost of in-fill stations in dense urban areas. Planners and especially politicians demand ever fancier and larger stations. That just speaks to the amount of cost inflation all around. Notice how the review article mentions how "cheap" the Vegas Loop feels. Would they say the same about old stations in places like Boston, or do they apply a different metric because of different expectations? (And to be honest, I know my expectations are different, because we're accustomed to newer things being prettier, at least superficially, especially in the age of disposal products. It's an understandable characterization they made, but it's not very reasonable.) Learning how to build more affordable, utilitarian stations, just like tunneling, is a lost skill. Like any skill, developing it requires iteration and repetition, and over time the output will become more refined. But to achieve frequent iteration will require dramatic reductions in costs.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
> with small pods you will never get the throughput with any kind of safety margin between them. You assert this like it's a fact. But it seems like something that could be proven wrong. I don't see any real fundamental obstacles here. You'd need to do some engineering obviously. But it's not a particularly hard problem. Don't crash into the thing in front of you if it hits the brakes for whatever reason. That about sums up the scope of the issue. There's probably a bit of math involved that tells you the minimum safe distance where emergency braking can still work given a certain speed. If you get humans out of the loop (which the Boring company obviously has not yet done), it's basically a function of how quickly individual pods can react to each other. Which would be measured in nano seconds probably. You should be able to get a pretty decent throughput. The nice thing with small cheap tunnels is that you don't have to squeeze everyone just through one of them because you can have more than one going all over the place. Most subway systems are a compromise on tunnel size where you basically end up with only a few of them because they are so expensive to build. They are literal bottlenecks because lots of people end up being funneled through a handful of stations via a small number of tunnels. By the millions. If you've ever tried to navigate the London underground during rush hour, it's not a pleasant experience. You basically have people shuffling back to back through tunnels and being crammed into railway carriages by the hundreds. The premise of the Boring company is very simple: digging smaller tunnels at scale is going to have economies of scale associated that means you can have vastly more of them for the same money. I agree their execution hasn't really delivered yet. But it still could. Probably waiting/hoping for FSD to solve the problem of routing wasn't the optimal move. But that doesn't invalidate the core premise. The tunnels they've dug aren't that expensive. So that part seems to be valid.
- karlgkk 2y ago
  > But it's not a particularly hard problem. Don't crash into the thing in front of you It turns out that this is a particularly hard problem. Oh, and if you get it wrong, people will die. In some cases, dozens of people.
  - pintxo 2y ago
    But that’s the big safety advantage of pods over railcars. Only a small number of people can die in pods. /s
Veedrac 2y ago
It seems unreasonable to claim that Boring Company has failed when they were founded in 2017, won their first contract in 2019 which was executed to requirements and multiples cheaper than the competing bid, and Vegas Loop was approved in initial form in 2021, a design now >3x the length of all subway built in the US in the last 20 years and for which construction is happily underway. Imagine subways were held to this standard! Done in 3 years or bust!
throwitaway1123 2y ago
> Literally the only “innovation” is that they made the tunnels a bit cheaper by removing space for emergency egress If the reports are to be believed then there was another "innovation" as well: ignoring worker safety [1]. "An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs [...] In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”" [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-26/elon-musk-las-vegas-loop-tunnel-has-construction-safety-issues https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-26/elon-musk...
- gruez 2y ago
  >If the reports are to be believed then there was another "innovation" as well: ignoring worker safety [1]. And incumbent construction companies are known for being paragons of worker safety? Construction related standards make up 5 of the top 10 violated standards[1] by osha. The Boring Company might not have the best safety record, but let's not pretend "ignoring worker safety" was one of their "innovations". [1] https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
  - throwitaway1123 2y ago
    > The Boring Company might not have the best safety record, but let's not pretend "ignoring worker safety" was one of their "innovations". If there's another company out there mutilating their workers via chemical burns to shuffle people 1.7 miles around a convention center [1], then I'll gladly bestow upon them the innovator award as well. Stating that constructing things is generally dangerous feels like something out of the PR department at the Boring Company. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240729111337/https://www.boringcompany.com/lvcc https://web.archive.org/web/20240729111337/https://www.borin...
    - gruez 2y ago
      So your contention is that The Boring Company violates safety regulations just like many other construction companies, but The Boring Company stands out (or "innovating") because they're building (what you consider to be) frivolous projects?
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
> they assumed that they would be able to optimise or disrupt what is actually a mature and optimised industry So ego and hubris.

wahern 2y ago

One of Musk's original points was that cost of tunneling isn't linear with diameter--double the size more than quadruples the price, or something like that. But then the insistence on using electric cars seems... counter productive. The London and Budapest subways use very narrow tunnels, about the size of Musk's tunnels. Their engineering is considered anachronistic, but given the cost formulas for tunneling one wonders if planners are being short-sighted or stubborn by insisting on larger tunnels. A subway with narrow cars is better than no subway at all. But then there's probably considerations, like handicapped accommodations (i.e. large wheel chairs) that make London or Budapest-sized subway cars a non-starter today, at least in the U.S., notwithstanding that it'd likely still be far cheaper to build a narrower subway and then pay for private, on-demand road transport for those physically unable to use the subway.

tsimionescu 2y ago
And Musk's actual results were a tunnel that was more expensive and slower to build per km than the channel tunnel. And this one isn't built under the sea straddling two countries with entirely different legal systems, but under a tiny patch of desert in a very permissive legal environment. And the Channel tunnel probably carried more people through in its first few months than the LVCC will have transported in its first few decades. It's a monumental flop on every possible level.
- Veedrac 2y ago
  > more expensive and slower to build per km than the channel tunnel Channel Tunnel: ~$22B / 31mi ~ $700m/mi LVCC: $47m / 1.7mi ~ $28m/mi ??
  - orwin 2y ago
    You're correct, but eurotunnel cost was 4.6B in 1985 English pound, which seems to be half of $22B. I think the 22B figure is the total project cost, including the not-tunnel part. Your point is correct though, I don't see where eurotunnel can be cheaper than... Any tunnel in fact. [edit] you could also compare total costs: 22B for the eurotunnel, 106 for the Las Vegas loop. It's around the same difference proportionally.
    - Veedrac 2y ago
      As far as I'm aware LVCC cost $53m, which includes tunnels and stations. Where did you get $106m?
      - orwin 2y ago
        Sorry, I don't find it back, but I remember distinctly reading about 106 millions for 2.2 miles (and not 53 for 1.7). It was quite recent (like two weeks ago). Aren't they opening new tunnels/stations? Maybe the difference in our data is there. It was just pedantery anyway, the cost are still an order of magnitude below the eurotunnel. [edit] weirdly I can't find cost nowhere. Everywhere it is said that it cost LVC 52.5 millions to build the first 3 stations and 1.7 miles, now there is 5 stations and 2.2 miles, they upgraded all the cars and the cost is still reported as 52.5 millions. There is also no report on what cost what either, this is really obfuscated. I don't care about the exact labor/material cost, but I'd like to know if the subterranean station did cost as much as the tunnels? less? How much? What about the outside stations? Did you find anything yourself ? I was never interested in that company, now I find the lack of transparency baffling.
        2y ago
Almondsetat 2y ago
I mean, it makes sense since the diameter is 1 dimensional while the boring area grows quadratically...
- floxy 2y ago
  I'm not up to speed on tunnel boring. Do they really grind away the whole cross-sectional area, instead of doing something like a hole-saw? Where you only machine away some of the circumference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_saw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_saw
  - immibis 2y ago
    No matter what, the amount of material removed is the volume of the tunnel.
  - dhosek 2y ago
    So you cut a one meter-deep circle in a chunk of rock. How do you get that circle removed? The back is still attached to the rock behind it.
    - floxy 2y ago
      Bore deep enough that the weight of the cantilevered piece breaks off. Or use additional leverage to break that chunk off.
      - thecopy 2y ago
        And then falls on the drill, making it stuck and bends the attachment. This is a solved problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine
Arainach 2y ago
>One of Musk's original points was that cost of tunneling isn't linear with diameter--double the size more than quadruples the price Ignoring all the other challenges of scale, this would surely make sense because the area of a circle scales with the square of the diameter...
pornel 2y ago
Glasgow Subway operates in tunnels with a 11ft diameter — smaller than Musk's 12ft tunnels, and they have driverless trains in operation now.
twic 2y ago
Except in a subway systems, the cost of the stations dominates the cost of the tunnels. So a small saving on the tunnelling itself doesn't make much difference. Check out the December 2018 forecast costs for Crossrail [1]. 3676 million for seven stations, plus "station tunnels east", the construction of the station tunnels at Liverpool Street and Moorgate. 1708 million for running tunnels. 439 million for portals and shafts. 956 for tracks and electrics. [1] https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/crossrail-huge-cost-hikes-on-stations-and-tunnels-revealed https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/crossrail-huge-cost...
- wahern 2y ago
  Without a doubt there's been tremendous inflation for the cost of stations, even ignoring the marginal cost of in-fill stations in dense urban areas. Planners and especially politicians demand ever fancier and larger stations. That just speaks to the amount of cost inflation all around. Notice how the review article mentions how "cheap" the Vegas Loop feels. Would they say the same about old stations in places like Boston, or do they apply a different metric because of different expectations? (And to be honest, I know my expectations are different, because we're accustomed to newer things being prettier, at least superficially, especially in the age of disposal products. It's an understandable characterization they made, but it's not very reasonable.) Learning how to build more affordable, utilitarian stations, just like tunneling, is a lost skill. Like any skill, developing it requires iteration and repetition, and over time the output will become more refined. But to achieve frequent iteration will require dramatic reductions in costs.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

> with small pods you will never get the throughput with any kind of safety margin between them. You assert this like it's a fact. But it seems like something that could be proven wrong. I don't see any real fundamental obstacles here. You'd need to do some engineering obviously. But it's not a particularly hard problem. Don't crash into the thing in front of you if it hits the brakes for whatever reason. That about sums up the scope of the issue. There's probably a bit of math involved that tells you the minimum safe distance where emergency braking can still work given a certain speed. If you get humans out of the loop (which the Boring company obviously has not yet done), it's basically a function of how quickly individual pods can react to each other. Which would be measured in nano seconds probably. You should be able to get a pretty decent throughput. The nice thing with small cheap tunnels is that you don't have to squeeze everyone just through one of them because you can have more than one going all over the place. Most subway systems are a compromise on tunnel size where you basically end up with only a few of them because they are so expensive to build. They are literal bottlenecks because lots of people end up being funneled through a handful of stations via a small number of tunnels. By the millions. If you've ever tried to navigate the London underground during rush hour, it's not a pleasant experience. You basically have people shuffling back to back through tunnels and being crammed into railway carriages by the hundreds. The premise of the Boring company is very simple: digging smaller tunnels at scale is going to have economies of scale associated that means you can have vastly more of them for the same money. I agree their execution hasn't really delivered yet. But it still could. Probably waiting/hoping for FSD to solve the problem of routing wasn't the optimal move. But that doesn't invalidate the core premise. The tunnels they've dug aren't that expensive. So that part seems to be valid.

karlgkk 2y ago
> But it's not a particularly hard problem. Don't crash into the thing in front of you It turns out that this is a particularly hard problem. Oh, and if you get it wrong, people will die. In some cases, dozens of people.
- pintxo 2y ago
  But that’s the big safety advantage of pods over railcars. Only a small number of people can die in pods. /s

Veedrac 2y ago

It seems unreasonable to claim that Boring Company has failed when they were founded in 2017, won their first contract in 2019 which was executed to requirements and multiples cheaper than the competing bid, and Vegas Loop was approved in initial form in 2021, a design now >3x the length of all subway built in the US in the last 20 years and for which construction is happily underway. Imagine subways were held to this standard! Done in 3 years or bust!

throwitaway1123 2y ago

> Literally the only “innovation” is that they made the tunnels a bit cheaper by removing space for emergency egress If the reports are to be believed then there was another "innovation" as well: ignoring worker safety [1]. "An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs [...] In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”" [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-26/elon-musk-las-vegas-loop-tunnel-has-construction-safety-issues https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-26/elon-musk...

gruez 2y ago
>If the reports are to be believed then there was another "innovation" as well: ignoring worker safety [1]. And incumbent construction companies are known for being paragons of worker safety? Construction related standards make up 5 of the top 10 violated standards[1] by osha. The Boring Company might not have the best safety record, but let's not pretend "ignoring worker safety" was one of their "innovations". [1] https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
- throwitaway1123 2y ago
  > The Boring Company might not have the best safety record, but let's not pretend "ignoring worker safety" was one of their "innovations". If there's another company out there mutilating their workers via chemical burns to shuffle people 1.7 miles around a convention center [1], then I'll gladly bestow upon them the innovator award as well. Stating that constructing things is generally dangerous feels like something out of the PR department at the Boring Company. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240729111337/https://www.boringcompany.com/lvcc https://web.archive.org/web/20240729111337/https://www.borin...
  - gruez 2y ago
    So your contention is that The Boring Company violates safety regulations just like many other construction companies, but The Boring Company stands out (or "innovating") because they're building (what you consider to be) frivolous projects?

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

> they assumed that they would be able to optimise or disrupt what is actually a mature and optimised industry So ego and hubris.