I don’t know if there has been independent comparison of the faster tunneling speed, etc, but the ability of Prufrock to “porpoise” (directly launch) is an innovation that I can’t find any mention of in TBM before 2017. (But that could be because it goes by another name, I am no industry expert.) https://www.boringcompany.com/prufrock
I think the primary innovation is business plan, ie limit scope by only bidding on things like small diameter, simple requirements, etc. Avoid projects that would lengthy and expensive study, etc. Public works projects tend to be insanely expensive and part of it is due to continual scope creep, which brings in more stakeholders which further increases scope and cost… in a continuous cycle until the project is canceled or, miraculously, is finished at ten times the budget.
Which kind of answers the objections raised in these articles. If cities are unwilling or unable to allow scope to be constrained to the capabilities of TBC’s tunneling tech, why should TBC bid on the project? Why blame TBC for that?
In this way, this kind of scope discipline is more reminiscent of foreign tunneling projects.
But we’ll see. TBC has not completed many tunneling projects, and companies must ultimately be judged on the basis of their output (although for companies in growth and innovation mode, that can require patience).
They don't quote anything specific, but they do mention the porpoising as already existing in the article:
> Veterans of the tunneling industry note that tunnel-boring machines have been electrified for decades, and that neither continuous construction of the tunnel lining nor digging in from aboveground is new.
And I'm not too sure how useful of a feature is it. Transit tunnels are useally built in places that are so built up that land is at a premium. They actually want the tunnel to start underground, because they want to install the station underground too.
So you have to build a shaft anyway.
And also, they are trying to minimize elevation changes for efficiency.
Stations are one of the common reasons given for why tunnel projects are so ridiculously expensive. Porpoising would avoid that while still allowing you to go from one place to another underground.
How would it avoid that? It'd still be mega expensive to purchase plots of land in densely developed land (aka: cities) so your boring machine can tunnel up and down from these station points. One would also need to be careful to not dig the upwards and downwards slope on existing infrastructure: pipes, underground electric and communications lines, etc.
Porpoising doesn't help with any of that, if you need a slope of less than 2-3% inclination the machine will pass through a lot of potential infrastructure to surface and then dig down again. It doesn't make sense it'd save that much money considering that the expensive part of a project in developed land is that the land has a massive premium on it by being so productive.
The idea with porpoising is you can just install basically a bus stop on the surface, which is orders of magnitude cheaper than a massive excavated station, grand as it may be.
We actually don’t need TBC to do this stuff. We COULD just have extreme restraint on scope and limit the stakeholder input as much as possible, like is more often the case in every country other than the US. But the incentives are all totally misaligned, bordering on corruption here in the US.
Thinking logically, tunnel boring machines not being electrified is stupid design decision. They are in half done tunnel circulating air in such environment for combustion is rather stupid.
> the primary innovation is business plan, ie limit scope by only bidding on things like small diameter, simple requirements, etc
Wouldn’t this imply bidding for utility tunnels first?
Not an expert. But I thought the Boring Company's pitch was designing a better TBM. If today’s TBMs are state of the art, the Boring Company is another general contractor.
What if they're worse than the traditional TBM meanwhile overstating their capabilities? It's not necessarily outright lying, though. Maybe Musk's reality distortion field hasn't actually altered reality yet?
It sure seems they've oversold and underproduced though.
They tend to bid for fixed-price opportunities, though, so overstating wouldn't matter to the city as the company would eat the cost.
People thought Elon was "reality distortion field"ing SpaceX, too, but because COTS and CRS were fixed price, SpaceX was able to prove themselves. And for a while, SpaceX did struggle to meet launch rate, etc. But they ultimately DID deliver, so therefore they got paid (in cost plus, you can get paid simply for doing work, regardless of the project being completed) and now they dominate the entire industry in both price and reliability.
>I think the primary innovation is business plan, ie limit scope by only bidding on things like small diameter, simple requirements, etc. Avoid projects that would lengthy and expensive study, etc. Public works projects tend to be insanely expensive and part of it is due to continual scope creep, which brings in more stakeholders which further increases scope and cost… in a continuous cycle until the project is canceled or, miraculously, is finished at ten times the budget.
Is there any documentation that this is the motivation? Why as detailed in the article does he then entice local governments by saying he can do it at an insanely low price and then never puts a bit in? Also in the article Musk said he could build the tunnel for $45M, but after the discussions with the city the price rose to $500M, so much for keeping costs in check.
>Which kind of answers the objections raised in these articles. If cities are unwilling or unable to allow scope to be constrained to the capabilities of TBC’s tunneling tech, why should TBC bid on the project? Why blame TBC for that?
Again where is the evidence, for that claim? He got the local government to cancel the light rail project because he said he could build it for more than a factor 20-30 less, after discussions that became a factor 2-3 and then they didn't even bid?
> But we’ll see. TBC has not completed many tunneling projects, and companies must ultimately be judged on the basis of their output (although for companies in growth and innovation mode, that can require patience).
Not many is quite an understatement. 2 is the actual number, one on the SpaceX property under some road (they actually cancelled a second planed one) and the Las Vegas one, which is probably the easiest case for tunnel boring.
Exactly, in another forum someone was complaining the SpaceX was getting all the business and things should go back to the old rocket companies. For some reason he did not see the reason those companies was losing business was because they were not delivering results at a reasonable cost.
I think the primary innovation is business plan, ie limit scope by only bidding on things like small diameter, simple requirements, etc. Avoid projects that would lengthy and expensive study, etc. Public works projects tend to be insanely expensive and part of it is due to continual scope creep, which brings in more stakeholders which further increases scope and cost… in a continuous cycle until the project is canceled or, miraculously, is finished at ten times the budget.
Which kind of answers the objections raised in these articles. If cities are unwilling or unable to allow scope to be constrained to the capabilities of TBC’s tunneling tech, why should TBC bid on the project? Why blame TBC for that?
In this way, this kind of scope discipline is more reminiscent of foreign tunneling projects.
But we’ll see. TBC has not completed many tunneling projects, and companies must ultimately be judged on the basis of their output (although for companies in growth and innovation mode, that can require patience).