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Comment by zknill | Hacker News Reader

I don't know US commutes, or US geography too well. But it seems these two locations are about 45mins-1hr drive from each other.

Where do folks actually live in those areas? Is it that a 30min drive north to San Fran becomes a 30min drive south to San Jose?

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More like the easy commute you had in San Francisco on muni (the bus and subway network of San Francisco) becomes an annoying hour and a half-long commute on bart (The regional train system) with 2-3 transfers

Until Boring Company sets up multiple pickup points with Loop and Hyperloop tunnels; then will arguably be a max 20-30 minute ride.

The dynamics of travel will dramatically change multiple industries, save for if the status quo establishment and industrial complexes through regulatory capture prevent the rapid expansion of the paradigm shift in transport that Boring Company is rapidly developing; the technology of which Elon needs for his Mars colony, and so it'll happen and be developed as far as is determined to be necessary to maximize its utility and safety.

How big is their network so far?

I haven't looked into it recently, however their Las Vegas network is going and expanding; 40 million people per year travel to Vegas, a great testbed and for exposure.

Why is the number of people in LA relevant when the ridership peak is 1,355 an hour.

... Wait, is it actually _that_ low? That's, like, a high-frequency conventional bus route (ie not BRT). Like, what on earth was the point? Either use buses for same capacity, or build a real rail line for ten times the capacity. The highest capacity metro systems can do something like 40k/hour each direction (though one of those would clearly be overkill in this case, and something far more modest could be used).

I wouldn't bring up the Las Vegas network if you're trying to advocate for the boring company, it's quite possibly the worst system of transportation that's ever been created. A farce in every aspect, benefiting no one.

I used the underground Tesla thing to get between the halls of the convention center during NAB - it was pretty reasonable, but not really scalable...

This is not the sort of thing you should measure on an individual user experience basis. Try running the numbers for the system, it would essentially get beaten by a medium-sized bus in capacity and times, at a fraction of the cost.

Not to mention the large delta between what was promised versus what was delivered. There's probably a good case for fraud, if it were not for the fact that the purchasers want to save face they could probably sue.

... that is what I said. Good experience, not scalable.

However, transit advocates need to realize that the experience of individual users _does_ matter.

Is that the one that’s just teslas driving in a pretty normal tunnel at fairly unimpressive speeds & throughput?

Teslas which still don't have reliable enough FSD to drive on a one-way only track so they need human drivers to drive 1-3 people at a time.

They have 2 or 3 tunnels of which at most 2 are actively in use.

By that time current senior staff is retired

Hey dang, what exactly in my comment above warrants -5 (or more) downvotes?

Extreme sycophancy without much critical thought.

Might as well argue he’s going to give all his employees time machines to go buy $AAPL in the 90s as part of their comp plan. Would also get downvoted.

"Extreme sycophancy without much critical thought."

A claim you make with no supportive arguments.

My comment is packed with critical thought. Maybe you're just lacking understanding to unpack it? Or are you too arrogant to not think that you know all?

And then ridiculous ad hominem that you think was clever enough to actually waste time to type out; what work do you have that you hate that you're procrastinating from working on?

I'm really curious if you know what sycophancy means, and if so, how exactly my comment is benefitting me? I think it's more likely you're jealous of Elon's success, have past trauma from personal work experiences you're projecting onto him, and taking it out on anyone who notes his successes and extrapolates to estimate where his projects will lead to.

wat.

I don't think you know what ad hominem nor sycophancy mean.

Have a good week!

You’re telling people to commute with a thing that doesn’t and very unlikely ever will exist?

https://www.boringcompany.com/vegas-loop - doesn't exist?

That is literally just a tunnel where people drive teslas around

Because theres a snowball's chance in hell that will ever happen. Just build normal trains and expand the public transportation like every developed country on Earth.

This is a very anti-Musk thread and generally anti-Musk crowd. Pro-Musk comments should be expected to be downvoted, unfortunately. It's days like these one has to be brave and burn some magical internet karma points in order to present an opposing view and to call out the one-sided discussions.

I don't think the comment is being voted because it's "pro-Musk", but because no one believes they're going to do any of that. I even thought it was a joke, until they asked why they were being downvoted.

The true is, there's a huge gap between what was promised early on and what they seem to be able to do. After a certain point people start calling it "bs" and have no patience for those repeating the initial claims.

Is this comment satire? It's really hard to tell.

If it's not I encourage you to go look at the stellar success of the boring company in places like Las Vegas and reconsider your assessment of the future.

This will never happen and the Hyperloop was a lie. Your comment reads like Elon propaganda.

You need CalTrain to get to San Jose. BART should have gone all the way around the bay by now but CalTrain defends its turf like a honey badger.

Transit in the Bay Area has very fragmented governance: 27 different transit agencies for 7.6m people in 9 counties with little coordination and no regional vision. By most measures, the Bay Area has the most fragmented public transit network in the country. See Seamless Bay Area if you want to make your voice heard for fixing this: https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/

For a map and list of the organizational insanity, see https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/transitagencieslist (2019).

(Large tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple avoid all this by using private employee-only shuttles which take the freeway where possible).

BART from the East Bay is in the process of being extended to downtown SJ (latest estimate: "2036", they are still debating single-bore vs twin-bore tunnel, to save money in construction).

It's not fair to just blame BART vs Caltrain though, there are multiple cities that need to cooperate with other too: as we saw in the neverending saga of the CA High-Speed Rail project, people wanted a midpeninsula stop, but no midpeninsula city (Redwood City vs Palo Alto vs Mountain View) wanted to be the one to incur the increased traffic and enormous construction disruption from underground multistorey parking lots, so it was dropped.

At least, Caltrain electrification is finally promised, fall 2024: https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification/project-be... (more reliable (=> fewer breakdowns and delays), less noise, cleaner air quality)

They still haven't finished that leg? I was there 7 years ago and the plan was advertised on the maps.

You can get to San Jose on BART now but have to go all the way under and around the bay instead of directly south, so it’s not really worth it to go from SF to SJ using anything other than Caltrain.

You can take Caltrain to San Jose. I did this commute for several years when I lived in SF and worked in SJ. With electrification coming top Caltrain this fall, it should be faster than the current diesel trains. Depending on where Twitter's offices are in Palo Alto and San Jose, it probably won't be that bad.

BART runs with 20 minute headways on longer routes (and as little as 4 minutes through San Francisco). The six CalTrain "baby bullet" express trains run hourly at best, with long service lapses mid-day and in the late evenings. Locals run more often (about every 10--20 minutes during peak commute hours) but add a half-hour to the just over one-hour express schedule.

(Both are still faster by far than driving, particularly during rush hour.)

CalTrain: <https://www.caltrain.com/media/22502/download>

BART's Green Line (Daly City - Beryessa / North San Jose) departs every 20 minutes from 4:55 am though 7:36 pm (southbound) and 4:59 am through 6:49 pm (northbound):

<https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2024-01/January%201...>

Are they upgrading the tracks as well? Diesel trains can run at 80mph no problem, which is about the maximum any standard US railroad supports. If the track is built to high speed standards you could go faster.

The track has a lot of at-grade intersections with roads running through the mid-peninsula - it seems unlikely they'll be running trains at 80mph.

At-grade intersections can be removed.

Melbourne, Australia has been running a project since 2015 – scheduled to continue until at least 2030 – to remove at-grade intersections (or "level crossings" as we call them) on suburban rail lines. They've already removed 83, and by 2030 plan to have removed 110. I'm not sure of the total cost, but I'd say in the ballpark of US$5-10 billion. The removal is done by a combination of elevating the rail line, trenching the rail line, and leaving the rail line at the same level but building road bridges over it – adopting whichever solution is most feasible and cost-effective for any given at-grade intersection. The project is run and paid for by the state government, with the federal government contributing some of the funding.

Australia's State of Victoria: population close to 7 million, economy almost US$300 billion (Gross State Product), annual state government budget around US$70 billion. California: population close to 40 million, economy almost US$4 trillion (GSP), annual state government budget of almost US$300 billion. If Victoria can afford it, California can too.

The plan is to run the high speed rail along the same tracks at reduced speed, so if that doesn't get cancelled they'll eventually remove all those

I commuted for several years to Palo Alto from SF. If you manage to get on a "baby bullet" it was a 37 minute ride, but you also have to get to/from a Caltrain station on each end. In PA, I was lucky that the office was a few minute walk, but in SF it was a taxi or bus ride (this was pre-Uber etc).

As an X employee, if you had optimized your commute around the mid-market area, you could be living less than 45 minutes away on a single mode of public transit, but it could double or triple to commute to the new X offices. Any time you have a transfer with the commuter systems in the Bay Area, it's going to be a clusterfuck from time to time.

.. and being "close" to the occasional death: The inter-city CalTrain (the outside of the train) is used frequently by those amongst us who pursue suicide, and aside from that dropping a mini-nuke on society / friends + family, another side-effect is 2-3 hours of delay on CalTrain. Overall, a traumatic and unhealthy commute.

Living in SF and working in South Bay sucked for me, when I did that, for that reason in particular.

I'm imagining hordes of 20-something engineers living in the Mission with a 15 minute flat bicycle commute to the X office now having to grapple with getting to San Jose. Probably pretty rough news for a decent amount of people.

they will just work remote

Are they permitted to?

No, not anymore post-Elon.

Wrong thread, this is Elon's company we are talking about

You mean they won't switch to a 3-4 hour, mostly flat, 50 mile bike ride?

The Bay area is fairly constrained in terms of transportation. Commuting in a car is not possible (unless you enjoy deadlock traffic + paying for parking). Public transportation exists but only works on specific segments.

I would guess a large portion of the individuals in the SF office would live within SF/East bay and have a fairly reasonable commute going to the SF office. I am not sure how far Bart goes south now but typically you would take Caltrain so thats a 45min ride from SF to Palo Alto. Then tack on however long it takes you to get to Caltrain. Easily a 1hr commute.

oh god i forgot Caltrain exists

Commuting in a car is not possible because most people do it, I suppose.

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

People actually live everywhere in the Bay Area, and do every commute, and there is extensive mediocre transit in the South Bay. Commuting Santa Cruz into town, Livermore into town, every single suburb has people going to San Francisco, or to another suburb, or San Jose, or Oakland. In heavy traffic they are much longer than 1 hr apart, and the fastest train is 1hr 10min iirc.

I commute to Palo Alto from SF. It takes ~90 minutes. 1 hour on the CalTrain + 15*2 minutes of last mile transport.

Caltrain's main issue is that trains run every hour. (with 1 super slow train in the middle). Miss a train, and you're screwed.

San Jose is bigger than SF, and tech people tend to age out of the city and move south into the peninsula- so probably a good portion of the employees are getting an improved or neutral commute.

If they relocate engineers to Palo Alto, that's halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. And a lot of engineers (not necessarily at X but in general in Silicon Valley) live in the suburbs between SF and SJ already. It might be mildly less convenient for some, but also mildly more convenient for many.

Twitter sold a lot of people on living in SF proper as opposed to Palo Alto, if memory serves they were one of the first big shops to set up on Market

Yeah, unless you live in Oakland, this probably will be irrelevant to everyone who lives north of Palo Alto.

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