
Boring Co. Drops LA Westside Tunnel Plan - Pharmakon
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/elon-musks-boring-co-drops-la-westside-tunnel-plan/
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jerf
It seems sort of shortsighted to block a tunneling company on environmental
grounds. In the long term, cheap tunneling would be _fantastic_ for the
environment. Most of what we consider the biosphere is on the surface, and to
the extent that there's life in the tunneled area, by volume tunneling isn't
going to be significant for a long time. (Volume is much larger than surface;
in general, areal intuition fails miserably for volume.) Being able to tunnel
places instead of running roads over things and such would be great.

(If indeed anyone can get too worried about potential rock-living life, since
it is conspicuously lacking in anything you could call "cute".)

~~~
zjaffee
They didn't block it on any known Environmental grounds, CEQA exists to insure
major infrastructure projects evaluate many options and attempt to find the
most environmentally friendly option. In this particular case, it was almost
certainly not building a low capacity tunnel for small vehicles and cars, but
to build the already planned metro rail line without having to add engineering
complexity to maneuver around a privately owned and built tunnel.

I'd also add that the use of concrete in tunneling does have a large
environmental impact as well
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete)),
so cheap tunneling wouldn't necessarily improve the environment in any clear
way. The best solution for the environment will always be electric powered
rail lines that are at grade, although that would be a poor choice from a
transportation planning stand point.

~~~
quotemstr
> In this particular case, it was almost certainly not building a low capacity
> tunnel for small vehicles and cars, but to build the already planned metro
> rail line without having to add engineering complexity to maneuver around a
> privately owned and built tunnel.

A metro rail line can't transport a car, so point-to-point transit is out, as
is any semblance of privacy. Why are you so quick to devalue these advantages?

If Musk can build a tunnel profitably, he should be able to do it, even if the
opinion of people like you, mass transit would be preferable. Musk isn't
willing to fund mass transit, but he is willing to fund a tunnel, so all you
get by blocking the tunnel is neither mass transit _nor_ a tunnel.
Congratulations!

~~~
danso
He can’t build it profitably, or at least without going through the
environmental impact review that every other project of this scale must pass.
Do you really think the hole digging is the bottleneck for every other
underground project?

~~~
quotemstr
How much infrastructure is getting built under the current review process? The
current process is just a fig leaf for everyone getting a NIMBY veto.
California ought to be ashamed of its technological paralysis.

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danso
It's not a technological problem. If people get unhappy when Facebook "moves
fast and breaks things" in its mission to "connect the world", then people
should be just as cautious when it comes to construction projects that impact
miles of public infrastructure and thousands of private homes.

~~~
mips_avatar
Sure I mean bad (insert bad thing) things are bad. And a risk to private homes
should stop a project. But I can’t find any proof that there’s a risk here.
Tunneling is really safe.

~~~
danso
Then why is Boring declining to take part in the EIR process?

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mips_avatar
You’d probably have to ask Elon Musk. I also haven’t read the lawsuit so I
don’t know what specifically the homeowners wanted investigated. California
law basically gives veto power to any homeowner for anything, so why bother
trying to be innovative there in the first place? I think the software
industry only evolved there because nobody had figured out how to regulate a
bit yet.

~~~
danso
California software companies are still subject to the same taxes and standard
of state employment laws.

California's high speed rail has been subject to the same scrutiny and legal
threats. Was Boring/Musk completely ignorant of well-known past precedent and
hurdles when they claimed they could build a transportation project for much
cheaper? As recently as 1 month ago, Musk still thought and publicly claimed
that the tunnel "opens Dec 10":
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1054164838430064640](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1054164838430064640)

~~~
mips_avatar
I think Elon Musk knows that if there's something big to be gained for society
the laws can be modified. For instance Tesla only worked because the Obama
administration kind of bent the laws of economics by securing a huge loan to
the company.

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traditionalist
Why doesn't Musk take his business elsewhere where he's welcome? I can imagine
LA being a nightmare for this sort of project. He needs a place where
bureaucracy is thinner and people are actually excited about everything new.

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choxi
He's building us an express loop in Chicago:
[https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/](https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/)

They're even paying for the whole thing, I think most residents here are
excited about it.

~~~
carlivar
Musk says a lot of things. He is really amazing at getting press attention for
himself. Ask Buffalo how Musk promises regarding the solar roof factory have
gone so far...

~~~
eduah
Ahead of the job numbers he promised
[https://www.wgrz.com/mobile/article/news/tesla-shares-new-
jo...](https://www.wgrz.com/mobile/article/news/tesla-shares-new-jobs-numbers-
tour-of-south-buffalo-solar-factory/71-615139509) . I will say that project is
going very well.

~~~
gamblor956
Per your own link, Tesla has not yet satisfied the requirement. Tesla needs to
hire 500 workers by April 2019, and so far has only hired 400. The other 400
were hired by Panasonic and don't get counted towards Tesla's total. Based on
the abysmal/lack of solarroof sales in the past year, it's unlikely they'll
need 100 new workers in the next 5 months.

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jseliger
My dad used to work in local government and likes to call the automatic
opposition, "People united against anything." Today we call them NIMBYs.
California has empowered them in peculiar and powerful ways, as anyone,
anywhere, can challenge any project under the California Environmental Quality
Act (CEQA), which actually supersedes the national version (NEQA).

~~~
wyldfire
And yet development should take the environment into consideration because it
can have massive consequences. Those consequences are ultimately an
externality of the development project and evaluating it in advance can help
inform the true financials of the project.

~~~
dpcx
I wonder whether those that were taking the environment in to consideration
for the development thought _beyond_ the project to what environmental impacts
could be lessened by the project. I'm not a Musk fanboy, but if these tunnels
will work the way he's suggesting, the amount of traffic that would be removed
from the roads (and by extension, the pollution) would probably be a net
benefit to the environment.

~~~
Anechoic
Which is the _point_ of an environmental assessment: to look at the benefits
and cost to the environment and document the net result.

This isn’t about declaring the project a hazard to the environment, this is
skipping the process to determine if it is or isn’t a net good.

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zebrafish
Who foots the bill for such an assessment?

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dawnerd
Whoever is paying for the project. The same as who pays for all the permits
and inspections.

~~~
zebrafish
I would think that's the reason why Boring Co. cancelled the project then.
They probably need to get some "MVP" tunnels up and running as soon and as
cheaply as possible.

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nimbius
For those not familiar with LA's private property rights, they are some of the
strictest in the nation. The 710 freeway, originally designed and intended to
go all the way from long beach to pasadena, has successfully been litigated
for fifty years to prevent it from ever doing so. heavy truck traffic has to
exit to surface streets to continue to the city or route around it using the
101. trucks are prohibited on the 110.

And the residents standing in the way of this project? not even very powerful
residents. Just backed by a handful of attorneys well versed on property
rights.

~~~
zjaffee
Why are you saying this like it's a bad thing? Transportation development has
time over time been proven to work best when decisions are made by consensus
rather than by letting central authorities and monied interests do whatever
they think is right.

Had this never happened, LA would have far worse pollution problems than it
does today, and NYC would be completely overrun with highways.

~~~
quotemstr
Has a consensus-based approach been proven "best"? New York would be much
worse off today if not for Robert Moses ramming through much-needed and
innotative infrastructure. Consensus, in practice, amounts to giving everyone
the power to veto massive projects, and widespread veto power leads to
paralysis and weakness. You need strong central authority to actually make
decisions and get things to happen.

~~~
zjaffee
The entire premise of things happening cannot in this day and age be something
that involves screwing over the working class as has been the case with the
vast majority of urban planning decisions historically, abet is also something
that is starting to get better now.

I cannot understand how so many of my fellow Americans love to talk about the
merits of democracy, but when it comes to large scale capital projects, either
public or private, people suddenly hate democratic decision making. Moses
sized power completely ignoring the democratic process, and had musk built
these tunnels, he'd have done the same.

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jbaczuk
Is it just me or is it ironic that the reason for cancelling is environmental
impact, when the tunnel would help alleviate congestion and smog due to
gasoline-powered traffic?

~~~
gamblor956
The stated maximum capacity of the Elontunnel is sufficiently low that it
would have had minimal, if any, positive effect on congestion and smog.

~~~
mips_avatar
It’s a test tunnel, you would get the improvement when more are made.

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gamblor956
Sorry, no, I was referring to the capacity of the finished tunnel, which isn't
meaningful better.

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exogeny
“Brentwood Residents Coalition” just screams NIMBY bullshit to me.

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readhn
would you be ok with tunnel being built under YOUR house (that you own and
worked/will be working for for the rest of your life) without consulting with
you FIRST?

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cdelsolar
yes? i don't own the prismatic wedge of land that extends all the way to the
core of the Earth afaik

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rripken
Why wouldn't you?

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lodi
You don't own the airspace over your house (over some minimum altitude), why
would you own the land under your house (below some minimum depth). I would
have absolutely no problem with a tunnel running 20m--or whatever the safe,
silent amount is--underneath my house.

~~~
gamblor956
So you wouldn't have been okay with the Elontunnel, which runs closer than 20m
below the surface--about 28 feet in the case of the Hawthorne tunnel. Though
for point of comparison, some portions of the Metro system run at this depth
or shallower.

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blondie9x
Musk can do better than this. We need real subways and trains for transit. We
do not need another express freeway lane that's underground. This is just
adding more room for cars. Building on the existing approach of solving
traffic by adding more lanes. This will not help Los Angeles nor America as a
whole shift away from car dependency.

~~~
njarboe
These tunnels can have a bunch of buses running in them next to each other (ie
a train). Cars are great. When there is no congestion you get fast point-to-
point transportation at any time. We should work on making this mode of
transportation better, not trying to kill it. Make the cars more energy
efficient, underground roads to fix the noise and land use problems, make them
automatic to reduce deaths, etc.

Would you ban a teleportation system that was energy efficient and insist
people take trains and subways? Trains and subways are much inferior mode of
transport compared to a functioning road system with vechicles. I wonder why
so many people have this car hate? Scared of driving a car? They are dangerous
and you have to pay attention to drive them, so that makes some sense to me.
Some kind of socialist reason that people should be forced into contact with
random other people. Sitting at home is what one should be doing instead of
going places? Where did you get this idea that cars where some kind of evil
device?

~~~
mips_avatar
I don’t think this should be so downvoted. I think there’s a bunch of people
on this thread downvoting anything that’s pro-tunnels.

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quotemstr
Yes/no decisions on the basis of environmental impact lead to excess risk
aversion, sloppy thinking, and ultimately, technological stagnation. While I
agree that we should consider the environment in project planning, the proper
way to do that is to use the price mechanism to account for environmental
damage.

That is, the output of environmental review should never be "no". It should be
"the environmental cost of this project is $X billion, and here's a
breakdown". Forcing people to _quantify_ their objections will lead to a more
honest evaluation of the options.

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blaisio
This is not a story of NIMBYs, this is a story of how LA can't make decisions
for the greater good because anything that affects a useful part of the metro
area requires independent agreement from multiple cities with very different
demographics. A lot of people don't realize that, unlike NYC, LA isn't one
city - it's a bunch of cities clustered together. Right now, there's no good
way to force all the communities to agree on something.

Some communities might have a NIMBY attitude, but just saying that this is
California NIMBYism is oversimplifying.

~~~
zjaffee
Except for the fact that this tunnel was trying to get developed in a way that
first off, violated California Environmental laws, something that the
government owned and built metro would have to spend millions of dollars and
several years on in order to complete, and second, it would've increased the
complexity of building an already budgeted heavy rail line under that part of
the city.

LA is very capable at making decision that work for the greater good as the
county has a sizable amount of power around taxation, and manages the regions
transit authority. The parts of the region most notable for NIMBYism are
largely only effective at delaying action rather than completely blocking it
unlike in the bay area which has multiple counties to deal with.

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lucas_membrane
IIRC, the original PR for this gave the idea that automobiles would enter the
tunnel through single-car elevators that looked like parking spaces. How many
such elevators are needed to keep a high-cost roadway running reasonably full?
How much infrastructure (safety barriers, driveways, waiting areas, not to
mention people) around each elevator to move the cars on and off safely?

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dqpb
> _The Boring Company is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda
> test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger
> Stadium_

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mips_avatar
When I read the title I was thinking that they had just released the final
plans, like a secret album drop. This is much more disappointing.

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ForHackernews
Well, that was completely predictable. It's not obvious to me that any of the
Boring Company plans are anything except vaporware.

~~~
imglorp
I'm curious about the continued negativity on this. Hasn't he pretty much
accomplished everything he has said? Batteries, cars, solar, space, it's all
working.

~~~
leesec
Honestly, I cannot help but get frustrated even though I know I shouldn't. How
are people rooting against this person? Do they not want space
exploration/green technology/incredible cars/transportation
innovation/globally accessible satellite internet/self driving cars/etc?

I don't even really understand where the hate comes from, because he missed a
few deadlines, because he dreams big? I'm sure his critics have missed more
than a few deadlines, and on things not nearly as important/world changing.

~~~
sschueller
The issues is not that we don't want these things. People cheer for NASA and
you hardly ever read anything negative about those missions.

Elon is why people complain. He rubs a lot of people the wrong way with this
tweets and attitude. You can be diplomatic and move things forward or you can
be abrasive like Elon and also move forward.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
> You can be diplomatic and move things forward or you can be abrasive like
> Elon and also move forward.

Just curious, can you name some people who have been diplomatic and managed to
move things as far forward? I honestly can't think of many actual achievers
that have been diplomatic about things.

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macintux
There’s some line to be drawn between acceptable abrasiveness and calling
critics pedophiles.

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johnnyfaehell
What if said critic is a paedophile or he had a valid reason to believe it
such as being told it by lots of locals? If someone is a paedophile, I think
to call them it, should be perfectly acceptable.

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readhn
well, im not sure where this tunnel would be located BUT if he was digging
under my $500,000-1,000,000 residential house (or whatever the prices there
are) or my commercial property i sure as hell would sue the billionaire all
the way to the bank as well. For him its just "playing games" oh let me dig a
tunnel so i can skip the traffic on MY way to work. For me - its my livelihood
- house is a single biggest purchase in most people's lives (or my business -
if he is digging under my commercial property). If this tunnel affects my
building - what do i do when things go wrong (foundation cracks)?

I have to go around and ask 10 people in my neighborhood if its ok if i want
to move a freaking wall inside my house and this guy can just go and dig up
tunnels without asking us ... just because he feels like it and he is a
billionaire.

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crysin
Why would you live in a place where people have to approve what you want to do
with your property?

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jobigoud
I don't know about GP comment about stuff inside the house but here we have
something called "local urban planning" where I live. For example, depending
on the plan, you can't build above 2 stories, or you have to conform to a
predefined set of colors for the street facing wall. There are various rules
depending on the neighborhood you're in and if there is a historical site in
the vicinity, etc.

