Tesla Tunnel Traffic Jam | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Tunnel Traffic Jam

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31 pointsedward16 comments

My God, this looks like an absolute death trap even in the best traffic conditions. What happens if a car catches fire, as enormous lithium batteries are known to do? The walls are too close to open a door and climb out, and good luck stopping and climbing out of the back hatch. The tunnels look like they're not even high enough for emergency vehicles like ambulances to enter, or even a tow truck if someone breaks down. I don't think you could pay me enough to drive through one of these.

Tesla Tunnel aka what if you took all the benefits of a subway and replaced them with the worst possible solution.

The problem with a subway is that I don't want to take a subway. They are often dangerous in the US, make it difficult to transport items, they are frequently dirty, and really just inconvenient.

I see these tunnels as somewhere in between traditional roads and a subway or bus. The cost seems like its way too high to justify. Maybe only worth it in the worst traffic areas where there is no land for more roads.

The point of a subway is that the people who want to take a subway take the subway, freeing space for other people. This solution has the high construction cost of a subway, no cheaper running cost than a BRT solution, and has less throughput than either. Also, those flaws (except maybe luggage) aren't a fault of subways themselves, and could also apply to any competitors copying Tesla.

I don't think the Tesla tunnel has any benefit over any other system (it's basically a worse airport people mover). But I think Elon is thinking 3 steps ahead towards his Vegas Loop, an idea that while still a bit too handwavey for me makes more sense. It's basically a road system underground, but fully automated. I'm still iffy on how I like the idea, but it's clear that this is Musk's vision, and the tunnel is perhaps a small path towards that.

I thought the cost was dramatically cheaper than subway systems because it was a much smaller diameter tunnel and didn't require nearly as much equipment? I seem to remember it was something like 10 or 100x cheaper (I'll have to look up numbers later). No question it'll be a lot less throughput.

It seems like the factors are the cost per mile, time to build, and people per hour vs a subway system. All need to be weighed to have it make sense. Obviously they can't employ people to drive you in Teslas either. It's only worth it if I can drive in with my car and drive out the other end. If it is 10x cheaper, can we build 10x the number of tunnels to achieve similar results? I really just don't know yet.

I'd question a 100x decrease, but anywhere from 2-10x due to less obstacle avoidance and external factors seems reasonable. (Although newer designs by places like Hitachi promise to cut cost using smaller vehicles at higher frequency, probably in an effort to make inroads in NA).

Something else that's worth considering is whether this scales. I'd expect a loop like the Las Vegas Loop to be somewhat larger to deal with concerns with ventilation and evacuation, something this loop doesn't have to deal with yet.

I think we also want GoA 2/GoA 3 capable cars, which should be easier than FSD and be achievable by Tesla in the short term. Driving manually through small tunnels is not for everyone, and even with guidewheels, I think automation is pretty important for this kind of system. The technology to realize these loops in the way Musk wants them isn't quite there yet, but I'd expect them to be here soonTM.

The only numbers I can quickly find is this at about a 30x difference:

  For instance, Mayor Francis Suarez from Miami noted that TBC quoted $30 million for a tunnel under the Miami River. In comparison, the Miami-Dade County transit officials estimated a $900 million price tag for a tunnel about 2-miles long for the same project

https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-boring-company-lvcc-loop...

You've never experienced a decent subway then. The king of Norway famously rode the subway during an oil crisis. Outside of America, they are not seen as dirty, or dangerous, just as another way to get around...

I have actually. The ones in Korea and Japan were excellent. Thats why I specifically mentioned the US. I'm not sure why there is a such a stark difference (cultural reasons?) but it remains the public transit in most of the US is a terrible experience.

Singaporean subways/trains are also excellent IME. However the Singaporean people seem to think it's inadequate - I thought it was fantastic compared to the public transport systems we have in Australia.

That's just a problem on investment, not inherent to subways. The more we spend on dumb "solutions" like these tunnels, the more we close our imagination to improvement of actual proven public infrastructure

He mentions asphyxiation but these tunnels have multiple ventilation systems just like other tunnel systems do. It's right on the home page: https://www.boringcompany.com/loop

Its hard to call a minute of waiting in this video a "traffic jam" though. I see worse at the street light next to my house.

My concerns about these boring tunnels are really just the cost for the limited capacity you gain.

I saw a lot of hateful glee over this on Twitter, reddit, etc today. We're all aware that both surface and subsurface trains bunch up and do the exact same thing, right? In Toronto this happens on a depressingly regular basis, and you have to wait in far worse conditions than the comfort of a Tesla.

Right. But those have emergency exits. No clue how you'd escape from a tunnel this small.

It's 12' / 3.65m in diameter. Model Y is 1.92m wide, so you just open the door and walk out. Here's a picture: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/04/11/00/41595384-9457687-...

The license plate is 12 inches wide, so you about 1.5 feet of walkway on each side of the car, 3 feet if the car pulls over.

Here's the London subway: https://www.myuksimcard.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/...

Some newer lines have very narrow walkways on the side, but Toronto's subway operator explicitly says you have to use tunnel and avoid signals, tracks and the 3rd rail. https://www.ttc.ca/riding-the-ttc/safety-and-security/emerge.... Here's a picture of people evacuating in the Toronto subway: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.4711057!/httpImage/...

I really fail to see the superiority of subways here.

Fair enough. Those tunnels are wider than I initially thought. Still, it's putting a lot of faith in the ventilation systems.

That said the comparison to the london underground is hardly fair. For starters it has emergency exits in the front giving a LOT more space for egress than the tesla. Not to mention that trains catching fire is much rarer than cars (of any sort) catching fire. I simply don't trust teslas to have gotten reliable enough for small diameter tunnels without service tunnels to not be a problem. Tesla seems to be reinventing the train poorly.

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