Elon Musk's first LA tunnel with free rides to kick off this summer | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's first LA tunnel with free rides to kick off this summer

newatlas.com

41 pointsdjrogers33 comments

I thought that the anemic pace of tunnel construction was more a political problem than a technological one. Either Musk has solved NIMBY-ism and red tape, or he happened to pick a convenient location free from these issues for his pilot tube.

I suppose much of politics is arguing over who’s going to pay for something, and who’s going to actually build it. With The Boring Company digging their own proving ground, these questions are moot.

Far from being a naysayer, I live in NYC, we need more tunnels dug than ever before. If this works, we'll take twenty.

According to Elon, conventional tunneling costs "as much as $1 billion per mile," which is the biggest reason we don't have more tunnels.

How is what he doing not conventional? That's a mail-order tunnel-boring machine he's got there.

And tunneling doesn't cost 1 billion dollar a mile. One Mumbai metro line is being built at 100 million dollar per km, the cost includes everything, stations, tracks, coaches, etc. And they're using 17 tbm for this purpose.

The cost is proportional to what kind of environment you're operating in. If it's ideal terrain it'll be cheap. If it's difficult, ever changing conditions with a high risk of subsidence damage to the structures above, get ready to pay way, way more.

See the Seattle "Big Dig" project for an example of how sideways things can go if you hit an unexpected snag.

From what I’ve read so far, they are making it electric, more powerful, faster, fully automated and continuous (no switching between digging and support-building).

A modern TBM is already exactly as you describe. They rotate pre-cast sections into place, then push off of them hydraulically to advance the machine. They don't stop digging.

Innovating on the TBMs is definitely part of it; I don't know why you are concluding from a picture that it isn't? Boring smaller tunnels is also part of it.

You can read more here: https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/

I don't have an easy way to check your claims against Elon's, for example whether existing "modern" TBMs are fully electric as you claim, or run on fuel as Elon claims, and whether continuous tunneling is the norm or not.

I am not sure if it does solve NIMBYism entirely. I note on the map of tunnels they would like to build there is no link between Santa Monica/UCLA/West LA and downtown LA.

I assume that is because such a tunnel would involve dealing with the city of Beverly Hills, which has historically been unenthusiastic about mass transit.

Is tunneling really the issue? The tunnel for the extension of the line 14 in Paris was completed last week, at a speed of 25 meters by day (twice as fast as expected). Yet the line won't open until at least 2020, many years after the initial deadline. Construction was stopped for more than a year because of groundwater flooding in one of the new stations, which prevented the boring machine from going through. I'm not sure the tunnel boring itself has ever been a technical challenge.

Am I crazy to be more excited about Boring than I am about Tesla or SpaceX?

Not at all. We could use some out of the box thinking of Elon’s caliber here on Earth as well. A week ago I was in Moscow. Their subway is truly insane in its scale. It’d be pretty cool if something like this could be built in major US cities as well.

It's already built - in NYC. New York City Subway has twice as many stations as Moscow Metro.

Sure, but I don’t live in NYC, and traffic is terrible where I live, and it’s not economical to improve it without fast, cheap boring technology.

PS; interestingly, Moscow metro has more riders, in spite of a smaller city.

This article points out Phase 2 will look to connect LAX with the 101.

Does anyone know anything about the logistics of receiving approval to dig underground? From their FAQ (see below), it says they will partner with the City of Los Angeles, but does LA own mineral rights such that they could sell the needed territory surface for this ambitious project? I assume Boring is definitely not dealing with individual property owners.

"Blue indicates potential Phase 2 expansion options, and is included as a concept, not as a finalized alignment. Phase 2 specifics would be developed in cooperation with Los Angeles County, the City of Los Angeles, city governments in the greater Los Angeles area, and the general public. The Boring Company looks forward to receiving feedback from residents of the greater Los Angeles area on station locations and system improvements for Phase 2 and beyond."

https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/

Where does it go to?

Read the article?

It just says it's under LA. And it says where it'll go. It doesn't say anything about where they specifically did 500 feet of tunnel so far.

Based on past coverage, it's underneath a parking lot across the street from SpaceX.

Edit: Satellite photos suggest here:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B055'18.3%22N+118%C2...

At Boring Company HQ

From the article, make sure you read carefully before you downvote next time:

"But first it's all about baby steps, with the company getting to work on its first test tunnel that begins at its headquarters in LA."

That is the most ad and 3rd link heavy site I’ve seen on HN in a while. Does anyone have a better reference?

The 'announcement' on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BinoVT6Acpd/?hl=en&taken-by=elon...

That camera angle is dizzying!

So where is it exactly?

Did you not want to read the article?

The article is pretty vague on where it is, other than "Los Angeles", which as anyone knows is pretty fucking big.

"But first it's all about baby steps, with the company getting to work on its first test tunnel that begins at its headquarters in LA."

Is that not specific enough? Seems pretty clear to me

I was looking for a line on a map or something. And the length of it. I know it was 500' at some point, but now it's longer, though unclear how much longer. Or where it goes.

FWIW, Wikipedia answers my question. I should have checked there before commenting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Los_Angeles

How many vehicles per hour can his little tunnel handle? I'm guessing under a hundred.

Beats me. I'm really interested in seeing it in person. It could be 60 cars per hour, or 240. Either one seems plausible, just a matter of how often the next one is sent on its way, and what the queuing system is like. If the endpoints can keep up with enqueuing and dequeuing the cars, then you could stuff 12 cars a minute on there (720 c/h) and have a 5 second following distance.

I bet you're right, though. At least on this initial build out.

If this tunnel is working using the "skateboard" concept then you'll need a certain number of those on hand, plus some kind of turn-around system to get people on and off of them. Unless you had a massive staging and unloading area, 12 vehicles per minute is completely impossible.

I think your low-end estimate is much more reasonable.

I also think if people are manually driving cars it's only a matter of months until there's a spectacular crash in the tunnel because some idiot thought they could drive up the wall at speed or something.

Tunnels are only useful if they go somewhere.

It also states in the article where they are planning to tunnel to.

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