Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan
techcrunch.com
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(If indeed anyone can get too worried about potential rock-living life, since it is conspicuously lacking in anything you could call "cute".)
I'd also add that the use of concrete in tunneling does have a large environmental impact as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...), so cheap tunneling wouldn't necessarily improve the environment in any clear way. The best solution for the environment will always be electric powered rail lines that are at grade, although that would be a poor choice from a transportation planning stand point.
A metro rail line can't transport a car, so point-to-point transit is out, as is any semblance of privacy. Why are you so quick to devalue these advantages?
If Musk can build a tunnel profitably, he should be able to do it, even if the opinion of people like you, mass transit would be preferable. Musk isn't willing to fund mass transit, but he is willing to fund a tunnel, so all you get by blocking the tunnel is neither mass transit nor a tunnel. Congratulations!
The environmental review process doesn't stop a lot of infrastructure getting built, people prioritizing public spending on other priorities does.
> The current process is just a fig leaf for everyone getting a NIMBY veto.
No, it's not.
> California ought to be ashamed of its technological paralysis.
Perhaps, but CEQA isn't the source of the problem, to the extent there is one.
Of course not, Boring pulled out rather than go through the process that would evaluate any risks.
> Tunneling is really safe.
Then there was no reason to avoid environmental review.
California's high speed rail has been subject to the same scrutiny and legal threats. Was Boring/Musk completely ignorant of well-known past precedent and hurdles when they claimed they could build a transportation project for much cheaper? As recently as 1 month ago, Musk still thought and publicly claimed that the tunnel "opens Dec 10": https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1054164838430064640
No, it doesn't.
The first major issue of tunnels is that you have to put all of the stuff that you dug up somewhere, and the usual methods of dumping (such as the nearest coastline) aren't very environmentally-friendly. There are also some other issues you can find going underground--radon emissions come to mind.
The other key thing to analyze is the effect of the entire project. The Boring Company isn't selling better tunneling technology, they're selling a form of transit. (And it's pretty clear that Musk is personally interested in speeding up single-occupant vehicle as opposed to improving mass transit). The standard environmental impact analysis compares different approaches to see which one would minimize negative impacts. Quite frankly, the proposed Loop transit system is a very space-intensive, low-throughput system, which makes it a pretty poor option for the environment in comparison to standard subways.
The real problem is that the suburban ideal of detached single-family homes combined with low-density commercial parks is not an environmentally-friendly way of living, and when you try to scale it up, what you get is an unavoidable mess of traffic that has no real solution. If you care about moving people, the first thing you want to do is get people out of their cars; and that means that you need to concentrate one of the endpoints (invariably workplaces) to allow people to walk to their destination at that point. The land use policies are going to have to change if you want to be environmentally-friendly, and anyone who promises a way around that is selling you a fantasy.
Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be) and fell good about a better future for all of us.
No, they can't. How do you handle vertical circulation?
Also, the capacity of highways is absolute rubbish compared to trains. I've run the numbers before--you'd need about 10 times the number of tunnels with Musk's Loop proposal, and about 100x the number of stations to get the same kind of vertical throughput as you would with regular subways.
> Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be)
Loop is essentially (as I've said) personal rapid transit. PRT is definitely public transit, but every PRT system has generally found that the "mass" part is rather hard to achieve.
The problem with this sort of thing is that it takes energy out of proven, working solutions to instead build technology that consistently hasn't lived up to promises. I might feel better about it if there were serious discussion as to why this system is going to succeed where others fail, but there has been absolutely nothing of that sort.
Depends how the tunneling is done, surely? If it's haphazard and prone to problems or even collapse I doubt it's an environmental plus.
And that's why we have environmental review to vet infrastructure and similar projects before they get built.
They didn't block a tunneling company on environmental grounds. A tunneling company gave up rather than risk even having an environmental evaluation of a potential tunnel.
> It seems sort of shortsighted to block a tunneling company on environmental grounds.
Probably. But this wasn't about cheap tunneling technology, it was about a specific proposed tunnnel.
By letting perfect be the enemy of good, they're leaving the environment worse off.
They're even paying for the whole thing, I think most residents here are excited about it.
One thing that kinda shocked me was how limited its capacity was. The Blue Line "L" train actually has something like 10x the throughput despite being extremely slow (45 minutes vs 12). I don't know if that's a design limitation of the technology or if that's all the demand they anticipated. It makes me worried it's not scalable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/us/chicago-tunnel-elon-mu...
Also, how do you define “welcome”? A single lawsuit doesn’t mean much about overall endorsement.
This was just one test tunnel. They have already succeeded on their other 2 mile test tunnel (Dodger Stadium) and are working to extend that.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dodger-stadium-...
Metro runs between 12 and 24 shuttle buses to Dodgers games (based on anticipated attendance) starting about 2 hours before to about an hour after the game ends, for a theoretical capacity of 3600 people on the low end and 17,000 on the high end over the course of the game.
This was a great Twitter thread on the public interest in a LA tunnel
A connection from Mumbai to New Mumbai under the sea like NYC comes into mind. The problem is i doubt given the experimental nature (still) the govt. will be bold enough to try it
I love the BANANA acronym, which stands for "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything".
This isn’t about declaring the project a hazard to the environment, this is skipping the process to determine if it is or isn’t a net good.
I don't understand how any pollution would be removed, just because it's now in tunnels doesn't equal it being gone.
Wouldn't it just be blasted back out through the ventilation system? Or were there plans to build some kind of "pollution scrubbing" into those?
seriously, how would that work?
any expansion of road capacity in LA is immediately used up and oversaturated. if you build it they will come. if you free roads up by providing an alternative like Musk's tunnel system, someone else will still come and fill the roads back up, because, "hey, traffic is moving again."
LA deserves better public transit.
Which is an increase in quality of life for those who would have otherwise forgone those trips. Either way it's a win.
Whether it's a big enough win to be worth the cost is a perpetual debate with projects like this.
Generally the person themselves should be the one to tell. Other systems have not worked out so well.
Where is the environmental assessment on NIMBY-ism I wonder? :/
Of course, if you choose not to follow the rules and processes for development...it's very difficult.
Elon's learning the hard way that not following the rules can make his pet projects difficult or even impossible.
On the other hand not letting anybody do what they want when they feel like it is important if you want to maintain a working society so it's a very tricky balance to maintain. It's probably reasonable for Californian residents not to let anybody dig holes willy-nilly underneath their cities.
That being said the article is pretty thin on details. They mention "a review of its potential environment impact" but don't explain what the problem was exactly, so it's hard for me to form an educated opinion on this particular case.
>If you drive people away, more will replace them
There is no data to support this hypothesis, however, in this case. The facts are California housing is expensive, and there are not enough jobs at those wages to support the expensive houses.
Another way of interpreting "The median home price is California is $379,000" is "people are willing to pay, on average, $379,000 for a home in California."
The home prices are the data to support my hypothesis. If there wasn't demand for houses then prices would fall. Demand for houses means people want to move there. If there were a net migration out of the state, prices would be dropping.
This is true in general, but it isn't as immediate as you are making it out to be and doesn't give you any insight into how long it takes for the price to correct itself. The migration trends are 1-2 years old at this point. If my hypothesis is correct, expect to see your pricing drops soon (towards the middle to end of next big moving season, typically May 15 to August 31st), but only to a certain level and then it will make more sense for the builder to go under and let the banks take the hit.
California is experiencing a net outward migration of people, but from the parts of California where there are already too many people, so all those people leaving has had minimal effect on the price of housing in LA or SF.
California is a really nice place to live; great weather, great coast lines, great food, great people, etc. Most people don't live there on accident.
Fun example of this is John Wayne airport in Orange County pilots do a special takooff involving cutting power to engines to reduce noise for Newport Beach neighborhood below dating back to a lawsuit from the 80s.
I wonder if they do this at other airports located in of near cities such as LGA.
I have some mildly related personal experience as well. The glider club I belong to started getting noise complaints from people living near the airport. On a busy day, our tow plane might make 25 takeoffs. We often took the same path every time, repeatedly annoying the same people. We started varying our routes and also replaced the propellor with a quieter one and everybody was happy.
"In 1990, Congress, fearing that many localities could eventually hamstring the growth of aviation by implementing their own patchwork of noise restrictions, passed the Airport Noise and Capacity Act which outlawed curfews at airports. John Wayne was grandfathered in, however, due to the original lawsuit being filed in 1985."
https://www.avgeekery.com/whats-rollercoaster-takeoffs-orang...
And the residents standing in the way of this project? not even very powerful residents. Just backed by a handful of attorneys well versed on property rights.
Maybe this understates the wealth level of South Pasadena, which would have been significantly affected by that final leg of the 710. South Pasadena is relatively well off compared to many other areas of the county, has a good school district, some rather nice craftsman era homes, a little bit of old money, attractive retail zones, convenient location to downtown, nice hillside geography, etc.
Though not Beverly Hills or Santa Monica, South Pasadena is an independent city with a largely middle to upper middle class population. So, in a way, it's not surprising that it succeeded in killing that final leg of the 710.
Personally, I wish the 710 had been completed. It would have benefited a lot of people.
Had this never happened, LA would have far worse pollution problems than it does today, and NYC would be completely overrun with highways.
I cannot understand how so many of my fellow Americans love to talk about the merits of democracy, but when it comes to large scale capital projects, either public or private, people suddenly hate democratic decision making. Moses sized power completely ignoring the democratic process, and had musk built these tunnels, he'd have done the same.
Perhaps even more ironically, those who live by an transit area would expect to see their home values increase due to desire to live near mass transit in big cities (see SF, NYC)
The canceled tunnel was planned to go in about a block from where I currently live and I was excited for it. It wasn't even going to be under Brentwood (the northern terminus was about 2.5 mi away from the nearest edge). The hypothetical question for the plaintiffs might better be: would you be ok with a tunnel being built between 2-4 mi away from your house after successfully consulting with your elected representatives?
This. all im saying.
That applies to every culture, ever, and I have a hard time identifying some "California culture" that encompasses the state. The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.
Measure R (2008, 67% in favor) and Measure M (2016, 71% in favor) both passed with supermajorities and raised Los Angeles taxes by billions to pay for rail and other public transit options. To me, that seems to indicate that the majority wants these kinds of projects.
Also, it goes without saying that LA County is not representative of "California culture."
Would you ban a teleportation system that was energy efficient and insist people take trains and subways? Trains and subways are much inferior mode of transport compared to a functioning road system with vechicles. I wonder why so many people have this car hate? Scared of driving a car? They are dangerous and you have to pay attention to drive them, so that makes some sense to me. Some kind of socialist reason that people should be forced into contact with random other people. Sitting at home is what one should be doing instead of going places? Where did you get this idea that cars where some kind of evil device?
Cars are one of the least space-efficient transportation option imaginable. In an urban environment, space comes at a premium. At the same time, car infrastructure is quite heavily subsidized. Finally, there is a very large car lobby that absolutely abhors the idea of spending a dime on anything that's not cars such that talking about mass transit is equated with a war on cars. (And quite frankly, you sound much closer to that end of the spectrum).
> When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-point transportation at any time.
Following on the above point I made about space-inefficiency... it's impossible to allocate enough space in cities to prevent such congestion. And tunnels don't help because it means you have a vertical circulation problem, which is a problem that we struggle to solve with conventional mass transit systems already, and it's even harder with cars.
Ultimately, the reason why people like me are so against Loop is because we see it as Musk doing to car owners what Trump does to coal miners: sympathize with their plight, blame it on completely the wrong thing, and then peddle fantasies that he'll be able to make it better.
That is, the output of environmental review should never be "no". It should be "the environmental cost of this project is $X billion, and here's a breakdown". Forcing people to quantify their objections will lead to a more honest evaluation of the options.
Some communities might have a NIMBY attitude, but just saying that this is California NIMBYism is oversimplifying.
LA is very capable at making decision that work for the greater good as the county has a sizable amount of power around taxation, and manages the regions transit authority. The parts of the region most notable for NIMBYism are largely only effective at delaying action rather than completely blocking it unlike in the bay area which has multiple counties to deal with.
LA's cities actually work very well together on many infrastructure projects; it's the valley portions of LA (San Gabriel and San Fernando) that don't cooperate well with others.
Tesla is impressive but it seems more like the success of a vision, making electric cars look cool and inspirational, not "like a real car but eco-friendly and boring". Technologically speaking are they really ahead of the competition?
Meanwhile the Boring company and especially Hyperloop fail to convince me. For the former it's mostly that I don't see what he's bringing to the table. If digging holes underneath large cities is so great why did we wait for him to do it? Why does it seem to be such a huge pain when everybody else does it but it would be cheap and easy for him? What's the secret sauce? Where's the innovation? It's not like we didn't know how to dig tunnels before Musk. They've been extending Paris Metro line 14 into the northern suburbs lately and it's a long, expensive and complicated process, both technically and administratively. What would Musk do better?
For the hyperloop it's almost the other way around: the innovation is obvious but what's unclear is if it can work in practice and actually be useful, so I think that would be a better situation to argue that "he's got Space X to work, why not Hyperloop?"
Yes and have been since 2012 when they started producing the Model S. It's been 6 years and major manufacturers have still not caught up.
He's trying to build mass transit using sewer tunnel boring machines and sewer tunnel cost structures. It's not "hard" innovation but innovation it is.
Now he's trying to find out if sewer tunnel sized mass transit requires the same level of environmental assessment as mass transit or as sewer tunnels...
I don't even really understand where the hate comes from, because he missed a few deadlines, because he dreams big? I'm sure his critics have missed more than a few deadlines, and on things not nearly as important/world changing.
Elon is why people complain. He rubs a lot of people the wrong way with this tweets and attitude. You can be diplomatic and move things forward or you can be abrasive like Elon and also move forward.
Just curious, can you name some people who have been diplomatic and managed to move things as far forward? I honestly can't think of many actual achievers that have been diplomatic about things.
Consequently, anyone who accomolishes something meaningful will be called a jerk. You can't do meaningful work while being universally well-liked. The world doesn't work that way.
It takes a certain kind of person to do what Elon does, and the personality is non-negotiable, apparently.
Would people think so if they were analyzing and over analyzing ever single thing you did while you held one of the most stressful positions in the world?
I for one am happy to cut the man some slack given all the good he has done and is trying to do for the world. He said himself he could've just bought an island after Paypal and never worked again, instead he chose to dedicate basically the entire rest of his life to good causes.
Mixed use development near transit supplemented by a network of bike lanes an 8 or 80 year old would feel safe cycling on.
Tunnels aren't magic. Does anyone here think they won't succumb to induced demand just like any other road? Even if they reduce congestion (and they won't - the 405 carpool lane made commutes a minute longer, not shorter) all that means is people who want more space move farther from the city, enabling more urban sprawl, and thereby trashing the planet even more.
Quick, cheap tunneling would be GREAT for building subways, though. Shame Elon hates public transport https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t...
The other thing about Elon is that one wonders how many clever people are toiling away on solving the world's problems but can't get attention/funding/support because Elon sucks it all up, AND he's dangerously close to going full Kanye on Twitter (cave rescuers are pedophiles? wtf?), which doesn't help anything.
If we know it works how come no one has done it? Traffic and congestion is a major issue in basically ever major city in the US (and probably the world), why the hate for attempted innovation?
>The other thing about Elon is that one wonders how many clever people are toiling away on solving the world's problems but can't get attention/funding/support because Elon sucks it all up
Is this really your concern? If anything I'd say he's inspiring many more people to try and tackle hard problems on a major scale. I'm way more frustrated that all the clever people are being sucked up by Facebook and Co to make ads super good and make time-wasters more addictive.
To your comment "If we know it works how come no one has done it? " -
1) We have done it. Amsterdam fought like hell for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o . Now they have one of the finest cities in the world in which to move about.
Copenhagen at rush hour handles loads of people well because they have built systems that move people efficiently and safely. And pleasantly. Even driving there is nice, paradoxically.
https://twitter.com/Pidge/status/1064443820245422080
2) People fight it because they believe they should be able to drive anywhere they like, for free, and without interruption - and then even store their car for free as well! The ideal situation is to be the only driver, but of course that only works if driving is very expensive (something I support).
In LA people are so furious at the idea of not being able to drive everywhere they shout down (almost) anything resembling progress. Things like Elon's tunnel are used as ammunition in these fights. After all, why should we build bike lanes when we're getting these kickass tunnels!?? This is part of why I left LA.
As for your latter point - yes, it is very much my concern. We have similar views regarding Facebook and Co. but given that Elon's tunnels are unlikely to actually make life better (note my earlier comment regarding induced demand) this is taking resources from actual solutions we could do right now, cheaply, and that we know work.
Also I really don't think this a resource drain. Before Elon there was basically no effort, and so if there was no Elon there would still be no effort. Also I would be shocked if there were more than like 150 people at Boring company.
This devotion is also fueled by Musk himself, who invests in positive PR (just look at any submission from Elektrek on this forum) and pretends to be a nerdy everyman on Twitter to appear to be "relatable".
Perhaps to his admirers, it seems like he's"just trying to help" when he proposes submarines for the Thai cave rescue. To outside observers, it looks like a cynical attempt to capitalize on the publicity around the rescue efforts for free. It's gauche when a normal person does it, and becomes in extremely poor taste when a billionaire with real resources does it.
Comments of the "He's trying to save the world, can't you see?" variety mix freely with the "this is a conspiracy against Tesla by big auto/big oil" comments that pop up anytime bad news is reported.
At the end of the day, neither Elon nor Tesla are hurting because of online comments.
In this instance, it would have been obvious from the get-go that a project like this would run into environmental concerns. The whole thing has been a waste of time and sucked attention away from more realistic possibilities. This broadly applies to Hyperloop as well, which is cool tech that solves none of the problems holding back transportation in the US, which are almost all political.
Kind of ironic that the man who for many is seen as saving the planet with his electric vehicles is trying to avoid an environment impact study.
It could more accurately be described as, "concerned and organized opposition taking every available legal step to delay and increase the costs of the project under the guise of genuine and valid concern." And succeeding, as it seems.
Although it's tough for me to feel too sorry for Californians being negatively impacted by a complex and bureaucratic legal nightmare that enables exactly this kind of NIMBYism.
“The parties (The Boring Company, Brentwood Residents Coalition, Sunset Coalition, and Wendy-Sue Rosen) have amicably settled the matter"
I have to go around and ask 10 people in my neighborhood if its ok if i want to move a freaking wall inside my house and this guy can just go and dig up tunnels without asking us ... just because he feels like it and he is a billionaire.