Hacker News Reader

Comment by leakycap | Hacker News Reader

All this so a handful of passengers a week can wait for the extremely small pool of vehicles in a dusty hole

There was a CityNerd video (which you may take or leave in general, but I found the anecdote interesting) in which there appeared to be one vehicle in service on the entire system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPjODKUxV5g

I assume though that they would adjust the capacity depending on time of day and whether there's an event or something going on, to some degree.

> adjust the capacity

It's a single lane tunnel and is thus one way. The parking are can only hold so many waiting vehicles and queued passengers. Their options for adjusting capacity are severely limited.

Then you consider what might happen if the lead vehicle in a convoy becomes disabled, or worse, starts on fire.

It's the same reason planes are safer per "passenger mile traveled" but aren't as safe per "total journeys taken." If you crash a plane you stand to injure or kill hundreds of passengers at once.

> It's a single lane tunnel and is thus one way.

Maybe they should have asked some railway engineers. Also why throw away the benefits of cars over railway when you inherit non of the benefits.

> there appeared to be one vehicle in service on the entire system

I watched that video the other day, pretty sure it didn’t say that. What it did point out though is that in most of the system, other than the one main line, there’s just one single-lane tunnel so that when a car is in a tunnel going one way, cars going the other direction have to wait to enter the tunnel until the tunnel is clear.

The title of the video seems pretty accurate: “The Vegas Loop Is Getting Progressively More Stupid.”

He does say that around 5:32 in the video. He says his driver told him there were two cars on the loop that day, and the other car wasn't in service because it was being used for training.

When he rode his driver told him there should be two cars operating at a time but one was training and couldn't take riders, so there was just one car running.

Thanks for sharing this, I had understood prior to this video that the combo of self driving tech + dedicated tunnels might have capacity that rival a light rail system like Seattle has but that's clearly not the case in the current system. I'm curious why more of the autonomous driving tech isn't being used in what I might have thought would be an "easier" place to do it.

If they have autonomous driving technology that works for “harder” problems, then why do they not use it for “easier” problems? You answered your own question; it does not work safely for those “harder” problems.

Zoox has permits to operate autonomously on Las Vegas streets. Tesla is unable to get permits to operate autonomously on isolated, one-lane, one-way streets with no pedestrians, cross-traffic, or even vehicles not under their control. That should tell you everything you need to know about how far reality is away from their corporate puffery.

> had understood prior to this video that the combo of self driving tech + dedicated tunnels might have capacity that rival a light rail system like Seattle has but that's clearly not the case in the current system

Not to disparage, but how did you come to that conclusion? A train will always be able to fit more people/m^2 than several cars of equivalent length, due to things like ability to stand, not needing to have multiple engines and trunks, etc.

> Not to disparage, but how did you come to that conclusion?

I did some math and you're clearly right. I think I imagined that with driver-less vehicles leaving much more frequently (10s per minute) one could catch up to the capacity of a small light rail system but that's clearly not the case. I had imagined that _maybe_ it could be an approach for a lower capacity system in the future.

My math as someone who is not knowledgeable in how to get this data is as follows:

In Seattle is running 4 car trains at 8 minute headways at peak which works out to 7500 people per hour at crush load (4 cars, 250 people per car, 7.5 times per hour). This would require 125 vehicles with 5 seats leaving every minute which is clearly impossible.

Looking at Portland's MAX, it looks like they often run 2 car service with 160 passengers of capacity each with service every 15 minutes so 1280 people per hour (2 cars, 160 per car, 4 services per hour).

1280 people per hour could be served by a 5 seat vehicle leaving every ~15 seconds. This I suppose is what I had expected would happen when I tried to imagine the best case scenario for this service.

> In Seattle is running 4 car trains at 8 minute headways at peak which works out to 7500 people per hour at crush load (4 cars, 250 people per car, 7.5 times per hour). This would require 125 vehicles with 5 seats leaving every minute which is clearly impossible.

7500 isn't that high - the Manchester Metrolink did 46M user journeys in year ending March 2025 (~5250/hour assuming 24/7 which it isn't.) Docklands Light Railway did 97.8M (~11000/hour ass.24/7)

Numbers from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/light-ra...

> I'm curious why more of the autonomous driving tech isn't being used in what I might have thought would be an "easier" place to do it.

There's no real need in a static environment, and much simpler ways to do it. Children's toys can follow a line painted on something; they just need proximity sensors and a basic signalling system (RF or also painted on the road) for where to stop and done.

There's no real need for the car to "see" beyond "am I going to run into something" and they operate at speeds where stopping is very feasible.

They're also a bad rival for light rail because they already have to dig a tunnel and the conveyance operates on a fixed path. They picked a domain that light rail is already incredibly good and efficient at.

They come to the surface to switch tunnels and Tesla FSD is not a viable technology for automated driving beyond a sunny highway.

It's hilarious how the quality of stops just degrades until you just get a typical car taxi pickup spot ...

When we were in Vegas for Def Con, one of the tube stations was next to one of the Las Vegas Convention Center entrances. I'd occasionally hang out there with friends, and once every half an hour or so, we'd see a lonely Tesla weave through the traffic cone path and disappear into the nethers.

Based purely on my own observations, I'd guesstimate that station sees about 50-75 cars per day.

What does this cost to use?

I just hope there is never a battery fire down there, because there appears to be no evacuation tunnel or safety procedures. I don't think you can even get the car doors open in the tunnel.

Or a flash flood. The only other tunnels we have here in Vegas are storm drains, and for good reason.

Do the cars not have a trunk door on the back?

More accurately all this so Elon Musk could keep peddling the lie that boreholes and cars are the future of public transit. What’s a little fraud and environmental harm compared to such a lofty goal?

Have you ridden the existing Vegas tunnel?

Tens of thousands of riders when I was there and not a spec of dirt. Very far from perfect, but a long way from useless.

There were tens of thousands of riders _when you were there?_ Or there were tens of thousands of riders over the lifetime of the system?

Most videos I've seen recently show a system that, while functional, typically only has a handful of vehicles running simultaneously, each with carrying capacity for one party of up to 3 people.

When I was there. During SEMA, the worlds biggest automotive show.

In 2023-03, they did passenger 1,000,000 [1].

In 2024-05, they did passenger 2,000,000 [2].

So 1,000,000 passengers in 14 months or ~420 days. That is a average throughput of ~2,400 passengers per day.

In comparison, the Tokyo Marunouchi line averages ~1,100,000 passengers per day [3]. That is ~420x the rate. Every single day, they do what the Las Vegas Loop does in a year.

The peak capacity that they claim without evidence is ~32,000 in a day [4]. The Maruonouchi line does in a day what the Las Vegas Loop at maximum capacity could theoretically do in a entire month.

[1] https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-boring-co-vegas-loop-1-m...

[2] https://www.teslarati.com/boring-company-2-million-passenger...

[3] https://www.japan-experience.com/plan-your-trip/travel-by-tr...

[4] https://www.boringcompany.com/lvcc

You are 100% correct. It’s small fry right now.

You might be shocked to learn the first airplane couldn’t take passengers.

Things improve, or at least attempt to. Even if it fails, I’d rather live in a world where new ideas are being tried and tested and not always talking about how good my horse and cart is.

I don’t think most people are arguing against the concept, or even implementation, of the system as developed. Obviously it’s both a publicity stunt and beta test as they learn how to build and operate a tunnel system like this. The concern is that much of the environmental harm that’s being done (according to the EPA) is repetitive, and that The Boring Company (TBC) actively pledged to hire an environmental inspector three years ago and is now being fined for having not done so. Given that, who knows how many violations that don’t leave a permanent mark are going unnoticed.

Do you think that they are going to ignore environmental laws for JUST this project, or do you think that is their modus operandi? I’d be happy to have a tunnel system installed near my home, even if there’s temporary disruption during the construction process. What I wouldn’t tolerate is active, and unmonitored (by TBC’s insistence on “self-monitoring”), pollution occurring near my home. Fines only cover so much, and un-polluting something after the fact costs far more than the fines that are being levied and, when it comes to pollutants that harm humans (like improper disposal of chemicals from digging, as they have been fined for), you can’t just “undo” the human harm with a fine.

What I think is that environmental review rules are so convoluted that almost any project you would investigate breaks plenty of them. I also don't trust the definition of "environmental" when it comes to environmental regulations. When you hear "environmental" you think dumping toxic chemicals, but in reality environmental reviews have components like a building casting a shadow on a playground for 1 hour a day. And on top of that I don't trust journalists for counts of number of violations. In this case they get to 800 by counting one real violation 700 times:

> The letter also accuses the company of failing to hire an independent environmental manager to regularly inspect its construction sites. State regulators counted 689 missed inspections.

> as they learn how to build and operate a tunnel system like this.

Yes, why do they even do that. Not that they are never any improvements, but this pretty much a solved problem. They have a stupid amount of NIH syndrome, but apply that to the physical world and that always results in fatalities.

I would rather live in a world where you do not get to cause hundreds of times more environmental violations than others just because you imagine your new horse and cart idea is way better than cars.

You can, in fact, not discharge your sewage and contaminated water into public spaces even if you are trying something new. What a concept.

At no point did I suggest anything like that.

Clearly they broke the law, and will be punished for it as the law demands. Good.

But it's not really a new idea. Vehicles transporting people through tunnels is something we already know how to do and we have many examples going back decades that are more efficient and higher volume.

This isn't some new early stage innovation that can grow into a great new thing, it's a shittier version of something we already have.

There's that, but attempting to run around regulations despite numerous violations just doesn't fly either.

And they will be punished for it, exactly as defined by the law.

A fine that isn't based on income isn't a fine, it's a cost of doing business at the expense of workers, the environment and society at large. 242k, that's peanuts for someone with Musk level wealth.

So you’re angry that fines are not based on income?

What are you doing to fix that?

> Every single day, they do what the Las Vegas Loop does in a year.

Tokyo Marunouchi is a multi-branch line totaling 17 miles; the Las Vegas Loop is a (not yet complete) single tunnel just one-tenth that distance.

This is a strange comparison.

Yamanote line is a single line and does around 5 million every day.

Tens of thousands of riders in what time period? Please, look up how many people it is capable of moving per hour, and compare that to any light rail or street car service in any city. There is no way the loop makes sense to build.

> Please, look up how many people it is capable of moving per hour, and compare that to any light rail or street car service in any city.

I have a hard time understanding this criticism. Why not do both?

It seems to me like underground highways make sense as an alternative to above ground highways in urban areas, not that they're an alternative to rail. There's lots of cities with excellent public transport that also make use of underground car travel (Melbourne for e.g.). If a company can figure out how to (safely) make underground highways more quickly and more affordably, it seems like that means we may need to do above-ground roads less frequently -- why would that not be a good thing?

Further, obviously Musk has a PR angle in facilitating tesla traffic here as the test bed in early days, but I don't see any reason that this couldn't be repurposed to rail use at scale.

In urban areas, they're usually an alternative. If you're going past the city, you could build a ground level highway around the city for a lot cheaper. If you're going into the city, it makes more economic sense to leave your car at the periphery of the city and take a rail system in because of the difference in throughput per $ spent building it (as well as the space occupied by parking for people who need to leave their cars in the city). Plus the people leaving the highway will get onto surface streets, and back up the highway.

Being able to make underground tunnels cheaper and faster is cool. Using them for cars is mostly a boondoggle with clearly superior alternatives.

I think that's reasonable. I suppose I also think it idealist that cities will actually act that way in practice in the short term. I'm specifically thinking of examples like the Corniche highway in Alexandria or Marine drive in Mumbai which shows cities are willing to give up gorgeous public space throughout incredibly dense areas to support car traffic. But there's also examples like Boston's "big dig" which shows cities are willing to spend extra to move those auto pathways underground. At least in the short term it seems that 1) cities aren't giving up entirely on cars, but 2) are willing to pay more to have them underground.

I suspect in practice the actual approach is going to be a mix of all of the above. So my reasoning is primarily that if all cities won't give up cars anyway, it seems objectively better to make it easier to at least move more of them underground. I suppose one case where I would change my mind is if there was evidence that more affordable underground roads reduced the investment in public transit.

> I suppose one case where I would change my mind is if there was evidence that more affordable underground roads reduced the investment in public transit.

It's Friday night so I lack the motivation to go on a stats-finding expedition, but anecdotally this seems like a circular issue to me. Public transportation sucks, so no one wants to fund it and we invest money into car infrastructure. Traffic gets worse, but public transportation is still bad because we haven't improved it, so we dump more money into car infrastructure, and etc.

I do hear you about the practical realities, though. Most people will drive if they can, because it is more convenient (so long as we can keep building more roads, even at exorbitant prices).

I think there would be far less support if people could see what they're actually spending on car infrastructure. At least in the US, it's currently so fractured it's hard to get an idea. Registration fees, gas taxes, federal taxes that get pumped into highway maintenance, etc. There's no clear "we spend $X on car infrastructure, and we could have really good public transportation for $Y".

> Please, look up how many people it is capable of moving per hour

…what is it?

Peak ridership is about 1300/hour. About how many people you can fit in two trams. Or 10 Disneyland people movers.

That seems high for what it is. Is that hypothetical peak or actually measured capacity?

That is the peak spontaneous ridership per hour. So about 22 people per minute. Probably measured during a convention or something. Most of the time it's probably half of that.

So essentially they made a ride comparable to Space Mountain that takes about 2200 passengers per hour.

The LVCC Loop has demonstrated a peak capacity of ~4,400–4,500 passengers per hour in testing.

How did you arrive at tens of thousands of riders?

I was at the world’s biggest automotive show. It was packed.

So then saying “ Tens of thousands of riders” is a lie since they weren’t actually using the tunnels to ride in at the time.

I didn’t say anything like at the same time.

In my week in Vegas for SEMA from 8am to well after dark it was always jam packed. That’s tens of thousands of riders.

What was it like when you rode it?

I’m not in LA so I haven’t ridden it but that’s a moot point to the discussion.

Having tens of thousands of drivers over an unspecified time period rather than simultaneously isn’t really a flex imho.

I didn’t intend it to be a flex.

I was stating what I saw when I rode it.

>Tens of thousands of riders

You saw tens of thousands of riders?

That anecdote just doesn't jibe with the throughput numbers -- that's why it seems like a flex, it's grossly inflated.

Now before we go into pedantry and you talk about how 'riders' meant 'all willing participants who are sitting in line' , fine -- i've been to SEMA and I understand those crowds , but those aren't riders. It's a misreporting of the situation, and frankly it seems intentional.

I did.

I was in and around multiple stations for a week, from early till late, and never saw a single one anything other than packed. Lineups up the turned off escalators topside were extremely common. Many tens of thousands of people were riding.

FWIW I was at the event that caused the worlds biggest event centre (the Vegas convention centre) to expand, because it wasn’t big enough to host the event.

Millions and millions of people in and around the convention centre, all serviced by the loop.

I didn't realize they could fit tens of thousands of people in the waiting areas. Those stations must really be something to behold.

If you’re curious, this is a demo/experiment. The long term goal is tunnels so inexpensive that they can go 30 levels deep, letting us travel within cities at 200kph with no stop signs (even eliminate automobiles from the surface of cities)

This will require considerable progress in tunneling r&d, which is their primary activity

IMHO Tunnels for bicycles make a ton of sense - similarly to EVs low ventilation requirements, small diameter means cheaper build and most importantly protects you from weather elements.

Takes most of the biking joy away tho.

Tunnels can recoup their cost easily if they are used massively by many people every day. Any reason why you are against building a subway / underground railway?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com