
Elon Musk's first LA tunnel with free rides to kick off this summer - djrogers
https://newatlas.com/the-boring-company-la-tunnel-rides/54578/
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huebnerob
I thought that the anemic pace of tunnel construction was more a political
problem than a technological one. Either Musk has solved NIMBY-ism and red
tape, or he happened to pick a convenient location free from these issues for
his pilot tube.

I suppose much of politics is arguing over who’s going to pay for something,
and who’s going to actually build it. With The Boring Company digging their
own proving ground, these questions are moot.

Far from being a naysayer, I live in NYC, we need more tunnels dug than ever
before. If this works, we'll take twenty.

~~~
dgreensp
According to Elon, conventional tunneling costs "as much as $1 billion per
mile," which is the biggest reason we don't have more tunnels.

~~~
astrodust
How is what he doing not conventional? That's a mail-order tunnel-boring
machine he's got there.

~~~
rohit2412
And tunneling doesn't cost 1 billion dollar a mile. One Mumbai metro line is
being built at 100 million dollar per km, the cost includes everything,
stations, tracks, coaches, etc. And they're using 17 tbm for this purpose.

~~~
astrodust
The cost is proportional to what kind of environment you're operating in. If
it's ideal terrain it'll be cheap. If it's difficult, ever changing conditions
with a high risk of subsidence damage to the structures above, get ready to
pay way, way more.

See the Seattle "Big Dig" project for an example of how sideways things can go
if you hit an unexpected snag.

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robotkdick
Am I crazy to be more excited about Boring than I am about Tesla or SpaceX?

~~~
throwaway84742
Not at all. We could use some out of the box thinking of Elon’s caliber here
on Earth as well. A week ago I was in Moscow. Their subway is truly insane in
its scale. It’d be pretty cool if something like this could be built in major
US cities as well.

~~~
KAdot
It's already built - in NYC. New York City Subway has twice as many stations
as Moscow Metro.

~~~
throwaway84742
Sure, but I don’t live in NYC, and traffic is terrible where I live, and it’s
not economical to improve it without fast, cheap boring technology.

PS; interestingly, Moscow metro has more riders, in spite of a smaller city.

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thedarkginger
This article points out Phase 2 will look to connect LAX with the 101.

Does anyone know anything about the logistics of receiving approval to dig
underground? From their FAQ (see below), it says they will partner with the
City of Los Angeles, but does LA own mineral rights such that they could sell
the needed territory surface for this ambitious project? I assume Boring is
definitely not dealing with individual property owners.

"Blue indicates potential Phase 2 expansion options, and is included as a
concept, not as a finalized alignment. Phase 2 specifics would be developed in
cooperation with Los Angeles County, the City of Los Angeles, city governments
in the greater Los Angeles area, and the general public. The Boring Company
looks forward to receiving feedback from residents of the greater Los Angeles
area on station locations and system improvements for Phase 2 and beyond."

[https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/](https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/)

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boznz
Where does it go to?

~~~
asdsa5325
Read the article?

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mmagin
It just says it's under LA. And it says where it'll go. It doesn't say
anything about where they specifically did 500 feet of tunnel so far.

~~~
diggernet
Based on past coverage, it's underneath a parking lot across the street from
SpaceX.

Edit: Satellite photos suggest here:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B055'18.3%22N+118%C2...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B055'18.3%22N+118%C2%B019'33.7%22W/@33.9218979,-118.3261516,17z/data=!3m1!1e3)

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olliej
That is the most ad and 3rd link heavy site I’ve seen on HN in a while. Does
anyone have a better reference?

~~~
ricardobeat
The 'announcement' on Instagram:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BinoVT6Acpd/?hl=en&taken-
by=elon...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BinoVT6Acpd/?hl=en&taken-by=elonmusk)

~~~
koolba
That camera angle is dizzying!

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function_seven
So where is it exactly?

~~~
asdsa5325
Did you not want to read the article?

~~~
astrodust
The article is pretty vague on where it is, other than "Los Angeles", which as
anyone knows is pretty _fucking big_.

~~~
asdsa5325
"But first it's all about baby steps, with the company getting to work on its
first test tunnel that begins at its headquarters in LA."

Is that not specific enough? Seems pretty clear to me

~~~
function_seven
I was looking for a line on a map or something. And the length of it. I know
it was 500' at some point, but now it's longer, though unclear how much
longer. Or where it goes.

FWIW, Wikipedia answers my question. I should have checked there before
commenting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Los_Angeles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Los_Angeles)

~~~
astrodust
How many vehicles per hour can his little tunnel handle? I'm guessing under a
hundred.

~~~
function_seven
Beats me. I'm really interested in seeing it in person. It could be 60 cars
per hour, or 240. Either one seems plausible, just a matter of how often the
next one is sent on its way, and what the queuing system is like. If the
endpoints can keep up with enqueuing and dequeuing the cars, then you could
stuff 12 cars a minute on there (720 c/h) and have a 5 second following
distance.

I bet you're right, though. At least on this initial build out.

~~~
astrodust
If this tunnel is working using the "skateboard" concept then you'll need a
certain number of those on hand, plus some kind of turn-around system to get
people on and off of them. Unless you had a massive staging and unloading
area, 12 vehicles per minute is completely impossible.

I think your low-end estimate is much more reasonable.

I also think if people are manually driving cars it's only a matter of months
until there's a _spectacular_ crash in the tunnel because some idiot thought
they could drive up the wall at speed or something.

