The Boring Company will prioritize pedestrians and cyclists | Hacker News Reader

The Boring Company will prioritize pedestrians and cyclists

mobile.twitter.com

35 pointsmaelito17 comments

non-mobile link twitter.com/elonmusk/status/972233079342297088

and to comment on this, I wonder how long it will take before these pods will be completely vandalized. Regular buses with a driver who can boot off unruly people can't prevent the buses from getting trashed so an autonomous pod is going to face some real challenges in that regard. That being said, I'm glad they are prioritizing mass transit even if this is just a PR stunt or what have you.

Most airport inter-terminal transit systems I've seen are driverless. More relevantly, the Vancouver Skytrain is driverless (it's a proper city-scale system equivalent to other urban light rail). I haven't noticed a vandalization problem on any of them.

Generally, airports are out of the way from the usual populations that commit these crimes and don't see a lot of traffic from them.

Exactly. You generally don't have too many unsupervised youngsters bored with time to kill and bad ideas to pursue. The drinks there are adults with responsibilities who generally aren't looking to make trouble or get fired form their jobs for being delinquents.

I studied at a university which is connected with a driverless suspension railway [1].

Students aren't unsupervised youngsters with bad ideas as such but not far removed from the concept. The H-Bahn never really looked bad.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-Bahn

Different societies and cultures. Japan would also _not_ have this problem --while Brazil probably would.

Our society is new and in flux. It hasn't yet converged and congealed with a semi monolithic identity (even if from disparate parts). Who knows if it will ever happen. Maybe one day.

France already has multiple unmanned subway lines that manage to do okay. My bet is cameras and a non-trivial chance of vandals getting stopped at the next station would be sufficient protection against this.

This a great way of framing what his tunnels can do. There is only so much capacity in a tunnel, but unlike current train systems, with automatic vehicles you can mix high density people movers (buses) with lower density (cars). If the the tunnel gets close to full then the high density vehicle get priority. Or maybe who ever pays most gets to go. That way you can get more resources to build more tunnels more quickly. A bus full of people should be able to out spend a single vehicle almost all the time.

Since supporting individual transport options over a certain size and speed seem to be politically impossible in urban America at the moment, promoting his system as mass transit instead of a brand new concept of mixed transit is a great idea. Cargo can/will also go in these tunnels, but I guess at the moment politicians can't/won't support transportation improvement for trucks.

What makes you say current train systems can't mix high and low density vehicles?

Some trains have different classes of travel but not many urban subways systems do (I don't know of any. India?). Also, current train systems are not usually designed for individual vehicles to exit and enter the track system. And I don't think any train systems allow vehicles that can also run on the road system.

His "tunnel" is a train, the cars/vehicles are modules on it. In that sense, it's no different than multimodal transportation widely is use here in the US. A so-called multimodal container can be taken off of a container ship in port, put into a train, delivered to another station where it is put of to an 18 wheeler truck bed , and finally delivered to wherever it is going. And vice versa.

Also there are subways that run on roads, the Muni in San Francisco is one example.

I would think there is a bit of a difference when the vehicle can convert from a car to a train by just merging into an existing stream of traffic in seconds. Multi model is nothing like that. Unloading a ship to a train takes days and unloading a train to trucks is also a full day activity.

"subways that run on roads".

Not sure what you mean here. Underground tunnels that have trains that have rubber tires instead of tracks like the Paris RER? Or trolley cars on rails that come out of the underground(the subway) and then run on the surface (a trolley).

The closest I've seen to the Musk idea is in Seattle where the buses go underground in downtown, but can go on the road network everywhere else.

Boring Co urban loop system would have 1000’s of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway -https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/972243992153739265?s=20

Video of concept: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/972245615735222273?s=20

Cyclists can’t afford cars?

Cars are a tremendous waste of space in cities; they waste space on the road and waste more space for parking. They also destroy the roadway and (non-electric ones) pollute the air.

Even if you like driving, you should be happy when other people walk, cycle, or use public transit; it reduces traffic for you.

I thought that was a rather odd comment even for Musk, I guess some people really do live in a bubble.

Literally can't - yes, many people literally can't get the money in their hands to lease/buy a car.

Figuratively can't - yes, some people don't make enough money to justify a car, whether that is a monthly lease, large upfront cost, insurance, etc.. when they attempt to fit it in their budget, the budget ends up negative or pushes out elements of higher utility. of course, this requires living somewhere that actually supports non-car infrastructure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com