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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

May be the Boring Company can work on this. They should be interested in accumulating expertise, instead of wasting it.

Given everything they’ve done on the increasingly bizarre LA tunnel, I think NYC is just fine without their input.

(In any case, the answer here isn’t a technical one, it’s political. And NYC/New York State lacks the political will or desire. A third party private company won’t solve that)

From the article, looks like the problem isn't political, but financial. It costs a lot, and there is a lack of expertise which only drives the cost up even more. So it would make sense to hire someone who wants to retain the expertise.

It costs a lot because of political reasons. There’s no technical reason why NYC subway construction should cost 10x what it does in Paris, and yet, it does.

Deteriorating infrastructure that drains all the resources is not a political reason, but quite practical. Though what caused that in the first place could be political in the past. I.e. bad planning and poor management. Today it's not political. Someone just has to deal with huge existing mess.

It's political today. These projects are given to friends of politicians at inflated prices and are used as sops to specific communities to stop them from kicking up a fuss or backing someone else. Here's the classic story of how costs can spiral without reason https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

NYC has more skyscrapers above to worry about below.

Paris has more historical buildings to worry about. Is there data on the relative added cost of either?

Paris isn't built directly on bedrock either.

But the trains run underneath the streets, not the skyscrapers.

Yes, but the foundations of the skyscrapers (which can go as much as 250ft underground) are where you'd want to build the subway. So you can't. You either have to go deeper ($$$$) or around (longer, again $$$). Plus, you have to make sure you don't dig out too much in the wrong place and cause a building to fail.

Uh, no they aren't. Look closely at maps of the NYC subway: with very few exceptions, the lines run directly underneath the streets themselves. Even many of the curves to traverse to following a different street occurs underneath the street right-of-way or the underneath parks. I count just five places where the subway runs underneath a tall building, and I believe in all but one of those cases, it's the subway that predates the building.

That's not the point. Digging a massive hole in the ground directly next to a skyscraper's foundation changes the physical properties of that foundation, and requires some very complicated engineering to get around it.

That and all the Manhattan Schist that needs to be excavated. New York certainly isn't built on mud.

O god. The Manhattan Schist takes ages to dig through and often involves blasting under the streets of NY because it's basically obsidian.

Tokyo, London, Singapore all also have lower costs and plenty of skyscrapers

Whats bizarre about the LA tunnel?

Bizarre gives me no information on what's wrong with it. Care to elaborate?

Too bad the Boring Company would rather build their own transit systems than bore the tunnels for existing subway systems.

Why can't they do both?

They absolutely can do both, but they don't seem to be willing to do so.

Do you have evidence to show that the problem is Boring Company's unwillingness rather than hesitance by cities (perhaps under pressure from Boring Company's more established competitors) to bring in a relatively inexperienced partner for a major project like a new subway line?

Everything they have publicly bid for has been about deploying their Loop transit system. They have not bid on any contracts or subcontracts for tunneling operations, so far as I can find, and their FAQ page spends more time discussing the Loop system than it does their tunneling technology.

The Boring Company is a startup exploring a transformative sweet spot around very-inexpensive small simple autonomous-EV single-lane road tunnels, when constructed very rapidly at extremely large scale. If BC were to attempt a conventionally sized and outfitted subway tunnel, bid against established contractors, for one of the very few contracts available, presumably with a machine in direct competition with established TBM manufacturers... well, that would be quite a pivot.

That's pretty bullshit if you consider their USP is cheap tunneling. Then they should be just building cheap tunneling then trying to build custom public transit that allow only for electric cars with compatible self driving systems.

> Then they should be just building cheap tunneling then trying to build custom public transit

Cheap depends on context. Here, on R&D, creating excellent machines, mass produced, and reused with high duty cycle, embedded in a big high-productivity surrounding process, all amortized and enabled by scale. And also on tunnel characteristics, especially small diameter (many costs scale roughly with face area). These are not well matched to existing markets. The sweet spot really is in system design, not merely in fancy small TBM design. The scale permits the cost that permits the scale.

> custom public transit that allow only for electric cars with compatible self driving systems

Access could indeed be an interesting issue at some point. But at present, company focus is on dedicated mass transit shuttle bus/vans. More analogous to rail transit, than to highways.

It's not transformative. It does absolutely nothing to fix traffic/congestion. Because the real limitation is above ground where streets where people are being dropped off/parking/living/etc which have limited capacity and cascade into backups from local streets and onto highways. This just means there'll be back ups underground as well.

Unless people are going to start living underground. Then you start to remove the above ground choke points ;)

Won't happen (yet), because it goes against everything Musk.

At the risk of downvotes... Here's my work-in-progress theory (v0.1):

Musk isn't a tech genius, (or maybe he is, but irrelevant) he's a regulation genius. (Which allows him to also be an effective fundraiser, but again, irrelevant.)

Musk's MO is to enter a niche, mostly uncontested and unregulated area of an otherwise over-regulated market. Then make a whole lot of noise about why this niche is so different and special and going to be so groundbreaking, which is really just cover for "why existing regulations shouldn't apply to me." Then as regulations (and subsidies) for that niche market are created, make sure that they favor his company (which already has a beachhead), while still being a barrier to market for any new-comers hoping to ride his coat-tails. Continue until level of regulation roughly matches the rest of the (non-niche) industry, ensuring niche status while becoming a competitor in the overall (non-niche) market. This happens as everyone realizes the final product, as finished, probably wasn't special enough to be excluded from the (non-niche) market regulations.

See: (in decreasing rank of success)

PayPal-> Banking

SpaceX-> Rockets/Aerospace

Tesla-> Cars

Giga-factory/ Tesla assembly automation -> manufacturing

Boring Company-> Subsurface Construction

Solar City-> Power Utility

Not-a-flamethrower -> flame thrower market???

Scuba rescue tank-> pedo scuba rescue market???

There are obviously some places this fits and others it doesn't. There's also some level of genius in how batteries/electric cars/solar/power-grid play off of one another, but nothing non-obvious. I suspect he wanted to make an earlier play in ride-sharing, but Uber beat him to it, with a similar strategy. This is now delayed until self-driving (re)allows for the regulatory advantage.

But the intended overall playbook starts to become obvious.

Back to Boring Company: I suspect skirting the existing regulations isn't going quite as well as desired because:

1- people realize his technology isn't all that special, even if it is (self-imposed) niche. (This is a failure in how hyperloop played out.)

2a- Subsurface engineering regulations aren't all that interesting, at least as far as looking for creative ways around them

2b- the regulations that are there have a pretty good (non-arbitrary and simple) engineering purpose. (Which is another way of saying the existing market is not actually over regulated)

3a- nimby politics plays a major role

3b- local governments (clients) don't have the power and/or money to override regulation politics

To answer: the Boring Company can't go and bid on bigger projects (yet) because then they would completely burn their niche status, which would admit to the world it's just another subsurface drilling company, and should be treated as such. They have to delay until their personalized regulatory system has been built, acknowledged, and subsidized. Then you can go after the regular projects that don't justify a special regulatory framework.

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