
The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas - cienega
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/05/elon-musk-tunnel-las-vegas-loop-boring-company-electric-cars/590287/
======
calgoo
I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected
to Mars colonization.

1\. Electric cars for transport, Check.

2\. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check.

3\. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport,
check.

4\. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check.

5\. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there.

Hopefully he will continue development to the point where the tech can be used
on Mars.

~~~
spraak
The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate
than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is
"uncharted territory" / wild west

~~~
toephu2
Musk has said Mars is the backup plan for earth. What if one day there is a
disease or meteor that wipes out the entire human population on Earth? (e.g.,
see the dinosaurs)

Even if the only appeal was the wild wild west and uncharted territory, what's
wrong with that?

Look at what exploring the Moon has brought us, many unexpected innovations
and inventions useful for life on earth.

~~~
bunderbunder
The meteor strike wiped out the dinosaurs, but not all life. Mars currently
has no life. The strong implication is that, Earth post meteor strike would
still be far, far, far more habitable for humans than Mars ever will be.

As far as why describing Mars as Earth's backup plan rubs people the wrong
way, I think it's a bit like Noah's Ark. While there is absolutely the cute
story about the boat full of animals, and it does make for a good story,
there's also the "meanwhile literally everyone aside from a minuscule elect
ends up dying" bit. Which would be nothing but sour grapes if you didn't see
people holding up the possibility of colonizing other planets as a mitigating
factor that implies that we really shouldn't be _quite_ so worried about all
the environmental damage that's happening here on Earth. But you do.

Put it all together, and the complete narrative starts to sound like, "Sure,
we're recklessly hurtling toward turning the planet into an inhospitable
shithole for billions of people, but don't worry about that, because
0.00000005% of them are going to get to live on a _completely different_
inhospitable shithole instead!"

Which, disclaimer, I'm not wanting to pan human space exploration. But I much
prefer the "exploration for the sake of adventure and discovery" narrative. If
that's not good enough, the ground to retreat to should be robots, not
messianic fables for rich people.

~~~
aeternus
What is the actual goal of environmentalism on earth?

If it is to preserve diverse species, then it absolutely makes sense to
colonize other planets and spread the wide variety of plants, animals, and
other organisms. The earth will eventually be burned up by the sun.

~~~
bunderbunder
Let's keep a sense of perspective here. What the sun's going to be doing a
billion or so years from now seems like a rather remote concern compared to
entire countries being underwater in a few decades.

If interstellar space travel is ever practically attainable - and, FWIW, that
is still a controversial subject - then humans absolutely will figure it out.
Or rather, they will just so long as they manage to extend both their
existential and economic trajectories far enough for it to matter. Ain't
nobody gonna be able to develop that kind of technology from Mars; they'll be
way too busy on more prosaic tasks, like repeatedly checking their domes for
leaks.

~~~
spurgu
> Let's keep a sense of perspective here.

So like a few million years?

------
breck
Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than
comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior
transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air,
better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban
areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is
a drastically different place before and after the Central Artery. The same is
happening in Seattle now. The problem is the cost. If Boring Company can solve
that (and he already has a history of doing comparable things in the rocket
and battery industries) it very much is the future of public (and private)
transportation.

~~~
pdq
This Boring Tunnel is all hype so far.

The demo tunnel doesn't look to have sufficient ventilation or emergency exits
in case of fire, car crash, etc.

They haven't addressed the ingress and egress congestion problems into and out
of the tunnel. How can a single elevator go up/down to handle 1000+ cars per
hour (4400 passengers per hour)? Basic math gives you 3.6 seconds for the
elevator to go down, wait for the car to offramp, go back up, and wait for the
next car to onramp.

These are some of the many reasons tunnels and subways get expensive. You
can't just build a basic tunnel rigged with cars and say "problem solved" at
1/10th the cost.

~~~
ryantgtg
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, there isn't a offramp/onramp in the latest
design scheme. When Boring Company first unveiled the design, it had elevators
that moved vehicles from grade-level to the tunnel. The vehicles then locked
into a track. Then after reaching an "exit" the vehicle is brought back to the
surface so the driver can continue the journey within that same vehicle. But
they recently scrapped all that. In the current design, there is no locked
track and the vehicles never leave the tunnel. This ensures that the tunnels
only function with a proprietary vehicle.

There still might be some human ingress/egress issues to resolve.

~~~
michaelleslie
Sounds like a less-scalable metro system, a technology that predates this
"innovation" by a century or so.

~~~
ryantgtg
Yeah, the joke is that next they'll release that the concrete tunnel road is
subject to deterioration, so they'll shift to steel tracks. Then they'll
realize that these individual vehicles should be linked together to allow for
higher capacity. Then... then you have a subway.

~~~
tntn
That would be great. Subway costs are absolutely ridiculous, so it would be
fantastic if the boring company decides to build exactly the same thing for
much less.

~~~
tomjakubowski
It's not exactly the same thing. In the Boring underground car-train, each
_party_ of travelers takes up an entire car's or truck's worth of space. On a
subway, each _person_ takes up room for themselves and their belongings. Plus
maybe a bicycle. You can move a lot more people at once in a subway.

Further, when the Boring underground car-train "stops", and parties leave the
train, those cars still demand that same space, just on the surface. With mass
transit carrying pedestrians and cyclists, you need much less room on
"integrate" passengers coming out from the underground, with local traffic on
the surface.

If Boring gives up on the personal vehicle folly, and can build a smaller,
cheaper, but equally safe tunnel for mass transit, great. But they seem
preoccupied with letting people keep their cars.

~~~
greglindahl
This article that we're discussing, about Las Vegas, involves dedicated
vehicles, not personal cars. And one of them is a 16-person people mover. It
is expected to have a low enough usage that that makes sense.

How many people are you expecting to take their bikes on the subway on the
Vegas strip?

------
dang
The submitted title was "No, the Las Vegas 'Loop' Is Not the Future of Public
Transportation". That broke the HN guidelines, which ask submitters to use the
original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait, and _not_ to
editorialize. We remove submission privileges from accounts who post like
this, so please don't.

Note: if this was the article's original title and, as sometimes happens, they
changed it, then none of this applies. Usually it's just the NYT who do that
though.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
bdcravens
Current title is "Elon Musk’s $49 Million Las Vegas Loop Makes Perfect
Sense—for Las Vegas"

~~~
dang
Ah right, I skipped a step above: it's fine to use a subtitle if it represents
the article in a more accurate and neutral way.

~~~
HNLurker2
Dang getting downvoted. This is a black swan

------
fabioborellini
Maybe Elon should visit Europe or Asia and check out an underground mass rapid
transit system or two. They have two orders of magnitude larger capacity. And
even their capacity is finite.

And keep in mind that the NYC Subway and the London Underground are NOT a good
example of a modern mass transit system.

~~~
Robotbeat
I've noticed that Elon Musk's projects often start off in the wrong direction,
but evolve in a way that works ultimately. And that's what matters.

For instance, SpaceX originally insisted on parachute recovery of their Falcon
1 and Falcon 9 rockets. They tried, and it didn't work. But they switched to
powered landing as some others had demonstrated (DC-X and Masten Space Systems
and Armadillo Aerospace), and they massively succeeded.

Elon is perfectly willing to pivot to what works after exhausting other
options.

~~~
_ph_
And he is iterating a lot. His designs usually are not finished, when they get
used for the first time. The first F9 wasn't reusable and had much less power
than the current block 5. But it was flying, good enough to sustain business
and giving opportunity to learn and experiment. All the crashes while getting
the landing right were of no consequence for the launching business. All the
tests happened with rockets which had delivered their cargo.

I see a similar development with the Boring company. They have dug their first
demonstration tunnel. So they have a basic handle on tunnel digging. Doing so
they made valuable experiences and claim to have improved their digging
machine already significantly. Digging the Las Vegas tunnel is going to add
much more experience to it and means, the company is a working business. They
might not have a good idea yet, what to drive through the tunnel, but I am
sure, they will come up with something. At the first presentation, they drove
a Model X with guiding wheels attached at like 40mph. That was nice, but not
great. Now they made a new video - they have redone the tunnel floor and now a
Tesla reaches 127 mph just driving on autopilot through the tunnel. If
everything else is worked out, I am sure there will be a custom vehicle
driving through these tunnels, which optimizes throughput.

------
skywhopper
The math on this is highly questionable:

    
    
        The contract posted on the LVCVA website projects an
        operating capacity of 4,400 passengers per hour using
        “autonomous electric vehicles at high speeds,” which
        might include a Tesla Model X or Model 3, or another
        Tesla chassis converted into a 16-passenger shuttle.
    

There are two tunnels involved, so to manage to get 2,200 passengers through
in one direction per hour, you're going to have to get 36 passengers out of
whatever vehicles and 36 passengers into those same vehicles every minute.

The only way this can work with Model 3s or similar will require a
loading/unloading experience similar to the Test Track ride at Epcot in Disney
World, including the line and the numerous staff helpers to make sure you are
buckled in.

Combine that with also needing to move those people down to the station and
back up to their destination, and the likelihood that any of the three
stations are in a location you already are or want to be, I'm not sure how
useful this is going to be.

~~~
jcranmer
Put another way: if you assume 16-passenger shuttles, you have to have 26
second headways between cars in order to meet capacity.

If you don't split the track to allow unloading, you have 26 seconds to
disembark 16 passengers, embark 16 more passengers, and then clear the
platform in enough time to allow sufficient safety margin for the car
immediately behind you. Station dwell times (essentially the time from train
is fully stopped to time it starts accelerating, and therefore not including
the last bit) are upwards of 30 seconds and much likelier to be close to a
minute, which can't be done in sufficient time. Especially because full
capacity cars generally require more time at stations, and I have to imagine
that modified Teslas that can fit 16 people aren't going to be quick to
navigate.

If you have multiple platforms at each station to accomodate the long station
dwell time, maybe it could be done, but I suspect that it'd blow out their
construction budget because of the extra space needed.

~~~
DuskStar
If they have to have multiple platforms at each station anyways, it might make
sense to essentially have three lines - A<->B, B<->C and A<->C, instead of
A<->B<->C - and only run direct. At least in that situation _everyone_ would
be getting off at each stop, which could simplify some things - and it
naturally splits passengers into two platforms.

That sort of routing is also significantly improved by having smaller,
independent vehicles (well, once the number of stops goes up) - sort of like
the Personal Rapid Transit setup at WVU. [0]

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Tran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit)

------
rayiner
So what’s this fascination with tunnels? In Chicago, there are overhead
elevated train tracks, and they work just fine. They seem a lot cheaper to
build and maintain than tunnels. You can even build them over existing
avenues. Why don’t we have more of that?

~~~
hoorayimhelping
Have you ever lived near an elevated train? They're not pleasant areas,
especially compared to subway stations. The area under the tracks aren't very
usable, except as a roadway and parking lots. They're loud as hell, people on
the trains can see into your home, the spaces around the elevated tracks are
great places for people to do drugs and have crusty hobo sex. These criticisms
apply equally to elevated roads.

Most times it rained or snowed in New York City when I lived there, New Jersey
Transit and PATH would have problems because of the issues of weather on
outdoor trains. It only affected NYC's subway when there was flooding (which
also affected NJT and PATH).

The fascination with tunnels is that they're a much more ergonomic way to
build infrastructure for the humans that have to live near them.

~~~
guruz
That sounds like a typical US problem to me.

In contrast in Berlin, the areas with elevated subway belong to the most
desireable living areas, e.g. the U2 in Prenzlauer Berg:

[https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
b-d&biw=1047&bi...](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-
b-d&biw=1047&bih=635&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=MeLuXLe7D5iN1fAPq5y5kAI&q=berlin+u2+prenzlauer+berg&oq=berlin+u2+prenzlauer+berg&gs_l=img.3...2415.5175..5345...5.0..0.189.895.11j1......0....1..gws-
wiz-img.w1t7hJ52Hvg)

Or check out the lovely bridges above Gleisdreieck-Park:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=berlin+u-bahn+gleisdreieck+p...](https://www.google.com/search?q=berlin+u-bahn+gleisdreieck+park&client=firefox-
b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT0ajNwcHiAhVGYVAKHaALDG8Q_AUIDygC&biw=1047&bih=635)

~~~
efficax
L stops in chicago are also very desirable locations. The parent is greatly
overexaggerating the problems with elevated trains

~~~
rayiner
Seriously. Wrigleyville is a real slum what with the brown line cutting right
through it, right?
[https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9485827,-87.6531626,3a,75y,2...](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9485827,-87.6531626,3a,75y,227.53h,99.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1syGWmp3nVefLqTTFayzVQvQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
(brown line runs right behind those houses).

------
crocal
If they can do this for 49MUSD then it’s a revolution. It’s a ridiculous
amount of money for something like this. Just the management overhead of a
project like this would cost millions, and the fact that it is short does not
make it any easier. I will be very curious to see how they pull it off, and
take the lesson whatever the outcome is.

------
rhegart
I believe in Elon. He’s always late, but he mostly delivers. If he gets 10x
faster instead of 14x and does it cheaper, it’s a huge boon to society (forces
other companies to innovate). Cost disease for infrastructure is in my opinion
the biggest drag against gdp and the economy.

~~~
HNLurker2
We don't call him Rockefeller of this century for no reason

------
gibolt
The car itself may not be the future, but cheap tunnels and multi-car (let's
call them trains) will be the future.

Asian cities already have amazing subway systems that just work so much better
than surface streets. The biggest improvement would be to have express lines
that only visit every ~10th stop. Financial viability due to massive ridership
make these possible in Asia, lower tunneling costs could make them viable
elsewhere.

------
melling
If they aren’t going to finish the Vegas monorail, maybe they can build a
tunnel from the airport to the Strip?

~~~
stcredzero
Minneapolis did the right thing with its light rail: Going from the Airport,
to downtown, to the Mall of America. When I was consulting in Minneapolis,
getting from the Airport to the apartment I'd rented downtown was just a
typical jaunt on public transit.

Here's how to win with public transit: Build it where people want to go.
Amazing how difficult that is.

~~~
duxup
Yeah the first few lines are pretty obvious if you are smart about it.

Twins ballpark / transit hub (not there at time of construction but it helps
that it is now), downtown, Vikings Stadium, Airport, MOA... pretty obvious and
useful route. Then to the U and St. Paul.

After that is is a question of what direction out to the burbs you reach out
to, and then the next, and so on.

~~~
bluGill
If it isn't obvious the question shouldn't be asked. Just put in a Bus rapid
transit system, and change the line every few months until you find a "line"
that is profitable, then keep that line going for a few years to prove it
works long term. Now you have real rider numbers to plug into the equation of
if the line is worth it.

~~~
duxup
I'm not sure rider number experiments are really needed. At least in MN rider
predictions were on the conservative side, but reasonable as far as
predictors.

Granted that doesn't mean your idea is bad or anything. I do wonder how many
people would change their routine for a "temporary" bus line... not sure they
would.

~~~
stcredzero
I think it was Portland (it was somewhere in the Pacific NW) in the 90's had a
"custom bus" running late at night. If you lived within 2 miles of a regular
bus route, you could phone in a request, and a dispatcher would make up a new
bus line for that night that would pick up everyone who called in.

~~~
bluGill
For public transit to work this is important. In the early hours of the
morning few people want to get around typically. However the fear that you
cannot get around if you need to holds people back. However if I know that
should I need to there is an option that isn't too expensive I'm likely try
it.

Minneapolis used to have a guaranteed ride home (might still do, I don't live
there anymore) to cover people who took the bus somewhere, but had to work
last.

~~~
duxup
Yup it is still a thing!

[https://www.metrotransit.org/guaranteed-ride-
home](https://www.metrotransit.org/guaranteed-ride-home)

------
ineedasername
While not revolutionary (or even all that evolutionary) it at least generates
a bit of revenue while garnering more practical experience for Boring. I'm not
really sure there's a future for Boring, but it is nice that an additional
company is trying to improve mass transit.

------
jsf01
I don’t see this doing $50M of good for easing congestion. I would prefer it
if they’d commit to a much larger budget project connecting the airport to the
convention center and several major hotels and casinos than this low density
single lane tunnel.

~~~
jsnider3
Las Vegas is hoping that it will be worth at least $50M of publicity.

------
theoh
Where did this title come from? I usually can't stand HN's fussing over titles
but this one really seems tendentious.

~~~
dredmorbius
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044085)

------
jolmg
TIL The Boring Company is the name of an actual company that bores, and "to
bore" is to drill a hole.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_(earth)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_\(earth\))

------
HNLurker2
Now I understand why people hate HN besides other stuff: but this Elon
worshipping

------
_bxg1
> ...it will dig a pair of concrete tunnels, 12 feet in diameter and less than
> a mile long. The asphalt-paved tubes will be just wide enough for a single
> vehicle to drive down.

So... it's a... subway

------
pje
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs)

------
antsoul
Only technology being worked on ? >> Digging.

What a coincidence, that's pretty useful for oil too.

The market uses money to burn oil to burn money to burn oil.

------
leshokunin
I believe those are called subways, we had them in Europe in the late 19th
century. /s

------
duck
The horrible title font made me think it was only $4.9 million at first
glance.

------
HirojaShibe
Sooo, another tunnel flood when it rains only half a cm.

------
daodedickinson
Vegas. Now there's a place for Musk.

------
grillvogel
this trend of condescending answers to a question no one asked for article
titles really needs to go.

