Here’s what Elon Musk’s 2.7-mile tunnel in LA looks like

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the ambitious project.

Read the whole story

 

[Dan Homerick]

With respect to how Boring company expects to reduce costs, I don't know. But my guess is that they'll remove the people from the process. Keep in mind that Musk is quite bullish on AI and automation. He's scared of some effects of advanced AI, but confident that it's coming.

If tunnel building is fully automated, or even just nearly so, then the cost per mile can be reduced to: wear and tear on machinery, materials cost, energy, design costs, regulatory costs, and any non-automated finishing work.

For any sort of real conversation about this stuff, Are should have an article or two about what costs are for tunnels as things are today. If it's a billion per mile, as some in this thread have claimed, how are those costs broken down? It's fundamental stuff for understanding the Boring company, but Ars has skipped right over it so far.

 

[artvandelayIIII]

Correction: I misread an LA Times story and got two tunnels confused. As a result, I described this as a 2.7-mile tunnel in West Los Angeles, when in fact that's a different tunnel that has been proposed but hasn't been constructed yet. This tunnel, in contrast, is located around SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. Musk hasn't revealed its exact length, but the company submitted a proposal for a 2-mile tunnel at the site last year. We regret the error.

In light of this correction, the headline is highly misleading, to say the least.

 

[Tim Lee]

Correction: I misread an LA Times story and got two tunnels confused. As a result, I described this as a 2.7-mile tunnel in West Los Angeles, when in fact that's a different tunnel that has been proposed but hasn't been constructed yet. This tunnel, in contrast, is located around SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. Musk hasn't revealed its exact length, but the company submitted a proposal for a 2-mile tunnel at the site last year. We regret the error.

In light of this correction, the headline is highly misleading, to say the least.

That's why I changed it. If you're seeing the original headline pop up somewhere, please send me a link so I can get it fixed.

 

[ColdWetDog]

I feel like a lot of people are lacking flexibility in their thinking.

You can do this reasonably without congestion with two layers, one east-west layer and one north-south layer (or diagonal, or whatever). On level one there's an east line, then four blocks over a west line, and repeat. Same for north and south on level two. The lines would just be two lanes wide - one going straight and one as a ramp to the other level, every other (or every three, etc.) crossings.

Yes, that's a lot of tunnels, but why else would Musk think automating things would be useful if you weren't going to do a lot of it?

(Although I'll remain skeptical of permits for the time being.)

Edit: also more layers makes "gentle" curves easier, so you can have parts of underground look more like individual segments of highway intersections. I'd imagine you want something like 1/4 of an intersection at each crossing, which would be completely un-navigatable for humans but not an issue for the navigation software.

Edit2: Actually what I'm describing is basically just an underground version of how downtown SLC or Chicago is set up: all streets are alternating one-ways and you can always turn on a red (except jk you can't because infinite pedestrians), but without stoplights.

No, you need something like this:

https://youtu.be/24bRtzwK4rY

 

[berrardo]

In the end, IMO, for cities Musk et.al. will find that it is easier to tunnel through the air than the ground.

The pedestrian/cyclist pods in particular are *much* lighter, and much of the infrastructure to support see-through 'air tunnels' is already in place in cities ... with few pipes and wires to worry about.

Under freeways, across rooftops, atop slender stems ... *much* less expensive than the gigantic concrete pillars needed for monorails. "Es muss sein."

 

[Xiao-zhi]

Romans did this 2,000 years ago. You can still tour their catacombs. Do they get any credit? No.

 

[omarsidd]

Density is going to be a huge problem for this idea:
- For not-particularly dense cities you need very large tunnels to build a system worth using. This is very expensive.
- For dense cities having a lot of small stations is inefficient as land is more expensive. More population also means crowded stations.
- Elevators for cars or passengers ingress/egress have a capacity way smaller than ramps/scalators.
- Throughput is going to be a problem as you need enough separation between sleds to allow them to stop without crashing in case of failures. This separation combined with the small size of the sleds is going to result in a very small passengers/hour/tunnel capacity.

Efficiency is going to be a huge problem. Musk's idea are cars that hold 8 to 16 passengers and can travel at 150mph. For comparison a typical subway train holds 180 people with 10 cars at a max speed of 55mph. A Muskway system would need to load and move one pod every 8 to 10 seconds to match the efficiency of one subway train that runs every 15 minutes. Speed is great, but without a good capacity it's not a good solution for congested areas.

Hmm, this might be true for reducing congestion at rush hour peaks, but for example in the DC Metro-rail system (the 2nd busiest subway system in the nation), rail cars may have only one or a few people in them at non-peak times (and this was after hours were reduced as well as before) , as well as in non-peak directions (think "toward a major off-peak-time sporting event starting soon" vs "away from").

Few, but non-zero. So there's definitely a steady demand for low volume transit.

My concern is more that effective hyperloops combined with ride-hailing services may irreparably cripple already strapped public transit systems.

 

[michael23]

Density is going to be a huge problem for this idea:
- For not-particularly dense cities you need very large tunnels to build a system worth using. This is very expensive.
- For dense cities having a lot of small stations is inefficient as land is more expensive. More population also means crowded stations.
- Elevators for cars or passengers ingress/egress have a capacity way smaller than ramps/scalators.
- Throughput is going to be a problem as you need enough separation between sleds to allow them to stop without crashing in case of failures. This separation combined with the small size of the sleds is going to result in a very small passengers/hour/tunnel capacity.

Efficiency is going to be a huge problem. Musk's idea are cars that hold 8 to 16 passengers and can travel at 150mph. For comparison a typical subway train holds 180 people with 10 cars at a max speed of 55mph. A Muskway system would need to load and move one pod every 8 to 10 seconds to match the efficiency of one subway train that runs every 15 minutes. Speed is great, but without a good capacity it's not a good solution for congested areas.

This gets to the difference between intra-city and inter-city. The volume of traffic within a city may not make this project superior to a traditional subway; maybe as spokes off the hub of a traditional subway at best. For inter-city travel, given the speed benefit and reduced volume, maybe the train density is more rational?

 

[michael23]

Density is going to be a huge problem for this idea:
- For not-particularly dense cities you need very large tunnels to build a system worth using. This is very expensive.
- For dense cities having a lot of small stations is inefficient as land is more expensive. More population also means crowded stations.
- Elevators for cars or passengers ingress/egress have a capacity way smaller than ramps/scalators.
- Throughput is going to be a problem as you need enough separation between sleds to allow them to stop without crashing in case of failures. This separation combined with the small size of the sleds is going to result in a very small passengers/hour/tunnel capacity.

Efficiency is going to be a huge problem. Musk's idea are cars that hold 8 to 16 passengers and can travel at 150mph. For comparison a typical subway train holds 180 people with 10 cars at a max speed of 55mph. A Muskway system would need to load and move one pod every 8 to 10 seconds to match the efficiency of one subway train that runs every 15 minutes. Speed is great, but without a good capacity it's not a good solution for congested areas.

This gets to the difference between intra-city and inter-city. The volume of traffic within a city may not make this project superior to a traditional subway; maybe as spokes off the hub of a traditional subway at best. For inter-city travel, given the speed benefit and reduced volume, maybe the train density is more rational?

 

[Republikan]

[Nested quotes removed.]

You're assuming that all interections are interfering. That's a pretty reasonable assumption on a 2D surface -- vehicles need to get "across" and the most practical way to do it is to stop and take turns passing through the intersection.

Move into 3D however, and you can have intersections that are non-interfering. Think freeway intersections.

I'm not saying that's what the Boring company is planning, but at the very least you don't need to have every "crossing" actually intersect. As a simple example, the East/West tunnels could be at a separate depth from the North/South tunnels.

Ummmmm. So how does a pod make the switch from going north/south to east/west? Presumably not every trip you want to make with this thing is in a straight line. This is also where the elevator analogy breaks down.

How does a car make the switch from an north-south interstate to an east-west one? Gee, if only there were some way other than disembarking the n/s car and boarding an e/w one.

Do you realize how much space a highway interchange takes up? Doing something on that scale underground in an urban area would be problematic for several reasons.

 

[Shavano]

not quite getting the big picture.

as a subway with 1,000 stops it sounds annoying. you don't generally want your ride to lose momentum. and if the stops are so close, you need to think about just walking.


but maybe it's for cars? then what are the logistics of a small space and getting off/on?

The big picture, is he's testing the technology for Mars.

All Elon Musk projects are related to Mars - Tunnels, Solar, Electrical Storage/grid, Electric Vehicles & Rocket Ships.

I expect him to get into the 3-D Printing Construction business next.

He better get that solar working really well because once you're on Mars, there's no fallback to an alternate system and as soon as you're out of electrical power, you'll be dead in short order. Earth is so much more survivable.

And you'd better figure out how to manufacture everything on Mars with equipment you take on the trip or you run a very significant chance of dying before you can get a replacement.

 

[CommanderZulu]

This whole tunning digging adventure is probably just a pilot program to get experience with building tunnels on Mars to facilitate transportation between habitats.

 

[Statistical]

This whole tunning digging adventure is probably just a pilot program to get experience with building tunnels on Mars to facilitate transportation between habitats.

The tunnels WOULD be the habitats.

 

[dsigned]

[Nested Quotes Removed]

Consider how few cities have public transport access to their airports, and don't have fairly obvious connections between different kinds of transport.

I presume you meant U.S. Cities, but even in that case off the top of my head I can think of Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston.

That's two out of the top four (Los Angeles and Houston) without access. And I can't speak for the others but Denver has only had public transportation access for the last couple years if that.

 

[alastairmayer]

[Nested Quotes Removed]

Consider how few cities have public transport access to their airports, and don't have fairly obvious connections between different kinds of transport.

I presume you meant U.S. Cities, but even in that case off the top of my head I can think of Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston.

That's two out of the top four (Los Angeles and Houston) without access. And I can't speak for the others but Denver has only had public transportation access for the last couple years if that.

Denver's only had light rail to the airport for the past couple of years. Before that it had the Skyride buses, which were also RTD.

 

[MrTom]

It seems like this is not being created to relieve congestion, but to give people willing pay a fast-track to somewhere. Since as noted by the promoted comment, you can't propel enough people to compete with a subway, but you sure can compete by getting someone there 3 times faster.

 

[Nekojin]

It seems like this is not being created to relieve congestion, but to give people willing pay a fast-track to somewhere. Since as noted by the promoted comment, you can't propel enough people to compete with a subway, but you sure can compete by getting someone there 3 times faster.

It's not really an either/or - it does relieve congestion to a degree, as well as giving people a fast-track. It doesn't have to make the subway redundant to still have an impact on the overall traffic.

 

[vartec]

Metro: 2036