Boring company

[YNM]

45 minutes ago, tater said:

Transit needs to address the needs of people actually living here, or it's a wasteful non-starter as far as taxpayers are concerned. 

Your main cities are growing : Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston.

Unless you're the kind that just bodge it everytime (like we do), then you'll want to plan ahead too.

(and sidenote, yeah I'm bloody fat.)

[tater]

Cities tend to grow organically. Back when NYC or Chicago enacted a new layout of streets, they could literally just knock over the housing of people they didn't like, it's much harder now. People already living there have a powerful incentive for the status quo to remain in force, it keeps their property values (and hence personal wealth) high.

[wumpus]

8 hours ago, YNM said:

Your main cities are growing : Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston.

Unless you're the kind that just bodge it everytime (like we do), then you'll want to plan ahead too.

(and sidenote, yeah I'm bloody fat.)

The Boring Company is in Los Angeles, so I'd expect them to bore there.  I have no idea what you would do with a hyperloop there, possibly airport to San Diego airport?  My understanding is that public transportation is the means of last resort (they have a subway, of sorts.  I think it has two, three stops tops).  Simply boring more bypasses sounds like a good idea, but in practice adding roads only increases dispersion to match previous commuting times.

San Francisco is obvious, with at least two larger (Oakland and San Jose) cities nearby and mostly connected by BART (I've been on BART from Walnut Creek outside Oakland, so it goes a long way.  Although I've heard that only commuter rail goes to San Jose).  It would be one of the more ideal locations for a hyperloop (or at least boring).

I've never been to Houston, but expect it to be even more spread out than LA.  Also forget about public works in Texas (you might find acceptance in Houston, but still get pushback from the rest of the state).

Has Pittsburgh thrown its hat in?  Navigating through Pittsburgh  requires crossing two bridges and at least one tunnel (if taken by a native, otherwise expect to get lost and cross many of each).  If any place would be helped by boring, it would be Pittsburgh.  Don't ask about Boston: I can't imagine the issues involved in attempting another "Big Dig".

[YNM]

13 hours ago, tater said:

Cities tend to grow organically.

So, do you plan for them, or do you just plan for now and bodge it for later ?

13 hours ago, tater said:

Back when NYC or Chicago enacted a new layout of streets, they could literally just knock over the housing of people they didn't like, it's much harder now.

NYC's grids was done during the period of rapid growth, not after it. Grids means easier expansion and planning.

But road layout has very little to do with public transport. In some rare cases, even expansive suburbs were made possible by public transport.

12 hours ago, wumpus said:

My understanding is that public transportation is the means of last resort...

You clearly hasn't heard or understood at all about transit-oriented development then.

12 hours ago, wumpus said:

Simply boring more bypasses sounds like a good idea, but in practice adding roads only increases dispersion to match previous commuting times. 

Adding more roads means making driving even more attractive, which means more drivers, which means more vehicles, which penultimately means even worse congestion on even more massive roads.

The same kind of holds with PT (more PT = more PT passengers), but that's a better thing to do than more vehicles.

 

I know it is very difficult for the 'average joe' to understand this very well. But I can assure you, from the rest of the world, public transport works, and lord knows how many fails we been having when we hadn't had it.

 

And my problem with Boring Co. is :

- Inefficiency (why bother with something that's only as good as a cheap solution while costing massively more)

- Still trying to cater the dream of cars.

Edited September 23, 2018 by YNM

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Adding more roads means making driving even more attractive, which means more drivers, which means more vehicles, which penultimately means even worse congestion on even more massive roads.

While that is undeniably true, I feel like this is often taken as an excuse to let roads become more and more congested, and just waiting for public transport to be better, rather than trying to improve public transport. I've read essays that essentially suggested waiting for the roads to become so terribly crowded that you have to use public transport. To be perfectly clear, this is better for the planet and for us than just expanding road networks endlessly, I would like a solution that was better than both.

I don't think this is a good idea for two reasons: First, it makes people resentful of public transit, and makes them consider it an inferior solution that is used out of necessity rather than choice, and second, it ignores the very real benefits car travel has, specifically the ability to get directly from one point to another, over an arbitrary distance. Ideally you could take car trips for long distance trips where other public transport doesn't directly go, and that use relies on a network of uncongested roads, which isn't a possibility if they are considered the best way to get around in cities. Of course just adding more lanes isn't the solution.

I mostly appreciate that the Boring Co. is trying to make something better, or at least different. To change public opinion from: "Cars are better, but they're too slow, I'll have to take public transport instead" to "Public transport is better." If you assume that whatever the best way of getting around is will be filled up to capacity, the Boring Co. also offers a solution which can, at least in theory, have capacity exceed demand. 

[YNM]

2 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I've read essays that essentially suggested waiting for the roads to become so terribly crowded that you have to use public transport.

That's an awful proposition to make.

Almost for years, before we have a good and frequent commuter service in Jakarta, people have to flock the roads, going earlier and earlier than ever to cope with longer journey times.

However, after the commuter train was simplified (increasing the reliability - less rail point usage) and made more frequent, now we have people going up earlier so they can have an emptier carriage.

It sounds like a paradox, but trust me, you do have your journey faster than if you all flock to the roads. It's not to say roads is useless - again, goods don't have a feet of their own, they need those trucks or trikes - but by choosing public transport, you do free up space for others that can't commute easily using public transport.

Not to say that we shouldn't make public transport as attractive (read : reliable and frequent) as ever.

[wumpus]

11 hours ago, YNM said:

You clearly hasn't heard or understood at all about transit-oriented development then.

Have you ever been to LA, or even America?  Transit-oriented development  here means cars (meaning trucks now, see Ford's change) and only "cars".  In NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, the SF Bay area, and possibly Seattle (I've never been to Seattle to tell), there has been a sufficient secondary attempt at mass transportation to allow sufficiently rapid transit to the point where it might be considered ahead of a personal car.  But only a small fraction of the US population lives in those cities.

Whether I've heard or understood it or not is moot.  It simply doesn't exist here.  Even in the places I've mentioned, any growth must first be served by cars and any other means is an afterthought.  That leaves most of the US, and LA in particular, leaving public transportation as "the means of last resort" (especially with the rise of Uber).

Oddly enough, LA *does* have a light rail, with enough connections to possibly be useful (don't be surprised if much of Uber's traffic is in the "last mile [km]" as I doubt it gets all that close to most destinations).  The map included appears to be 50km by 50km.  Has anybody used this?  I wouldn't believe that LA is anything like the cities I've mentioned, but it has been 20 years since I've been there.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Los_Angeles_County_Metro_Rail_and_Metro_Liner_map.svg

[YNM]

58 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Oddly enough, LA *does* have a light rail, with enough connections to possibly be useful.

They want a proper metro now.

59 minutes ago, wumpus said:

It simply doesn't exist here.

Well, do you think the current way of doing it works ?

And some basic reference on TOD.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Some more news:

 

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/Document/RetrievePDF?Id=201820110280-24766458

http://hawthorne-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=554&meta_id=36307

Some amazing "architectural visualizations" in the last one.

EDIT: The building that the Brick Store is buying appears to still have a furniture showroom and car shop in it. I wonder if they were bought out.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[tater]

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

It's hard to believe, but it seems like the tunnel might actually open on time.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

On 11/28/2018 at 5:16 PM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

It's hard to believe, but it seems like the tunnel might actually open on time.

Is this a first for one of Elon's project? Lol

[Shpaget]

Isn't the project canceled?

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-boring-company-cancels-los-angeles-tunnel-fo-1830707724

[Kerbart]

2 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Isn't the project canceled?

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-boring-company-cancels-los-angeles-tunnel-fo-1830707724

It seems there are multiple tunnel projects in the LA area. Musk tried to bypass an environmental review by cutting this project up in smaller pieces all below the threshold for environmental review and got sued over that.

Apparently there's a second tunnel project going on near the Dodger's stadium. I can see how, at this stage, he wants to prove the concept first, instead of spending endless amounts of money and time on litigation.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

 

[YNM]

6 hours ago, Kerbart said:

It seems there are multiple tunnel projects in the LA area. Musk tried to bypass an environmental review by cutting this project up in smaller pieces all below the threshold for environmental review and got sued over that.

I wonder whether the project tunnels counts as a public right-of-way, or a railway.

[Kerbart]

18 hours ago, YNM said:

I wonder whether the project tunnels counts as a public right-of-way, or a railway.

It's under people's property so they have no control over it. Given the haste with which the project is executed, I wonder what happens when the ground above the tunnel starts sinking.

[YNM]

3 hours ago, Kerbart said:

It's under people's property so they have no control over it.

Yeah, but :

- It's an easement because they clearly didn't buy any land (would be even worse if it's private easement)

- Things will pass through inside it.

The choice that I can see so far :

- It's a public right-of-way (in which case all vehicles are allowed to travel through it, incl. pedestrians and animals, and for it to be otherwise requires traffic orders and regulations.

- It's a railway, which means it needs all the statutes required by railways (not sure what this entails in the US/California).

- It's a private easement - which means Boring Co. / whatever company Elon is setting up will have to own it. How they build something private in something they don't own yet is... a question for the plaintiffs.

I don't know, but Elon trying to evade the legal side is very alarming. Every piece of infrastructure requires clearly defined legal instruments, as they stay in one place for decades and even centuries, unlike airplanes and rockets, and for their existence they affect the lives of many, many people.

4 hours ago, Kerbart said:

I wonder what happens when the ground above the tunnel starts sinking.

I'm fairly sure the technical side is OK (as there's a lot more to go after the borehole is completed - the boring process are usually quite quick unless the soil conditions are extremely variable, like 2nd avenue subway or the alaskan way tunnel).

I'm more concerned what if some other existing installation got severed, or if someone bores a hole to the tunnel.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I would imagine a toll road is the closest comparison:

While they are open to the public, there are restrictions on what can use them that aren't necessarily laws (for example, on some toll roads you need those automatic payment boxes), and the owner can charge for their use.

I don't know much about how toll roads work legally though. Typically, I imagine the owner (if not the operator) actually owns the land. In the case of the boring co, that doesn't make any sense since one of the advantages of tunnels is that they don't take up real estate. 

[YNM]

14 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I don't know much about how toll roads work legally though. 

They are right-of-ways still. The tolls are used for road maintenance.

And it'll still be an easement.

The only place where a toll is truly different is in the UK (M6 Toll), under Special Roads (Motorway) classification.

Edited December 1, 2018 by YNM

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, YNM said:

They are right-of-ways still. The tolls are used for road maintenance.

And it'll still be an easement.

The only place where a toll is truly different is in the UK (M6 Toll), under Special Roads (Motorway) classification.

Depend on countries, in Norway they tend to be to pay for the road, original tunnels and bridges who replaced ferries who costed money, nowday they seems to be standard. 

[YNM]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

in Norway they tend to be to pay for the road, original tunnels and bridges who replaced ferries who costed money, nowday they seems to be standard. 

Yeah, they can also be used for paying the cost of the highway. We also have tollroads here, they're operated as build-operate-transfer but penultimately they're owned by the gov't.

But the point remains that in most of the world, roads are "you can enter unless we say otherwise", not "you can't enter unless we say otherwise". And to allow for restriction, the only ones who can do them are either gov't or the gov't has to write a piece of legislation allowing bylaws, ie this.

The question right now is whether Boring Co. has done all those paperwork or not... otherwise we can go to interesting things... If they're really averse to paperwork then actually they might've shoot themselves in the feet.

(Oh, and if the tunnels are highways... well, have they heard of "if you build it they'll come" ?)