Elon Musk's tunnel project is a bad joke
usa.streetsblog.org
usa.streetsblog.org
The Boring Company seems to be trying with different thoughts and ideas for making these tunnels a reality and they have been quite open to the public with these ideas. It feels to me that the author is taking advantage of this transparency and using it as a weapon for his own agenda.
The entire "demo" was a proof-of-concept that they can use as a model in order to see if it works or not, there is nothing wrong with it. It's not like they will be deploying the current idea to the general public of LA starting tomorrow.
> Some experts questioned whether the Boring Company had even succeeded at improving the cost of tunnel boring. Right now, it’s not altogether clear that it did.
Well, they are still developing the technology, aren't they?
> But this design creates congestion at the front end while promising to relieve it on the journey. Drivers will need to line up to wait their turn on the elevator.
The idea he presented in the press conference is that the tunnels would complement the current highways and public transportation system, it wouldn't be a full replacement for those.
Adding new lanes is incredibly difficult because it would require road work, blocking the entire road to traffic, and also because you are physically limited to the number of lanes that you can possibly add to the road.
The idea of tunnels is supposed to work around these limitations.
It's weird that after succeeding at creating two companies that tons of people predicted would fail at every turn people don't give him a little more benefit of the doubt than this.
You think he started Tesla and SpaceX out of greed, too? Two insanely difficult and competitive industries, that he almost threw away his entire personal fortune from Paypal getting into? Do you know anything about his history at all?
He's created a lot of noise and dissent on Twitter, most seriously with his error-riddled disparagement of journalists who have investigated labour conditions at Tesla. On that platform, his de facto fan club of Musk bros have made great strides in alienating people who wouldn't even otherwise have an opinion.
The criticisms in this article are painful for those of us who wish him to succeed, but they aren't really that unfair. The big unveiling WAS a public relations flop. They HAVEN'T yet succeeded in reducing the price of tunnelling. If the tunnel is only usable by automated electric cars, then it IS essentially a private highway for the wealthy. If the tunnels are used to capacity, then entrance/exit congestion IS a real problem that needs to be dealt with.
I think the article takes a few truisms to heart (more roads means more congestion) that might not be as applicable to an underground network as to a surface network, and the author clearly has an agenda with regards to social utility. However, it's not an unreasonable reaction from someone who hasn't already bought into the hope that Musk will be successful in his various endeavours.
I doubt Boring would have gotten much hype at all if Musk had admitted up front that it'd be little different than an underground highway, something which people have been using for decades.
Yes each tunnel is limited by the speed of the slowest vehicle, but if the tunneling cost is low enough (it certainly would be lower without skates and special tracks) you could have a "slow lane" and a "fast lane"
> The Boring Company seems to be trying with different thoughts and ideas for making these tunnels a reality and they have been quite open to the public with these ideas. It feels to me that the author is taking advantage of this transparency and using it as a weapon for his own agenda.
What did we see besides a bunch of smoke and mirrors?
This is a solved problem. The obstacles to better public transit are political and economic, not technological.
Arguably, you're also talking about SpaceX. Landing a rocket on its tail is something we'd already done. The rocket engines SpaceX uses are tried and true technology. The Falcon rockets are a technological tour de force, but really that's all about implementation. The big barriers were really political and economic. A situation had arisen where an industry had become stagnant, and everyone was scared off from competing. It wouldn't surprise me if the same applied to tunneling.
"The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company" https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/
Everything else is just icing on the cake. People are forgetting this.
If you wanna call out Elon Musk for something, call him out for his abusive management practices and erratic/abusive behavior on twitter. Calling him out for trying out bold ideas (with all the trial and error that entails) is really petty and counterproductive.
Well, because it isn't. Tunnel boring is an established industry, it's just a new topic on HN, and apparently for Musk. People don't call him out for being bold, they are calling him out for doing bad and falling over his own hubris.
Yes, but Elon's stock and trade has become:
1) look at an established industry
2) do a 1st principles analysis of how inexpensive the product could be
3) analyze where the difference comes from
4) $$$
It's more admirable than imitation of previous successes, at any rate.
It’s not hard to see how trying something high powered and electric/lithium-ion based might change the cost/benefits of tunneling, and Elon/Tesla also seems like it might have a uniquely special knowledge of electric motors to succeed
I see no reason why this isn’t worth the experiment.
Do I agree that electricity would potentially help? Yes. Mostly for exhaust. As long as you can equal out the torque as well. Motors that large don't always have the same amount of torque as their fuel counter parts. But massive batteries overheat as well and are an explosive risks. Diesel at least needs to be well aerated to pose as an extreme fire risk. Running a large battery for that long would be an issue. You still have the heat, but at least the exhaust problems are potentially not there. Even though large lithium batteries still produce fumes when run hot. But I'm not sure as to what ppm until those fumes are dangerous/equal to carbon monoxide.
From what I've read, Boring Company is very aware of this. Give me a 1st principles analysis for why those things can't be done cheaper and faster?
The thermal limits in boring isn't related to the energy source--it's related to the bore head warming up from the friction of boring. This problem is addressed by cooling the bore head with water.
Teslas are still more expensive than other EVs, and selling them at the same costs as their competitors would, in Elon's own words, kill the company.
Boring Co and the tunnel reveal yesterday demonstrate that Elon has not done a 1st principles analysis of how inexpensive a product could be, and indeed that Elon isn't even sure what the product is.
No more so than cars, and rockets.
I can't predict that he has not made any substantial or meaningful improvements to tunneling technology to date because (a) that's not a prediction, it's a statement of current affairs, and (b) it's already quite clear that he hasn't--and based on the Hawthorne tunnel, it appears that (c) Elon has actually regressed from current tunneling technology.
But yes, I am willing to predict that Boring Co will never make meaningful improvements to tunneling technology. Everything they've already suggested as innovative has already been done by existing players. BoringCo's road map for innovation for the next 10 years is literally them just playing catch up to everyone else.
Those two things are the same thing. A loan against a personal asset is the same thing as your own money.
SpaceX is just using McDonnell Douglas's DCX prototype tech to go into space. Difference between now and then, the gov is throwing money at the development.
Tesla, nothing new there. Electric cars are old. Like, real old.
The Boring Company, tunnels, transit, moving cars on a skid. Old.
Hyperloop, was theorized in the early 1900s. Plans and prototypes in the 70s and on ward, but lacked funding to move these projects forward.
Let's not forget that little publicity stunt with the cave sub for those kids. Then calls the guy leading the actual rescue a pedo because the guy told him not to use the situation as a publicity stunt.
And that little "I'm taking tesla private" and mentions the price. Never happened. There's a reason why that shit is illegal. "The good old days" of the stock market, pre 1930s was filled with that shit. Then he says the SEC are assholes because he broke the law with some scandalous manipulation that historically was always done by greedy assholes. It's interesting how people don't understand how dangerous pump and dumps can be.
If he had the humility to just say "Hey, I'm taking old ideas I think are good and I'm going to try to make it better with bumps in the road." There wouldn't be as much hate. Not over promising, plus getting angry at other people that point out that he's missed the mark.
It's utter crap. It's not "affordable mass transit". It doesn't even attempt to approach the advertised speeds. It has no real ingress and egress plans for vehicles nor does it take into account congestion in the tunnel.
The whole thing is needless grandstanding around a poorly built tunnel that doesn't even fulfill 1/10th of its promises. This is why I'm cynical, and why I'm sure others are too.
I dunno why you would say the point is the technology. The point is obviously building out alternative means of transit to help decongest above-the-ground roadways. Which this fails to demonstrate.
Is that so? Were rockets and cars not already 'mature' fields? Do you have any basis for that statement at all?
Why don't you read an article or two. It'll help keep you from making a fool of yourself.
Unless all you're trying to say is "people have been digging tunnels for a while". Which is about as useful as pointing out that people had been riding horses for a while so transportation was probably as efficient as it was going to get.
I'm not a Musk apologist. The idea of underground freeways in tiny tunnels is not good, but real innovation generally comes from grinding, evolutionary progress. You need to iterate to figure out what works and what doesn't work.
Small boring machines work differently from big boring machines. It's like the difference between an toy RC car and...a Tesla. Other than using batteries and motors they're not comparable.
I'm fairly certain that a "tunnel [...] network that will be filled with self-driving cars that will race people in groups" has existed for quite some time in the form of subways.
If Musk really wanted to help, he could leverage this to improve and extend the current LA subway system, but he isn't. Instead he's going down the unnecessary (and probably fruitless) route of making this into a marketing campaign for the Elon Musk persona.
Compare to the trapped Thai soccer team from earlier in the year. He could have worked _with_ the existing efforts, but instead chose to do his own thing.
The "Elon Musk" persona is no doubt annoying, but is that a reason to undermine and shoot down new ideas? Don't let your schadenfreude get in the way of recognizing real achievements.
NY spent $2.7 billion to dig a tunnel 10x the size of Elon's, including rerouting existing utility lines (and including hundreds of miles of unmapped/undisclosed plumbing, electricity, internet, etc.), in one of the densest cities on the planet. All this while attempting to minimize disruption to the millions of people in the area.
Don't let your schadenfreude get in the way of recognizing that what BoringCo did is not an achievement by any definition of the word. It's the equivalent of Baby's First Tunnel, and unless you are Elon's parents, it's not something worthy of praise.
Still, let them try something new. What have you got to lose? If the R&D work they're doing here results in even marginal improvements in tunneling technology, I'd call this a win for everyone.
He literally picked one of the easiest places to build a tunnel, and the criticism here is, he still hasn't done anything new, special different or cost effective. He hasn't paid out to do the things that really cost money, like life safety, stations and redundancies. But he already claims he did it "cheaper" compared to everyone else. The tunneling portions to these types of projects are typically the cheapest expense unless there are special circumstances. I think the tunnel from England to France was the most expensive part due to a lot of issues they were running into with water.
Again, everyone says he's bold. He ain't. A GED redneck could point out that he's not doing anything new, special or different. HN really is ignorant of industries that don't fall in line with dev.
Exactly! If he can be so efficient at it, why is he not proposing to improve the LA metro system quickly and cheaply?
Instead, he's proposing his own network, using his own autonomous vehicles. Why?
> The "Elon Musk" persona is no doubt annoying, but is that a reason to undermine and shoot down new ideas?
Again, this isn't a new idea. I'm not saying that what Musk is doing is not impressive, but that he's clearly using the ideas and technologies developed to promote himself and his companies rather than implement them in the most straightforward manner--which would be comparatively boring (no pun intended) and lackluster.
Personally, I think working to improve the existing Metro network would help his image more, but he's very much chasing a specific public image: Out-of-the-Box Thinking Innovator from the World of Tomorrow. And improving yesterday's subway systems won't contribute to that image.
Personally, I don't think a Metro system in LA is likely to work well, and I think Musk knows that. I live in LA, and even if there was a good metro system here, the city isn't walkable enough to get to an entrance easily, or if you did get to one, get close enough to your destination. Which means you'd have to drive there and park, and then Uber for the last mile. That basically makes it a non-starter for most people here. So, yes indeed his solution is not capable of transporting people as efficiently as a subway, but it is likely to actually eat into the congestion problem, by competing with the freeways for drivers.
But from what I can tell, the tunnels being proposed aren't primarily for commuter's cars. From the FAQ[0] on the Boring Company's site:
> Is this public or private transportation? > Both. Within Loop, there will be a large quantity of autonomous electric vehicles dedicated solely to public transportation. In addition, privately owned compatible vehicles can access Loop. Accommodating pedestrians and cyclists will be prioritized over accommodating private vehicles.
So even if people can enter with their own vehicles, it seems the plan is to prioritize "pedestrians and cyclists"--like a subway system would.
It also begs the question of what counts as a "compatible vehicle". I don't know if they released any info on that, and I don't want to theorize. But it's clear it won't be as simple as an "underground highway" meant to compete with freeways, and is intended to function primarily in ways similar to subway systems.
I also live in LA, and like several thousands of other commuters in and out of downtown, I find that the Metro works just fine for commuting. It's not designed to be a hyper-dense subway system like NY, since LA's not that kind of dense. It has good coverage of most of the most-visited parts of LA, including Santa Monica, downtown, Hollywood, and Pasadena. During Trojan Football, Rams, Lakers, Clippers, and Kings games, tens of thousands of people take the Metro to the stadium/Staples instead of driving because it's more convenient. Hell, almost a quarter of the Dodgers crowd takes public transportation to the stadium even though the last mile involves a shuttle bus. And during the Women's March in 2017, the Metro demonstrated the capacity to handle more than 500,000 people heading to the same destination at once. (The Women's March required them to utilize every train car available; normal capacity is generally much lower as many trains are either in the shop for maintenance or on other routes.)
Elon's tunnel has the capacity of the exit lane on the highway. It can't even compete with a side street. It's a solution for lazy rich billionaires who can't be bothered to actually think through what they're trying to do.
The expensive part of subway construction isn't the tunneling, and hasn't been for decades. The expensive part is constructing the subway stations; each station can itself coast as much as all of the tunneling.
BoringCo does nothing to solve this. It addresses the most cost efficient part of the problem that, even if they can introduce efficiencies, would only cut a fraction of a percent off the cost of public transportation systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
The problem with infrastructure isn't coming up with crazy new ideas (like "skates"), or being able to use hot new technology (like fully-electric TBMs). Execution in the real world is entirely the trouble we have with existing solutions. It looks like he's trying to iterate on the parts of the problem we've solved already, and ignoring the parts of the problem that we don't know how to fix.
What happens when it hits a steel pipe or a giant boulder and gets stuck for a year? What happens when these tunnels cause unexpected sinkholes, and the governor orders a halt for more ground studies? What happens when you discover 500 leaks a couple years after opening? These really happened in Seattle and Boston.
The Boring Company's webpage doesn't mention the possibility of any such issues, but they're not the kind that are solved by changing methods. We already have the "error". Now we need "trials" that address these errors.
I'm assuming if the Boring Company is moving forward, that they have actually done the research and found that those problems are:
* rare enough not to worry about at this point in the game
* have no good possible solutions that anyone can think up right now
* don't have any obvious places where big improvements can be made
* they don't have access to the details of exactly what mistakes were made in those projects because the industry is unable or unwilling to share the information.
* there are solutions to those problems, but they require that other "seemingly solved" problems be optimized or solved differently
Not to mention that they are completely new at this as a company. Getting a few easy wins, validating that your plans and ideas are on the right track, and making sure you really know the problem before diving in headfirst sound like pretty good ideas.
It's a utility tunnel. That's been done before, for much cheaper than the $10m/mile that BoringCo spent (not including R&D, capex, or all the other costs that other boring projects include in their totals).
For better or for worse, Elon Musk has a track record of taking difficult ideas and beating all odds to make them a reality.
Citation needed. I give SpaceX credit for doing things no private company has done before, but the executive in charge of that is Gwynne Shotwell, it's COO. SpaceX accomplished nothing before she took over.
If you wanna call out Elon Musk for something, call him out for his abusive management practices and erratic/abusive behavior on twitter.
Agreed. Him forcing 100-hour weeks on SpaceX employees over Shotwell's recommendations has torpedoed their ability to hire experienced engineers.
Calling him out for trying out bold ideas (with all the trial and error that entails) is really petty and counterproductive.
People would love for Musk to try out bold ideas. The problem is that Musk is not trying out bold ideas. He's just doing things that have been done before, but with worse execution and 1000x better marketing.
One example I found was the English Channel Tunnel, which cost $21 billion for 32 miles of length. It's a two way tunnel, so at $21 billion / 32 miles / 2 bores (plus 1 utility bore)... $218 million per mile (avg), and I'm not adjusting for inflation (completed in 1994).
https://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/Ar...
https://www.tunneltalk.com/Toronto-sewer-tunnel-Sep11-Straba...
This is a 12 foot diameter tunnel, exactly the same size as Elon's.
The only remotely "innovative" thing that Elon has suggested is recovering the boring machine after tunnel digging. Even this isn't innovative--the reason most boring machines aren't recovered is because it would cost too much to extract them from the surface. Elon's proposed method of extraction (digging down from the surface) is the method the industry already uses in those situations where it is cost-effective to recover the machine.
The boring machines that BoringCo is using are used boring machines that were recovered using the "innovative" method that Elon proposed. It was cost effective to do so because they're relatively tiny, as far as boring machines go.
The O'Hare airport connector in Chicago is a better example of what cheap, fast tunneling could be used for than the car skate mechanism. This article points out how remarkable it would be if things go according to plan: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/for-1-billion...
It seems like we don't need a "revolution" in tunneling costs, even a 30% reduction would be material. The incumbents here have grown fat (like ULA in rockets) on cost plus contracts, it is not like going up against General Motors, Toyota, etc. where is really competitive.
Even if the technology only works in favorable ground (can't choose exactly where it goes), ultra-low-cost tunnels could be good for other uses such as storing parked cars. Los Angeles gets around a cubic kilometer of rainfall a year and if they just had a place to store it, they would not need to import water at all.
Now that's a bold idea but storing one cubic kilometer of water in an artificial reservoir seems rather complicated and I'm not really sure the technology developed by the Boring company would help greatly.
If I'm not mistaken and given a diameter of 3.8m you'd need 87 thousand kilometers of tunnels to store one cubic kilometer of water. You could circle the world more than two times with a tunnel that length.
You could get that 1 cubic km of space by damming up the area where the Los Angeles River drains out out to where the depth of the ocean really drops off.
Practically it can be done on a small scale. Some communities are starting to realize that they can either spend $1M on upgrading their sewer line or spend $3M and get a really nice and verdant park.
Of course it's not like I have any expertise in the domain, I'd gladly be proven wrong.
He used an existing used machine.
It took him 18 months to go 6000 feet, a distance the established tunnelers do in 8.
He said it cost $10 million, but that’s really unclear if that’s accurate given how SpaceX was heavily involved.
There’s literally nothing new here except for a hole in the ground.
that and this example is a paltry little tunnel in no way useful without the required safety of a parallel tunnel and such.
the real game changer going forward is still autonomous vehicles. combined with EV technology they will disrupt both the automotive industry on a scale many do not fully imagine as well as public transport and providing freedom for people to live further apart. it will give even more people the freedom of travel
And Boring Company plans on using parallel tunnels, for safety and for increased capacity (two directions of travel).
Subways are kind of like circuit switched networks (more raw capacity), this is more like a packet switched network (more flexibility/overall efficiency). And with cheap enough tunneling it becomes horizontally scalable.
But, as the article mentions Boring Company seems pivoting more to "a tunnel for rich people to drive in". That seems like a more plausible use-case. Or well just build a subway. And as another perspective as European, public transportation is pretty cool also. No need for expensive tunnels. Would probably help with the congestion too although it seems like a lost cause in the US.
[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1054164543922823168?lang...
>L.A.’s highways are congested. Simply putting new ones underground doesn’t really solve this problem.
I mean, more capacity should mean less congestion, shouldn't it?
>Drivers will need to line up to wait their turn on the elevator. If the tunnels were really able to deliver lightning fast commutes across Los Angeles, demand would likely be quite high.
That also doesn't make sense to me. The tunnel will be unsuccessful because it'll be too successful? People won't want to use the tunnel because too many people will use the tunnel? If Musk reaches that point he'll probably already have won.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, the answer to that is often "no", due to induced demand[1].
> That also doesn't make sense to me. The tunnel will be unsuccessful because it'll be too successful? People won't want to use the tunnel because too many people will use the tunnel? If Musk reaches that point he'll probably already have won.
I think the point being made here is that ingress/egress imposes such a significant bottleneck that total throughput will still be low, and very few people would actually be able to benefit.
I see what you mean but couldn't you raise the same objection if somebody wanted to, say, create a new subway system or something similar? More people in the new transport system means fewer people in cars on the streets means induced demand... I don't see why this particular project is different.
>I think the point being made here is that ingress/egress imposes such a significant bottleneck that total throughput will still be low, and very few people would actually be able to benefit.
I agree with that, it's also a problem with hyperloop. It seems like Musk's vision of the future is great if you're rich, not so much if you're poor.
The author missed a solid opportunity to make a Stonecutters joke.
That was exactly my thought when I read about the test. I have a hard time seeing how this can scale in capacity. But getting himself out of the gridlock...now that's...something at least. Speed similar to a helicopter ride above the traffic without all the hassle of getting on and off and finding a place to land.
Not sure it's a good thing.
Even if the tunnels were significantly cheaper than building new freeway lanes, a tunnel is a single lane, with single entry and exits. Ingress and egress overwhelm any gains from potential speed improvements in the tunnel.
Besides this, it doesn't matter how much improvement in traffic capacity is gained from tunnels, or lanes. Induced demand always renders improvements in capacity moot over the longer term.
What on Earth did Elon do to attract the ire of the far left? Because obviously both articles were written by people who are evidently into far left ideology according to their Twitter feeds.
I suppose everybody else either don't really give a crap about his experiments or think they are useless but pretty cool (hello, personal flamethrower), across these circles SpaceX is considered to be pretty rad, and while Tesla might not be perfect I'm pretty sure they are one of the trailblazers towards a future of self driving electric cars.
So can anyone explain to me - and I mean this genuinely - why the raging hate from this particular part of the ideological spectrum?
Thanks.
Real breakthrough!!
The innovation is the assertion that such small tunnels are sufficient and safe for mass transit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwX9G38vdCE
From memory, the important points: 1. They want to have the drill work continuously. Apparently current technology winds up drilling less than half the time, partially because the drills stop when putting in the wall sections that make up the tunnel. 2. Switch the drill and the waste train (that takes the dirt from the drill) to electric using batteries that the train brings in. This reduces the construction of pipes and infrastructure in the tunnel during construction. 3. Work to speed up the drill head by using the materials scientists from SpaceX. 4. Make bricks out of the waster material on-site. Right now disposing of the waste material is a big headache/cost.
Also, the reason the drill stops to put in walls sections every X feet is because in soft-soil like LA, the tunnel will collapse without walls. Unlike the Elontunnel, the walls built by the machine during this stage are the final walls, which is why they take so long--they're subject to the full construction process (measuring, building, remeasuring, inspections, sign-offs, etc.) before the tunnel digs a new section.
When you're digging under other people's property, it's better to go slowly and do things right the first time. It's more expensive to fix something like a tunnel after the fact, and that's something BoringCo is about to learn.
As for number 3: different materials require different drill heads and speeds. For example--with soft soil drilling to fast can "liquefy" the soil. Material science won't change that--it's physics that the boring industry has decades of research in.