[ysavir]

> It's a prototype of a bold idea, in all likelihood it will fail (like most bold new ideas), but at least they're trying something new.

I'm fairly certain that a "tunnel [...] network that will be filled with self-driving cars that will race people in groups" has existed for quite some time in the form of subways.

If Musk really wanted to help, he could leverage this to improve and extend the current LA subway system, but he isn't. Instead he's going down the unnecessary (and probably fruitless) route of making this into a marketing campaign for the Elon Musk persona.

Compare to the trapped Thai soccer team from earlier in the year. He could have worked _with_ the existing efforts, but instead chose to do his own thing.

[satiani]

Yeah, those subway networks cost $2.7 billion per mile (in NYC) and take decades to complete. He managed to do it in a couple of years at an estimated cost of $10 million. Even if that number is wrong by an order of magnitude this is a massive improvement.

The "Elon Musk" persona is no doubt annoying, but is that a reason to undermine and shoot down new ideas? Don't let your schadenfreude get in the way of recognizing real achievements.

[gamblor956]

Musk took a full year to dig a small, utility-sized 1 mile-long tunnel under a road in a relatively sparse (for LA) suburban neighborhood, and spent at least $10 million on that mile, not including R&D, Capex, etc., that other projects properly disclose in their audited financials.

NY spent $2.7 billion to dig a tunnel 10x the size of Elon's, including rerouting existing utility lines (and including hundreds of miles of unmapped/undisclosed plumbing, electricity, internet, etc.), in one of the densest cities on the planet. All this while attempting to minimize disruption to the millions of people in the area.

Don't let your schadenfreude get in the way of recognizing that what BoringCo did is not an achievement by any definition of the word. It's the equivalent of Baby's First Tunnel, and unless you are Elon's parents, it's not something worthy of praise.

[satiani]

Yeah, I admit my comparison to the subway costs was not fair.

Still, let them try something new. What have you got to lose? If the R&D work they're doing here results in even marginal improvements in tunneling technology, I'd call this a win for everyone.

[mhermher]

Does the 10M include what he embezzled out of SpaceX I wonder?

[corodra]

Yea, because the underground to NYC is REALLY over built. There are fuck tons of old tunnels there. A lot that were never recorded properly (or lost). LA doesn't have the same problem. Especially since they are farther from water. The NYC ground is extremely saturated in comparison to LA. The only thing you have to really worry about hitting is oil in LA rather than water or an old tunnel that was never mapped.

He literally picked one of the easiest places to build a tunnel, and the criticism here is, he still hasn't done anything new, special different or cost effective. He hasn't paid out to do the things that really cost money, like life safety, stations and redundancies. But he already claims he did it "cheaper" compared to everyone else. The tunneling portions to these types of projects are typically the cheapest expense unless there are special circumstances. I think the tunnel from England to France was the most expensive part due to a lot of issues they were running into with water.

Again, everyone says he's bold. He ain't. A GED redneck could point out that he's not doing anything new, special or different. HN really is ignorant of industries that don't fall in line with dev.

[ysavir]

> He managed to do it in a couple of years at an estimated cost of $10 million. Even if that number is wrong by an order of magnitude this is a massive improvement.

Exactly! If he can be so efficient at it, why is he not proposing to improve the LA metro system quickly and cheaply?

Instead, he's proposing his own network, using his own autonomous vehicles. Why?

> The "Elon Musk" persona is no doubt annoying, but is that a reason to undermine and shoot down new ideas?

Again, this isn't a new idea. I'm not saying that what Musk is doing is not impressive, but that he's clearly using the ideas and technologies developed to promote himself and his companies rather than implement them in the most straightforward manner--which would be comparatively boring (no pun intended) and lackluster.

Personally, I think working to improve the existing Metro network would help his image more, but he's very much chasing a specific public image: Out-of-the-Box Thinking Innovator from the World of Tomorrow. And improving yesterday's subway systems won't contribute to that image.

[darawk]

Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong and he actually does have a plan here?

Personally, I don't think a Metro system in LA is likely to work well, and I think Musk knows that. I live in LA, and even if there was a good metro system here, the city isn't walkable enough to get to an entrance easily, or if you did get to one, get close enough to your destination. Which means you'd have to drive there and park, and then Uber for the last mile. That basically makes it a non-starter for most people here. So, yes indeed his solution is not capable of transporting people as efficiently as a subway, but it is likely to actually eat into the congestion problem, by competing with the freeways for drivers.

[ysavir]

I'm not expert on the Boring company, and I don't put in any effort to staying up-to-date beyond the occasional article that lands on HN, so if I'm wrong on anything, please let me know.

But from what I can tell, the tunnels being proposed aren't primarily for commuter's cars. From the FAQ[0] on the Boring Company's site:

> Is this public or private transportation? > Both. Within Loop, there will be a large quantity of autonomous electric vehicles dedicated solely to public transportation. In addition, privately owned compatible vehicles can access Loop. Accommodating pedestrians and cyclists will be prioritized over accommodating private vehicles.

So even if people can enter with their own vehicles, it seems the plan is to prioritize "pedestrians and cyclists"--like a subway system would.

It also begs the question of what counts as a "compatible vehicle". I don't know if they released any info on that, and I don't want to theorize. But it's clear it won't be as simple as an "underground highway" meant to compete with freeways, and is intended to function primarily in ways similar to subway systems.

[0]https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/

[gamblor956]

Personally, I don't think a Metro system in LA is likely to work well, and I think Musk knows that. I live in LA, and even if there was a good metro system here, the city isn't walkable enough to get to an entrance easily, or if you did get to one, get close enough to your destination.

I also live in LA, and like several thousands of other commuters in and out of downtown, I find that the Metro works just fine for commuting. It's not designed to be a hyper-dense subway system like NY, since LA's not that kind of dense. It has good coverage of most of the most-visited parts of LA, including Santa Monica, downtown, Hollywood, and Pasadena. During Trojan Football, Rams, Lakers, Clippers, and Kings games, tens of thousands of people take the Metro to the stadium/Staples instead of driving because it's more convenient. Hell, almost a quarter of the Dodgers crowd takes public transportation to the stadium even though the last mile involves a shuttle bus. And during the Women's March in 2017, the Metro demonstrated the capacity to handle more than 500,000 people heading to the same destination at once. (The Women's March required them to utilize every train car available; normal capacity is generally much lower as many trains are either in the shop for maintenance or on other routes.)

Elon's tunnel has the capacity of the exit lane on the highway. It can't even compete with a side street. It's a solution for lazy rich billionaires who can't be bothered to actually think through what they're trying to do.

[DuskStar]

If a Boring company tunnel has 1/10th the capacity of a subway but costs 100 times less, that's a major win. Parallelism is a thing here, after all. (hell, if it has 1/100th the capacity at 1/100th the cost that's still a major win, because it lets you build incrementally and following a wider variety of routes)

[gamblor956]

The problem is that the boringco tunnel at max capacity has roughly 1/100 the capacity of a subway but only about 1/10 the cost. Scaled up to equal volumes, it would actually cost 10x of what a subway costs.

The expensive part of subway construction isn't the tunneling, and hasn't been for decades. The expensive part is constructing the subway stations; each station can itself coast as much as all of the tunneling.

BoringCo does nothing to solve this. It addresses the most cost efficient part of the problem that, even if they can introduce efficiencies, would only cut a fraction of a percent off the cost of public transportation systems.

[bryanlarsen]

It's more likely to make the congestion problem worse than better. Induced demand in large cities is massive.

[ofrzeta]

The MTA problem is not about technology, though: "How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...