Elon Musk’s Ideas About Transportation are Boring
pedestrianobservations.com
pedestrianobservations.com
A modest improvement in road throughput from automation is nothing but a short-term solution, and might well make congestion worse because of the reduced time/attention cost of driving— potentially much worse, since people many more people could move into RVs occupying the only free land in coastal California, its roads.
Elon Musk does not look like a smart guy when he rejects what clever outsiders who have been paying attention to these issues for years have to say and by calling them idiots— after all, he supposedly got into rocketry by devouring textbooks, not by getting angry during his commute.
This graphic makes the point about why cars can never be a solution for mass urban mobility better than pretty much anything else: https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif
We all know what would happen to bus stops, stations, and generally to public places if people on buses actually had anywhere near the density "made possible" by public transport. It just won't work.
While for instance, adding roads in the sky (ie. very long bridges) scales exponentially, for obvious reasons. As does just flying (flying, incidentally, is a lot more efficient than people think). People don't want this, for obvious reasons, but there comes a point in cities where we have no choice. Frankly, cities like depicted in "the fifth element" and "star wars" are the future. Probably more rails, less floating, but the general idea is where we'll be going.
Doesn't even really matter if they have public or private transport. Given how fast public transport upgrades (even when absolutely required by the numbers of people they just refuse to upgrade for decades. Yes. Decades) and how comfortable it is, and add of course the fact that they just don't support the use cases cars enable (some of which, like an elderly or disabled person doing groceries, are absolute requirements) and you get to the point : private transport is far preferable to public transport.
Then how do cities like Singapore, with a population density of nearly 8k people per square km, have far less traffic than pretty much any major US city? They make public transportation work, and if you've ever been there, you'd know it works really well.
Just because western countries haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean that it can't work at all. Public transportation in the US sucks because the US, as a whole, wants it to suck.
-Tax cars really highly.
-Have car quotas
-Suppress dissent and in practice a one party system
-Build out public transit
-Pop Density.
-No land for sprawl available.
It has sprawl but it's far less auto-oriented than the US.
Some major factors are: -expressways are almost all tolled -carbuyers are required to demonstrate that they own/rent a parking space, rather than policy than mandates every new housing unit and business have enough parking that demand is more than sated even at zero cost -zoning that allows sufficiently-dense land use such that most residences are within a short walk of a rail station— this station usually has groceries and other necessities nearby, as well as schools within walking distance
Rather, public transportation sucks, so everyone who can afford a car (and some who can't) buy a car and use it, so they don't care very much that public transportation sucks; they instead are annoyed that private transportation sucks and want that to improve (e.g. by having an AI deal with driving). They don't see public transportation as a solution to the problem they experience, even if it would solve the problem that brought them into that situation.
FWIW, I have always relied on public transportation in any western country I have been to and while it could have been better sometimes (e.g. rural bus schedules requiring you to plan around them) I don't think it's too bad either. I don't know how Singapore compares, but usable public transportation is definitely also common elsewhere.
(and let's not forget things like Amazon just don't work unless they exploit delivery men if you do choose to answer this question)
EDIT: I don't really understand the Amazon question. Maybe I didn't understand the original question either.
2) public transport is not wheelchair accessible. We have trains from the 70s on the track, and aside from multiple steps and a gap, there are no places for wheelchairs. Buses are a little better, but not really usable either. When push comes to shove, this requires people to lift the wheelchair and put it on the train/bus, then help you on the bus as well. If bystanders don't do this, I guarantee out here the driver won't either. For trains, you are supremely unlikely to find anyone of the public transport companies in the station, and nobody helping wheelchair bound people on the bus. Plus, you never, ever see wheelchairs on the train.
Note that if you look at the videos below you see that in most cases, disabled people need (much) more time to get aboard a vehicle. This is not available in public transport and is available in private cars.
Furthermore, wheelchair users (as visible in the second video) (and obviously only up to a certain level of disability) are not just able to use cars, but are able to carry and move heavy loads using them, like groceries.
So once again, an argument in favor of cars once a good look at reality is added to it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0usQ1LksSA
> We have trains from the 70s on the track, and aside from multiple steps and a gap, there are no places for wheelchairs
you’re wrong. The only 1970s train still in widespread use is the HST. These have generally been refitted with wheelchair spaces: it’s in carriage C on a GWR HST, for example.
Besides, HSTs are being either replaced or hugely refurbished (power doors etc.) by 2020 - because really serious accessibility regulations come into force then (RVAR). Entire fleets of 80s trains (Pacers) are being scrapped because of this. The British railways are already good for accessibility, and getting much better.
[1] https://cdn.londonandpartners.com/visit/london-organisations...
[2] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1TZlXmiSe3I/UTcdowZY8hI/AAAAAAAAH3...
Dutch train: https://www.seat61.com/images/Russia-austrian-ext.jpg
Swiss train: http://citytransport.info/Digi/3253.jpg
British train: https://www.angeltrains.co.uk/Products-Services/Regional-Pas...
Eurostar: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/14/15/2C4DBFB70000057...
(I've used these Eurostar trains. If you have to get on with a wheelchair ... good luck. It's frankly too hard for perfectly normal people and pretty much all young kids have a lot of trouble)
Oh and as for London buses: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/driver-in-angry-co...
I will generally agree that London is a positive exception. Mostly because everything else in Europe is utterly inaccessible for wheelchair users. Unfortunately, even with that there isn't all that much that is accessible.
Let's just all sanely agree that obviously cars are a lot more wheelchair accessible than public transport, with a few small and limited exceptions. And even within those exceptions, public transport does not provide the services a car can give.
Here in the US, all public transportation is required by law to be wheelchair accessible. Perhaps Europe is different, but that is a decision that they have made, it is not an inherent limitation of public transportation.
Cars are not inherently wheelchair friendly; they must be designed to accommodate them. Trains and buses are exactly the same. Here at least, public transport is much more accessible than private vehicles because all public transportation must be wheelchair accessible, but there is no such requirement for private vehicles.
Netherlands:
http://www.accessibletravelnl.com/blogs/Trains-in-the-Nether...
Switzerland:
https://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/passengers-with-reduc...
Britain:
http://www.britrail.com/plan-your-trip/passengers-needing-as...
Eurostar:
https://wheelchairtravel.org/review-eurostar-train-london-to...
I especially encourage you to look at the picture of the ramp in the last article. The Eurostar may be difficult to board for normal people, but if someone in a wheelchair calls in advance, they get all the assistance they need.
The article you linked for London buses is just people being inconsiderate and needing to be told to behave. That could have happened just as well with someone blocking a parking lot reserved for disabled people.
So to put it bluntly: I see your articles ... they paint a completely unrealistic picture, and frankly I refuse to believe that things practically work this way.
A lot of details are unspecified. They essentially say "call 3 hours in advance and we'll provide". I called "sorry we don't work at this time, call back during working hours ... blah blah blah", but of course there are (a lot of) trains riding around at the moment. So ... not during weekends ? I hope it's not that bad. Somehow this isn't mentioned on that page. It also seems to be limited to large stations and is not generally available on either all trains or all stations.
I also refuse to believe that this can work for 10-15 wheelchair users on one train. Picturing such a situation raises all sorts of practical issues (for one, I seriously doubt that you can fit more than 5-6 wheelchairs in the biggest NS wheelchair section in a train that I've ever seen) that I'm thinking they just don't deal with.
Just no.
Additionally I'm ignoring the fact that for wheelchair users and other accessibility-challenged users the other problems of the train (such as a potentially large walking distance between the station and your house and/or your actual destination) that cars don't have as much are much worse than for normal people.
I will agree that the trains in Holland are much more usable than the trains in the Bay Area. That's certainly true. But practical for wheelchair users ? No way. Anywhere even remotely as good as having a car ? No way. (but yes, if you're rich (cars are cheaper), and live in inner city of the Hague, they're certainly more practical)
High-density neighborhoods make grocery shopping much easier for everyone. Here in San Francisco, I have one grocery store 1 block away, another grocery store 2 blocks away, and 3 more grocery stores within 5 blocks. I can do all of my grocery shopping on foot, and I can pick up what I need in a small batch on my way home on any arbitrary trip. If I were disabled or elderly I would probably additionally need a cart of some sort, instead of carrying groceries myself.
Of course, there's coordination problem here: ceteris paribus car users benefit from other people shifting to public transport, as long as they themselves don't have to switch. This is why it is important to make public transport a genuinely attractive option, and to put a price on the negative externalities caused by private cars, for example by means of congestion charges.
And yet it works perfectly well all around the world.
Besides, is Manhattan not American? The seem to do well (though, of course, they could spend more and improve their neglected since the 70s or so subway).
Just a wild guess, the "vast majority of your adult life" are the experience you imagine the whole world has, yet they were spent unattached, without children or supporting so much as a cat, never mind children in a rich area of a huge city (and yes, San Francisco counts as huge) ...
Clearly we should design the entire planet around the frustrations extremely rich Californians experience ($100k per year is almost 2 TIMES the median income, and makes you part, as an unattached person, of the top 7% income earners in the US. Let's just stop pretending and point out the obvious: to fix income inequality in the US, these incomes are what needs to be taxed MUCH more, without, of course, providing any more government services for that extra tax for you. You do not need it. Plenty of other people, 93% when not even counting those outside the US, do need it)
Sorry for the derision, but you were doing it to me.
San Francisco Muni has a daily ridership of 658k. Do you really think it would be better if all of those rides were done via car?
The majority of it was spent attached, with a child, and several years of it taking buggies on public transport.
And no, San Francisco is not huge - San Francisco isn't much bigger than my suburb.
You also seem to think I'm in the US, for no good reason.
So that's wrong on every count.
No one is saying get rid of cars, simply improve traffic by adding mass transit
If I look at paris, it already has a very dense subway system. The main drawback is that it closes between midnight and early morning and that it could be even denser.
Close the roads to cars (except emergencies and buses), promote bikes and electric longboards (along with other transportation systems that are easy to carry under your arm when you are done) and you have a solution for megalopolis.
even though musk might seem short-sighted in his approach, his vision and determination are admirable. let's have more of that, especially in the public transportation space.
(i agree that automated cars is not going to be a panacea, at least not in the next 30 years, but it's an meaningful step forward in transportation tech)
And I'd definitely enjoy owning a car or campervan for hiking/biking trips and other adventures — or paying $.75 a mile for a robocar to pick me up for similar trips.
I just hate the way that nearly all American cities make car ownership mandatory for full citizenship, and American land use laws mean almost all new development is almost purely auto-oriented (this is somewhat less the case in a subset of post-2008 development, but these developments are generally islands of sorta-walkability in an inhumane hellscape of high-speed arterials).
So Musk, a person who owns and is the CTO of a company that can now land reusable rockets that were only dreamed about in science fiction a decade ago, won't be able to drop tunneling costs in the US by a factor of ten, when the author admits this is already done in other countries.
Not sure this is worth reading past that part.
Also, if you read the rest of the article he literally predicts your response of appealing to the authoritative win of SpaceX as a completely invalid counter argument (and he’d be right, appeals to authority is on the list of logical fallacies, last I checked ;) ).
Musk can access great people and large amounts of capital, thinks things out from first principles, doesn't believe in "safety first", and thinks tunnels could be of great value. Traffic (on car and trains) is killing our cities and nothing is being done about it. No new transportation infrastructure built in the Bay Area since 1980 except a few small BART extensions. We could put anything in these tunnels. Not sure why people are so worried that he is going to get some people together and try.
One can't prove a negative.
Proof. Assume n > 2, 2 divides n and n is prime. Therefore, 2 is a prime factor of n. But since every prime number only has one prime factor, itself, then n = 2. But n = 2 contradicts n > 2. Therefore, no prime numbers greater than 2 exist. QED.
- or -
Claim. There is no beer in the fridge. Argument. I opened the fridge, there was no beer in the fridge.
- or -
p is a proposition. ~p is its negation. Take q = ~p. Proving p is the same as proving ~q.
Seems to me you can most certainly prove "negatives".
Fine. One can't necessarily prove a negative. Only if you can prove the negation of the assertion can you "prove the negative".
Now apply that logic to: <Musk> I can reduce the cost of boring by an order of magnitude.
Can you prove that he can't? The gp was (over)simply stating that just because no other digging project has done what Musk claims to be able to do doesn't necessarily mean that Musk can't do it.
IDK, if they can make a boring machine that is faster and more efficient than the ones used on projects that achieved the cost/km they are shooting for I really don't see the problem.
An automated (less labor), faster (less labor over the life of the project), smaller bore (less cost per mile) and more efficient (less cost per mile) machine should reasonably be able to hit the same target current technology already has, no?
I'm also thinking there's probably a lot of low-hanging fruit to be found if one starts fresh instead of having to tie into an existing system or use the 18th century train model.
It's not like shooting rockets to the moon or anything.
Shooting rockets at the moon is 1950s technology. ;)
Yes but reducing the cost of something that "isn't the biggest cost" which directly effects the things that are the biggest cost does seem to be beneficial.
> 2) the current labor costs in the US is primarily a "political rather than technological problem"
Which is why a boring machine which reduces overall labor costs through increased efficiency and automation also seems to be beneficial.
> 3) bore size doesn't have that much of an effect on overall cost
"The Barcelona Line 9 doesn’t use the 12m diameter stacked tunnel along its whole route. Some sections are built using different construction methods, presumably because they are cheaper. This mostly depends on the local geography and available space."[0]
"This is why there’s a trend toward bigger tunnels, as a cost saving mechanism: BART’s San Jose extension is studying different tunnel approaches, one with a large-diameter tunnel and one with twin small-diameter tunnels, and the cost turns out to be similar. "
One could be excused to think 1 large tunnel == 2 small tunnels would imply that one small tunnel would cost about half of one large tunnel. As an aside, I grew up out there, why they even digging tunnels, not like there's a mountain between Fremont and SJ?
Still not seeing a reason why it isn't possible to make digging tunnels efficient enough to...actually, why are we even arguing over how some rich dude choses to spend his money?
[0]http://www.cat-bus.com/2017/10/barcelonas-line-9-inspiring-m...
It then points out that "the actual cost is even less sensitive to tunnel width. The VLHC study only looks at the cost of tunneling itself. In addition, there must be substantial engineering. This is especially true in the places where transportation tunnels are most likely to arise: mountain crossings (for intercity rail), and urban areas (for urban rail and road tunnels)." While on the other hand, the smaller tunnels means more complex junctions, including "forcing underground four-level interchanges".
This helps explain why one small tunnel might cost more than 1/2 the price of a large one.
2) "increased efficiency and automation" are technological solutions. One of the costs is union featherbedding, which is a political problem not easily solved by such a technology solution.
3) "The Barcelona Line 9 doesn’t use the 12m diameter stacked tunnel along its whole route".
The same reference also says "The metro line is almost completely contained in this single tunnel". Certainly if you can get away with cut-and-cover then there's no need for an expensive TBM.
Regarding "why they even digging tunnels, not like there's a mountain between Fremont and SJ", I don't know about that project but I know that in other projects the main options are either surface or elevated trains. Surface means at-level crossings, which are dangerous and stop road traffic. Elevated is safer, though more expensive. Both require condemning expensive land, and people will object to the sound and visual impact, and file lawsuits.
Also, underground routes can usually go straighter.
You asked "actually, why are we even arguing over how some rich dude choses to spend his money?"
We do this all the time.
People complain when the Koch brothers use their billions to help push politics in a direction they favor.
People complain when Bill Gates uses his billions to help push education policy in a direction he favors.
In both cases one of the objections is that money amplifies influence, to the point where one rich person's whims can have more political influence than the serious concerns of tens of thousands of other citizens. Including experts.
It's also a problem should public institutions start to fund projects which are fundamentally flawed.
And finally, I'll argue that your question is misdirected. The article is not about "how some rich dude choses to spend his money" but rather an argument directed to people who have already decided to listen to a rich dude, in order to dissuade them of their enthusiasm.
If TBM costs are 50% of total cost, no amount of TBM cost reduction can achieve the 90% cost reduction goal - it clearly has to be combined with other strategies.
I believe it's clear that the author believes that these other strategies (all of which is probably project management based strategies) should be engaged with first, before falling down a path of throwing capital and R&D at cost reduction mechanisms (reduction of tunnel diameter for example) that may have significant technical and long-term short comings.
I mean, the entire blog post is just telling Americans what Americans kind of know - Large American government contracts are often poorly managed and executed (for whatever reason), and that reaching for a technological magic bullet is unlikely to achieve what we want.
You could have done that 40 years ago. SpaceX has figured out how to do this in an economically feasible way but technically it was possible a long time ago. Same for Mars. We could have landed there probably somewhere in the 1980s if someone had been willing to pay for it.
Musk went to NASA's website back in 2000 or so looking for the man to Mars plans and found nothing so he started a rocket company to bring down launch costs by a factor of 100. Ten years later reuse of rockets is happening. Amazing isn't it. Let's see what the next twenty bring.
This is a scathing review, but I can't really find anything inaccurate in it. Perhaps I didn't try hard enough, but the thought of riding hundreds of miles underground doesn't make me enthusiastic about looking for ways to make it more real. I've seen what happens when Lithium batteries catch on fire, and I wouldn't want to be stuck in a tunnel when that happened.
Experientially, it'll probably mostly be like a very long subway ride— but much comfier than the the tiny-tunnel, tiny-car Hyperloop, since at least you'll be able to go to the bathroom.
That train is also looking to go about 2.5x faster than the Boring Tunnel cars, resulting in a much shorter trip.
Cities scale with busses and trains. For some reason, the boring company wants to scale a city with cars. You build this big expensive tunnel to get 1/10th or even 1/50th the throughput that you could get with a train system.
Maybe that's not the California way though.
If he had his way, he'd probably put rentable self-driving cars back-to-back in those tunnels. It'll be like aluminum and steel train cars, except each one is a Tesla.
You're missing that the boring premise is to utilize electric mass-transit units within the tunnels as well. That could dramatically scale the transit systems. It becomes a defacto variation of a subway system. Musk keeps pointing this out and it keeps getting ignored for some reason.
Consider that many folks don’t want to buy a car in some of these bigger metro areas or to pay for the parking to maintain one. For so many reasons, beyond technology, traditional mass transit is the superior option.
I couldn’t care less whether Musk achieves his technological goals with the Boring Company. It’s hawking an inferior product even if he does.
Elon has some good ideas and some stupid ideas, this is of the latter category.
This system is also nice because people could choose all types of different ways they would like to travel. From sleeper cars, to mobile offices, to cramped seats on a bus, to stand-only packed in like-sardines, we are now in a Japanese subway situation.
But as it runs on skates, do they want everybody to input their routes first? And clearly, it's going to cost so much now than surface highways, but economics is lost here, for people are convinced that a maglev train in a pneumatic tube will cost 6 billion, but a high speed rail will cost 80 billion. The name Elon musk is like magic to dispel any economic sense.
The plan would to be able to pack cars at 100x the density of trains.
There's one catch for trains though: most trains aren't dispatching single cars. Rather, trains on busy systems are generally 8 or 10 cars that move as a consist. If you factor that in to your example, you don't have 120s between cars, but rather 12s. That might sound like a lot, but you should have 3s between cars for safe driving anyways, and train cars carry well over 4× the number of people in individual cars. Even if every road car were full Jitney vans.
Conceivably, the utilization of the tunnel could be way higher than the utilization of train tracks (most of the time: empty)
You're not getting 150+ cars in that tunnel during the same time period.
There are two arguments in the article: that Musk is going about solving the problem in the wrong way, and that he is solving the wrong problem altogether by trying to put cars in tunnels. The author may well be right about the first, but I think he/she is wrong about the second.
Let’s think about everything that changes in a fully driverless, electric, shared, and tunnel-augmented vehicle ecosystem.
No more greenhouse gas emissions directly from vehicles (and none at all once the grid is fully renewable).
No more need to dedicate huge amounts of valuable land in our cities and suburbs to parking (cars can drive themselves to outlying areas to park or, better yet, can be shared).
Dramatically higher throughput because the human mistakes that cause congestion can be avoided (I recommend CGP Grey’s video on the causes of traffic: https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE ). Driverless cars could drive faster and closer together, especially if they can communicate with one another.
Even more dramatic reduction in deaths and injuries as human error is removed from the equation.
Far fewer cars are needed in a shared-vehicle ecosystem. Most privately-owned cars are idle nearly all of the time, but they still take up space. Sharing vehicles allows us to reduce the amount of infrastructure needed for cars.
The average size of vehicles in the fleet can also be reduced. Right now people drive unnecessarily large vehicles because they might need the space a few times per year (annual family skiing trip, etc). These vehicles use up more energy and take up more space. In a shared-vehicle ecosystem, most of the vehicles can be something like a Smart ForTwo, with a smaller number of large vehicles that can be used by whoever actually needs them at any moment.
A shared-vehicle ecosystem could also include something like a cross between a scaled-up UberPOOL and a scaled-down bus: a Sprinter van (or equivalent) could pick up and drop off a dozen or so commuters who live in area A and work in area B. This improves the density of the system.
With affordable tunneling, freeways can go underground instead of destroying communities on the surface. This is one of the greatest evils of our car-centric infrastructure today, but with affordable tunneling we can abolish it.
Train-based mass transit will always be desirable for high-traffic corridors because it can be made far more dense. And despite this article’s attempts to paint him otherwise, Musk agrees with this - he is in talks to build a Hyperloop between Washington and Baltimore, as well as a lower-speed mass transit “loop” in Chicago.
However, trains will never be all that we need for transit, because they just can’t go everywhere. You will almost always need last-mile transportation at the endpoints, and there will always be routes that are not efficiently served by the train network. That’s where cars (or whatever we call the things they evolve into) come in.
A driverless, electric, shared, and tunnel-augmented vehicle ecosystem is probably the perfect mass transit system.
Yes, I think it's agreed that such a system could/will change things dramatically. Let's assume that it is possible. The questions then are 1) when will the transition take place, and 2) how do we improve the current system until it happens?
If it takes 50 years, then it's rather pointless to wait before making big changes, or even to plan for such a transition. (By comparison, the US interstate system is only 60 some-odd years old.)
It's quite clearly not next year.
Nor would it be easy for cities like Miami and Amsterdam to go underground, if tunnels are what's needed to make such a transportation system work.
"A driverless, electric, shared, and tunnel-augmented vehicle ecosystem is probably the perfect mass transit system."
You may be missing a qualifier - perhaps "personal"? - in your description. The word "vehicle" includes buses, trams, and trains, so this summary includes many current subway and tram systems, except without a driver.
P.S. It's hard to predict if something really will cause a big change. I remember in the 1990s when Dean Kamen talked about the Segway as being the next transportation paradigm, "John Doerr speculated that it would be more important than the Internet" and "Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that it was "as big a deal as the PC"" (quotes from Wikipedia). When it came out, it turned out not to be a big change. I think e-bikes - an update of 1800s technology - have had a bigger impact than Segway.
Let's solve our congestion problems by doubling the amount of traffic on the roads! Sharing vehicles is a red herring; the peak traffic is caused by what's effectively a unidirectional, time-compressed mode of transit--once the car drops someone off at work, there's not enough trips nearby that it can do.
> Driverless cars could drive faster and closer together, especially if they can communicate with one another.
Yeah, except for all those unpredictable pedestrians walking on the street in busy cities. You could drive faster and closer together only if a) every car were so wired, and no one drove manually and b) it's a limited-access highway with little conflicting movement. It might help I-70 in Kansas; it's not helping any street in NYC.
> A driverless, electric, shared, and tunnel-augmented vehicle ecosystem is probably the perfect mass transit system.
No, it ain't. The way you get mass transit is you start packing people into tighter spaces. A single-occupant car, no matter how many times it's reused, no matter how tightly you pack them, is just way too much extra space. The twin Hudson river NEC tubes carry more capacity than the GWB, Lincon Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and Brooklyn Bridge combined.
Reading on, it seemed like one of his suggestions for cost-reduction was to drive down wages for workers. I would have thought he would have seen Musk as a kindred spirit there:
"There appears to be a lot of union featherbedding in some American cities, but this is a political rather than technological problem; without such featherbedding, labor costs are not onerous."
So, I do not see any contradiction. But that is just how I interpret the article, I do not have a personal opinion in this issue.