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This is a pilot. Doesn’t have to be financially viable on its own. Paves way for future projects and proves utility for the community.

It's not anywhere close to self-funding a real public transport system.

How do they expect to make money as a private enterprise if these are the numbers they propose?

Public transportation is supposed to lose money, not make it, hence the "public" part. It's paid for by tax dollars, because it is impossible for private companies to make money from it.

Even the private rail systems around the world are largely subsidized pubicly during construction, with only operations being privatized.

If you read further down the page it says this Dodger loop will be their first test track, to replace a previously proposed test track in Sepulveda. It's not meant to make money, it's to prove it works. The money will be made in future systems.

One important property of a test track is that, if things don’t work out as intended, you can take it down for indefinite periods for upgrades or even take it down forever. Test tracks don’t have SLAs.

⇒ what Tesla describes here is not a test track, or at least shouldn’t be.

Not sure what you are saying. Can you clarify?

They aren't proposing these numbers with any more context than the article, (This is a pilot running alongside existing infrastructure) so I'm really unsure about what you are asking?

I'm saying the numbers are so astronomically off that there is no viable path to profit without public subsidy, for any theoretical future system, big or small.

Their path to profit is the Chicago airport loop, which is proposed to cost a fair bit more and have much more consistent ridership. This is a pilot project, a technology tester.

There is some disagreement among experts that this project is ever a path to profit, given that the projected construction cost is ridiculously low.[1]

[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/for-1-billion...

From the looks of it they want to test this system and if it proves to be a viable method of transportation, they will present this to governments and construct it for them. They don't have to run it. They can just make it and sell it.

> Public transportation is supposed to lose money, not make it, hence the "public" part. It's paid for by tax dollars, because it is impossible for private companies to make money from it.

What? No! Public as in "open to the public". At least in the German equivalent "Öffentlicher Nahverkehr" thats exactly what it says ("öffentlich" = "open to the public").

Systems like the MTR[0] also show that it is indeed possible to have a public transportation system that is directly profitable at scale.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTR

In the US, "public transportation" means "transportation system owned by the public". This is opposed to "private transportation", which is owned by private entities.

All tranport systems are available for use by the general public.

Also, the MTR infrastructure is government subsidized.

Prior to the destruction of North American light rail systems, a process accelerated by US auto companies (which bought urban rail cos only to then neglect them) public transit companies were entirely private and often entirely capitalized with profits and private investment. Many streetcars used to profitably have two people working on them: one driver and one toll collector.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...]

This was possible because cities weren't as developed as they are now. Property was cheap back then.

These days, the major expense of building a mass transit system is just buying property. And in cities, these properties are going to be already developed.

Right now, there are individual buildings in US cities that cost over $1billion, so grade-separated ground rail is not going to happen for cheap. That only leaves tunneling, which also isn't cheap.

If this one works, they can do similar projects in places where they can build, own and charge for huge parking garages. Build parking in cheap location, then provide a way for people to get to the location they actually want to br (downtown, stadiums/event centers, airports). If that still makes sense when we have self riding cars - I don't know (probably only for the most high density destinations).

I'd prefer they do a pilot out in the desert or something, or from e.g. the tesla megafactory to the nearest bus stop, not under city ground - it'd cause problems (or maybe provide a head start) if the city wants to build a metro there.

They want people to use this, so it makes to do it in a place where there are actually people, and an incentive for those people to choose this form of transport over others, like driving.

The same would happen with the Tesla Gigafactory in NV, the closest "city" is sparks(Reno), which is where all the wrokers live. So a link from there to sparks would make sense. The downside is a bunch of that land is all BLM, so it would take dealing with the feds to make it happen, which might be difficult and delay things crazily.

Seriously? 2800 passengers per day? On the Crossrail just two trains can transport more people (3000). And at peak time there will be 2 trains per minute...

There can't actually be 2 crossrail trains per minute surely? Keeping the tube lines consistently running ~2 minutes apart is barely achieved...

Like, I'd be incredibly impressed if they pull it off - I'm just dubious.

> There can't actually be 2 crossrail trains per minute surely?

Official docs actually say "A train every two and a half minutes at peak time through central London ... trains accommodating up to 1,500 passengers"

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/

So it looks like no. It will actually take crossrail 5 minutes or more to exceed that daily capacity of Dugout loop.

You are right I didn’t remember correctly. Still 5 minutes to exceed the daily capacity of this loop is a quite good result I think.

I would say that crossrail will be much higher capacity than that, since it aims to have 41 stations and London is a big city, so there is potential for the same train to carry one group from Station A to Station D, someone else from station C to Station G, another group to replace the first from station D to station K, etc. Large networks are just more useful than ones with 2 nodes.

Most subway lines will have peak scheduled throughputs of about 26-30 trains per hour, or a train every 2 minutes or so. The tracks can support more, but it's a good idea to have some schedule slack so you can send more trains through if things go wrong. Moscow's Metro does manage 45TPH, but that is achieved mostly by having a simplified track layout with no revenue branching.

Prague's metro C has a 90 second interval during rush hour.

I was always wondering about people running to get the next metro.

"Keeping the tube lines consistently running ~2 minutes apart is barely achieved..."

The Victoria line has been quite successfully running 36 trains per hour (100 second headway) at peak times for the past year. Peak = about 3 hours each in the morning and evening.

Per game. Still it is a weird design choice for something where you need a lot of people to move at the same time. They need to decrease the distance of the skates, chain them together or get bigger ones. Automatic people movers are nothing new, but if this is what it takes for the US to be excited about infrastructure then I am all for it. Half of the utility if these types of systems tends to be in the overall design though. The interior of the vehicles, the location and design of the terminus, how long you have to wait etc.

Dodger Stadium rarely has two events a day. I’m not sure they had a double header at all this year.

The number of passengers it’ll transport is like two sections in the stadium. This is a publicity stunt.

Ya for sure. They picked the stadium for their test because they can demonstrate the system for a lot of randos who come to ballgames. It’s not solving any problem, besides getting a few folks home faster.

> besides getting a few folks home faster.

How is that not solving a problem? Isn't this the purpose of undergrounds/metros?

Yeah, it gets 5% of people home faster.

Faster, cheaper (than car) and with less emission right? Seems quite good to me.

It seems an awful solution compared to the worst underground line. Modern lines, as I said, can transport more passengers than they move per day in a mere minute... If you add the time to make 3.6 miles probably they will complete the journey in 10-15 minutes.

Yes, but full scale metro lines are very expensive and not every situation justifies that kind of spending.

If this system can be built more quickly and at much lower cost than traditional transit systems, then it could well be very successful.

It removes those 5% from clogging up the roadways and parking lot. If you attend games, why would that be a bad thing?

When they are building a tunnel anyway, why not run a normal metro line through it and be able to transport much more people?

Why would they waste the enormous amount of additional money it would take to construct a normal metro line, when the entire premise of the company is the proposition that it is possible to construct a useful underground transportation system which is much simpler and therefore much less expensive than a normal metro?

Don't underestimate that if those 5% instead of taking the car take this Loop, there'll be less cars and less traffic. So a higher % will be home faster.

Nr of cars vs congestion follows an S-curve with a very narrow/steep middle section. Removing a single digit percentage of cars/passengers can mean the difference between 'busy but only a little slow down' and 'complete stand still'. I don't know about the numbers in this specific case, but transport systems work in not very intuitive ways.

Indeed and adding this capacity could easily make things worse with induced demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

While induced demand is definitely a thing, they're not going to start selling more tickets to baseball games because the road to the park isnt quite as congested. Induced demand is because of the effects it has (encourages more spread out development and 1PV usage).

Depends on your standards for “problem”, which is conceptually a statement I myself find frustrating, so i can see where you’re coming from.

But, we should try and be considerate when we define “problem”. LA has no shortage of serious transportation problems. This solves exactly none of them. Outside of Startupland, a problem is usually something that gets acknowledged before you find it.

From a marketing perspective it may be a publicity stunt, but from an engineering perspective it looks like a sensibly-scaled prototype. You have to start somewhere, and it makes sense to start with a small-scale project that will get some public use without becoming critical infrastructure.

I had the exact same questions. I'm pretty sure the answer to question 1 is hidden in their systems about the originally planned Sepulveda proof of concept tunnel. According to them that one hadn't been planned to take any passengers so it would have been a total loss and poor proof of concept. This tunnel would still be a loss but probably a smaller one and a much better proof of concept and marketing show piece.

Advertisements, perhaps?

I'm imagining something like in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Perhaps as you're traveling through the tunnel there are adverts playing along the walls as you go or perhaps even just the "windows" of the "skates".

Based on the section mentioning the timing, it indeed sounds like it's intended to be one-way, switching direction after the event starts.

> So what else is happening to make this financially viable?

I'd guess: retail areas at the station, higher travel class with expensive tickets, local transport, parking, advertisements, internet access (maybe on a longer loop).

$1 is the cost, not the fare

Ah yes, I see how you can read it either way. Even at $10 a ride under the same assumptions that seems light as I assume something like this would cost 100's of millions upfront and then fairly decent running costs.

So VERY guess work but if it was 10x under the same generous assumptions this is ~$45mil/year revenue

What are cost... - $15m for 5% interest on $300m debt? - $15m for running cost and maintenance?

Then a $15m buffer, would not be a margin bad margin for infrastructure if he can start building a bunch of these. Maybe cheaper rides to grow the concept..

If I'm understanding this correctly the traffic will be towards Dodgers Stadium before the event, and away from Dodgers Stadium after the start of the event.

They can also buy up and leasu put retail space at stations.

The mined materials worth something perhaps?

Also, the article only says the project is privately funded, fares could be subsidized?

> So what else is happening to make this financially viable? maybe private car use of the loop lift at a premium? stadium co-funding to promote events?

Elon needs to distract people from Tesla's and his legal trouble.