I rode Elon Musk's Vegas Loop, the worst transit system on Earth
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
But if you consider what it really is - an easy way to sell Teslas to cities for no benefit, then it makes perfect sense.
Beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPjODKUxV5g
It looks like a project that they just gave up on ...
(asking a bit naively, it's the first time I hear about it)
AVs in tunnels allow for a wide range of density from 2-seater to high density bus/train-car like vehicles that can convoy through tunnels but still do point-to-point and on-demand.
The main challenge is convincing the train-obsessed that 3d travel is better than 1d travel.
2. Aren't AVs suppose to greatly alleviate the traffic problem on existing roads since AVs can/will coordinate efficiently. I'm actually surprised that the loop doesn't operate autonomously and requires drivers
3. Wouldn't flying cars be the ultimate 3D model, as oppose to digging limited tunnels.
2) Yes I'm surprised also. Any theories on why? Too much of an edge case for tesla's focus?
3) I think yes but very few building have heliports, far more have parking garages that could double as tunnel ingress/egress. I think both will be used but tunnels support higher density and have less dependence on weather.
Cars can fail, you have to leave enough room to allow cars behind to stop in time to avoid a (cascade) crash.
(yeah, taking 140 km/h, quite high for a car especially in tunnels like this, but anything slower would be slower than our slow trains and would be quite disappointing)
I suppose you do that by making the system as convenient and efficient (cost effective both for the operator and the users, energy efficient, good capacity, good speed, not more wasteful hardware wise, good longevity in the long run) as, or more than a properly setup train system?
Another commenter has a good point though, in a place that's not willing to invest in good public transport, there's a void to fill I suppose.
How many exit tunnels will need to exist for the final above-ground stage of the trip to be quick and not increase the total length of the route significantly?
If there are exit tunnels all over the place, how long would it take to build all of them? If there aren't, how do you avoid massive jams as the multiple lanes merge to the single exit tunnel lane?
How do all the exit tunnels connect to the surface streets in the many areas where there's no room for another lane to be built anywhere?
They could terminate to converted underground parking garages (cities already have quite a few) and with AVs the need for personal parking would be greatly reduced. People would have plenty of time to get in and out without blocking the tunnel.
It's actually insane that most trains stations block the track, how quickly would you fire the dev that insisted on holding a perf critical mutex while waiting on user input?
Building the tunnels does need to be automated but that's exactly what Boring company is doing.
Ultimately human driving will be banned within cities. It's just far too dangerous. It's almost as deadly as smoking especially in cities and the risk asymmetry is extreme: pedestrians and those around the car are in far more danger than the driver.
As for the idea of a convoy of magic cars, it’s a nice idea but I don’t think it holds up to actual math. Specifically, area used. There are plenty of variants of this graphic, and here’s a tongue in cheek one:
The fundamental issue is that individual low-capacity vehicles are large and use lane space inefficiently. Sure, perfect self driving might improve the situation, maybe by a factor of two or, extremely optimistically, a little more. But a factor of two isn’t really good enough.
Consider the 405 freeway in Los Angeles through the Sepulveda pass. It carries over 300k passengers per day (I’m not sure whether this counts Sepulveda Blvd as well, but, either way, we’re talking about 12+ traffic lanes), and traffic sucks. Maybe really advanced self driving could double capacity. Sticking a freeway lane in a narrow tunnel does nothing to speed it up or increase capacity.
In contrast, Wikipedia’s estimate of light rail capacity is about 8x as high for a rail track as compared to a lane of traffic. A single pair of light rail tracks could perform comparably to the entire Sepulveda Pass mess of roads. If actual intelligent, retroactive planning happened, there would be four tracks for one express and one local each way, New York style, and the whole assembly would be quieter, cheaper, far faster (at least during rush hour), and use massively less energy. But self-driving Teslas would not get most of those gains.
(E-bikes and the kind of culture that would get a hundred thousand or so people to ride them over the pass on their commute would also do the trick, but good luck with that. Although… the pass isn’t that long, and maybe Dutch-style levels of dedication to cycling might actually make it work. Los Angeles with real bike infrastructure would be quite a sight!)
Vegas has never had meaningful public transit investment, and a real subway would cost billions and take decades of political will that simply doesn’t exist here. The Loop fits the actual use case: moving convention attendees between LVCC halls and eventually casino properties, quickly, in a city where distances are deceptive and walking in 115° heat is brutal.
For that narrow purpose, point-to-point, climate-controlled, short-hop movement in a dense tourist corridor, it works reasonably well. The comparison to a subway is a bit of a category error; no subway was ever on the table. The real question is whether it beats surface-level shuttles and moving walkways, which it probably does.
The critique is fair though: it’s not scalable the way a subway is (throughput is limited by number of cars), and it’s privately owned infrastructure serving commercial interests rather than a public transit network.
Now, after Loop demonstrated vehicle rates that would beat most light rail projects and many subway systems too - assuming they get adequate automated larger vehicles - the criticism seems to be that it's not build out yet to a significant size, or that it has minor usability quirks.
I sure hope these people understand just how foolish that position risks to become if Boring Co continues good execution and build outs the entire system as planed.
A heavy rail subway line can transport 30,000+ people per hour compared to vegas loop which maxes out at 4500 people/hr. Plus every single Tesla in the tunnel requires a human driver, unlike trains. Even IF Elon managed to create these larger Tesla vans, they won't reach those numbers on a single route.
The largest subways in the world can reach 80,000 pphpd (crush load) but the vast majority of US systems are under 20k, and those are numbers Loop can likely reach with larger vehicles:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/s4r6l4/chart...
Only a handful of the largest US systems really hit the capacities the only heavy rail subways can support, and they do so with eye watering costs, see the famous $2.5 billion mile in New York's Second Avenue extension. So a $10-20mil/mile system with 1/4-1/2 the capacity of a full subway could, if demonstrated, completely change the game in many cities.
In what K hole did that happen? All of the experiences I have heard of involve multi minutes long waits for a car to arrive, and then time to load the car and unload at the far end. That adds up to dozens of people per hour if they are lined up and organized waiting to get in a car. Low hundreds per day, on a busy day is barely plausible.
This is all public info available from unbiased sources; preferring schadenfreude and rage inducing bait is, of course, a choice you are entitled to.
The 4400 number is based on a capacity test that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority performed[1] to certify the Vegas Loop met its contractual requirements, which was 4400 riders per hour. The test was performed with "about 300 people", so results were extrapolated to reach the final number. The LVCVA didn't publish any further information about their methodology, so we can't really comment for sure on how realistic their conclusions might be.
However, a few months after the tunnel opened, there was some criticism[2] saying, "the highest hourly passenger rate hit thus far is 1,355 passengers per hour." It also notied that the ride took 4 minutes instead of the 2-minute goal. A spokesperson from the LVCVA responded:
> “The ride itself does in fact take two minutes,” Nelson-Kraft said. “What wasn’t taken into account are other factors of the Loop experience, like passengers load in and load out time. [...]"
Given that the LVCVA conducted the original capacity "stress test", I think it would be reasonable to guess that they tested only how many passengers can be pushed through the 12-foot-wide tunnel and did not consider loading and unloading as part of overall rates.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210707125245/https://news3lv.c...
[2] https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior... (soft paywall, viewable with JS disabled)
The accounting company affirmed the test results, CFO Ed Finger told the board that the auditors observed 157 unique rides and there were no negative findings. These are all public records and board minutes anyone can request and consult.
Essentially, according to what was reported in the media, they had the few hundred volunteers board packed Teslas (3 pax + driver), ride the system, disembark and take another ride, while remaining within the station limits.
I wouldn't call the 4400pphpd result an "extrapolation" - it's a real, instantaneous capacity number once the system reaches steady state, just like you don't have to drive for an entire hour to express your speed in km/h or mi/h.
The figure is of course not indicative for the real rush hour capacity of the station infrastructure, especially the underground stations that have escalators etc., when they are packed with disoriented tourists carrying luggage and not necessarily making an effort to move fast and hit good numbers.
Hence, I think my original point stands firm, Boring has demonstrated vehicle rates that can beat light rail, the basic premise of cheap narrow tunnels is sound. To actually demonstrate competitive numbers in real life scenarios will require larger vehicles, better organized ingress flows and procedures, more and perhaps larger stations etc. But these are all tweakable factors depending on actual demand at a specific station, they can run a mix of vehicles and expand infra where it makes financial sense, but only IF the tunnels have good vehicle rates, ie. no more than seconds of headway with extraordinarily rare in-tunnel break downs.
This was the original concept no? It seems like valid criticism that the original prototype is immensely inefficient and slow compared to something even remotely comparable.
> Now, after Loop demonstrated vehicle rates that would beat most light rail projects and many subway systems too
Genuinely curious where you’re getting this.
Asserting that Loop is beating any form of normal rail is a wild claim that I don't think I've ever heard a transit engineer agree with.
In short, I'm not worried about Boring Co continuing good execution, but it would be nice to see Boring Co initiate good execution.
There is as yet no fire department vehicle that can enter the tunnel. And from here [1]
"Evacuation procedure basically consist of driving the car out of the tunnel, via the next station. If evacuation must be made in the opposite direction, the manual says the driver must await instructions from the OCC, as they are not generally permitted to drive in reverse."
[1] https://computer.rip/2024-08-12-a-pedantic-review-of-the-las...
This is why only a small number of cars will ever be in the Vegas loop tunnels. If there were any risk of a collision or a disabled vehicle that would prevent other vehicles from exiting a tunnel, that would be an unsafe and unacceptable outcome.
Not only do subways have a real world measured capacity that is 4X Boring's claimed theoretical capacity, that theoretical capacity would never be allowed to exist in the real world for safety reasons. It's something like 20X the real world safe-ish capacity. 4400 per hour would require hundreds of people in the tunnels at the same time, with no emergency exits.
> it was claimed Boring Co has no chance of duplicating or significantly improving on the speed
The claim holds up. The article shows evidence that this is not faster than existing transport at all. It is in fact slower. How did you not read this??
> Now, after Loop demonstrated vehicle rates that would beat most light rail projects
They did not demonstrate this. Why put this lie out there?
> that it has minor usability quirks
Major usability problems. It is strictly worse than every existing transportation system.
The Vegas loop doesn't seem like that at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPjODKUxV5g
It looks like a project they just quit on.