I'll agree we need to be careful with this technology. Even it it does work as advertised, both from an engineering and financial standpoint, it's not a cure-all for transportation and we shouldn't talk about it that way. It is a solution to the narrow, specific problem of getting a small few business travelers on a nonstop trip to O'Hare quickly and painlessly.

For example, the "spurs" that others mention here to McCormick Place, Fulton Market and Water Tower are a terrible idea. We already have transit systems to take people around downtown, and they will have direct connections to Musk's tube at Block 37. If we decide we need to improve those systems, the "fix" should be a true public transit line/downtown circulator that is available to everyone and priced accordingly, fully integrated with the CTA system. A few spur tunnels should not become an excuse for the city's continued inaction on the downtown circulator problem.

Moreover, virtually any other corridor Musk could build within the city (including to Midway) would either require a similarly high fare, putting it out of reach for most Chicagoans, or a hefty public subsidy, which is a waste of taxpayer money compared to traditional transit options. In a subsidized, public-transit mode (say, a line below North LSD or Sheridan) the system would likely break down under the demand... political pressure would keep fares relatively low but demand would quickly overwhelm the system.

So I do hope this is the one and only Musk tube we get in Chicago, unless or until Musk learns to apply his magic cost savings to something that resembles a traditional subway line.

Yea, this is only competing with taxi's that go between the loop and ohare. People that take the blue line between ohare, and belmont for example can't even use it. It's not going to do anything else. And mostly used for business travelers. It will help reduce some of the traffic on the Kennedy and reduce some pollution. This also might help Chicago get Amazon H2, and another billionaire wants to pay it!

has it been mentioned this technology dosent even have federal approval? environmental impact studies havent even been commenced (which can take years to compile)? how the hell does he expect to "start drilling" in 3 months?

also, i still dont understand the target market for this route. if youre not going directly to Daley Plaza, whats the incentive? most people along the blue line corridor are stopping somewhere in between. and if you are a business person, odds are your meeting could be anywhere in the city (this notion that business travelers only go directly downtown is flawed). while this is supposedly cheaper than uber at the given time, years from now who's to say. but if you ARE a businessperson, than odds are youre expensing your trip anyway. so the notion that its cheaper than a cab dosent really matter, since the cab will take you directly to your destination with all of your luggage and the price difference in the scheme of things really isnt that much. wheras with the Loop you would have to still fend for yourself to figure out the "last mile" or whatever. traffic on the kennedy can suck, but not necessarily on all days or all hours...ultimately the question is how many people are willing to pay the tradeoff for something like 20 minutes in time savings, and among that group how many are actually want to go to Daley Plaza as opposed to somewhere else? hes talking about the volume this can accommodate (and he will definitely need the volume to make this not a complete failure), but im just not seeing it

^ Experience in European and Asian cities would seem to indicate that business travelers do prefer a rail option to the city center that comes frequently and provides a predictable travel time. And Chicago has an even greater (relative) concentration of businesses in the CBD than London or Milan, which have more of a mixed-use core and business scattered over several districts.



In other news, CTA is spending $50M on the Garfield Green Line station for what is, approximately, zero transit value. This station was just built in 2000! And majorly spruced up in 2013 for the Red Line south diversion. At least the architecture is becoming more sophisticated and less like a Mega Bloks set (thank Theaster Gates for that).

Also, sadly, their development vision for this area includes two existing park and ride lots next to the station, which will remain untouched by this project. :yuck:

Who the hell is advocating for the abandonment of rail transit? I don't know anyone in Chicago doing that.

You're not a lawyer, I am, and reading this hurts my brain. Railroads don't have "special powers" such as the power of eminent domain. That power rests entirely with the government and it cannot be "granted" to a private entity. The government may exercise the power of eminent domain on behalf of a private entity (see Kelo v City of New London) but it isn't actually bestowing that power on a private company (note: Pfizer is in no way a railroad).

This is absolute hogwash. The Interstate Highway system was constructed further to the National Interstate Defense Highways Act of 1956. The network had been planned since the 1920's after the trials and tribulations of the 1919 US Army Convoy (which Eisenhower was part of as a junior officer) that drove 3000 miles across the country on the patchwork of highways. Roosevelt kick-started planning of the highway network in the late 30's and Eisenhower championed it after seeing the Reichsautobahn and how it helped facilitate the defense of Germany.

This is an illusion.

Using pre-uber taxi numbers between O'hare and the loop there are 339,000 trips per year. At 1.25 passengers/trip and 25 bucks each, he could take 'em all and only gross $10 mil a year. It'll take a hundred years to pay off the cost of construction.

It is not remotely viable without bleeding a large number of riders from existing transit. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand it frees capacity for other riders. On the other hand, having a destination at both ends of a transit system fills the reverse commute and is what makes it viable.

By using small, high speed, independent vehicles, he not only reduces the travel time, he can reduce the platform wait to however long it takes to fill up the Muskmobile.
He is betting that this convenience has a dollar value, and he aims to find out what it is.
But have no illusions, this is a vampire to existing transit.

The convenience factor is not new. In the heyday of streetcars, we did the same thing. We ran modest capacity vehicles very often. They weren't fast, but they ran so often that the platform wait was minuscule and complex trips weren't eaten up by missed connections.

Unfortunately our two biggest transit mistakes, the nickle fare and transfer, signed the death knell for that convenience. It left the only sustainable path to be one of efficiency. Putting more passengers on fewer vehicles at the expense of service.

I tend to say let him try, with a few caveats and concerns.

It should never cost the taxpayer any thing but his fare.
I should not inconvenience taxpayers or endanger passengers.
And he should not keep spouting bullshit while using my statement of "no skin off my nose" to imply that the things he is saying are true.

I also have real concerns about running lithium batteries in tunnels. A fire in one of his battery packs can produce enough hydrogen fluoride gas to raise a mile of 14ft tunnel to to the LC50.

And, if and when it fails, I am concerned with what use he'll find for a long term lease on 36 miles of tunnels under the city.

No. I've done a fair amount of business travel and I've worked with brokers and consultants for years. If travelers are flying in and coming into the city then odds are they're coming into the downtown area. The Loop isn't the only business nexus but it is a few dollars of a cab ride from the other high percentage areas (Fulton Market/West Loop and Near North). Large portions of business travelers aren't going to the South Side, West Side, or North Side. The businesses there are far too small on the whole for that kind of travel to make economic sense. The largest volume of business travelers, by far, will be heading downtown.



Again, as someone with an expense account I'll tell you times have changed a lot in the last 10 years. Travel expenses are heavily scrutinized now an companies are trying to incentivize frugality (such as by adding unused amounts from expense budgets to the company bonus pool) in order to control costs. Another method is making preferred methods easier to book and expense (such as integration of Uber with our expense reporting & travel management app meaning I have to do nothing versus having to save, scan, and submit a report for a taxi receipt). Travel methods and providers are getting heavily scrutinized to the point where deviations are documented and require justification to your line manager.



Yeah that's just not true nowadays. The price difference matters a lot to companies especially ones with a lot of traveling employees. Those costs add up. What doesn't matter all that much to your employer though is if you have to walk a few blocks with your luggage. Your convenience takes a back seat to the budget.



That last mile was planned out before the traveler left on their trip. Anyone who does this enough has learned how to figure these things out. With all the abundant transportation options in Chicago's CBD that's really a non-issue. The last mile is a lot harder in smaller cities and towns in the hinterlands.



Business travelers will pay for predictability especially when it lets them cut down on the amount of slack time in their schedule. Planning extra time to negotiate the Kennedy (knowing how bad it can get) and then laying about the airport waiting for your flight isn't pleasant. Ultimately we just want to go, get the job done, and go home. So if worst case is downtown traffic means its a 10 minute walk to the station and then 15 minutes to the airport I'll take that in a hearbeat over having to pad my schedule with 45 minutes of time just in case the Kennedy grinds to a halt.

Project isn’t using federal funding. No requirement for an EIS. He’ll just need a FONSI from Illinois EPA, which shouldn’t be too difficult to get.

Then you’ll want to take a closer look at 610 ILCS 5/17:

Sec. 17. If any such [railroad] corporation shall be unable to agree with the owner for the purchase of any real estate required for the purposes of its incorporation, or the transaction of its business, or for its depots, station buildings, machine and repair shops, or for right of way or any other lawful purpose connected with or necessary to the building, operating or running of said road, such corporation may acquire such title in the manner that may be now or hereafter provided for by any law of eminent domain.

(However, in this context we should note that this 19th century law has been amended so it doesn't apply to railroads incorporated after July 1, 1985.)

Most states have similar statutes giving eminent domain powers to railroads, pipeline companies, utilities, and plank road companies.

The south side Green Line is a cash vacuum. The rehab back in the 90's should have consisted of demolishing the elevated and excavating a trench ROW (cost effective considering the alleyway route through miles of mostly vacant land at the time) and extending the lost eastern leg in a subway under 63rd to SI Ave. and ideally tunneling a western leg to Englewood under the Dan Ryan. I know this sounds crazy but consider the upfront rehab costs at the time and the ongoing maintenance cost on 110+ year old elevated structure + stations...

There is no doubt that this can succeed technologically because there is absolutely no new technology involved in this airport express line. I am incredibly skeptical of this thing's ability to recover its multi-billion price tag in a timely fashion.

I am a big fan of express rapid transit lines but as we all know they are virtually non-existent outside of New York City. The Superstation was a chance to create a downtown hub for express CTA rapid transit service to O'Hare and Midway with new local service into neighborhoods beyond those points.

In theory, a new mode incompatible with existing CTA rapid transit service could do that admirably well. But we're seeing no indication that that is remotely on Musk's radar.

And it doesn't really matter if the express service runs at 55mph or 600mph. The fact is that the actual transit time between DT Chicago and O'Hare security involves all sorts of walking and shuffling around at either end. The actual trip to the airport is a fraction of that time.

And for someone flying from Chicago 3~ hours to New York City...the total time of the trip, from the time they physically stand up to leave until the time they unlock the door to their apartment or hotel, is barely affected. Under absolutely ideal circumstances, door-to-door on that trip would be 6 hours. You just saved 30. Big deal.

Also, here is some information on the potential use of eminent domain in Texas for their proposed high speed rail line:
https://www.texascentral.com/rumors-...minent-domain/

I don't know what the law is in Illinois, but politicians can be very easily bought off. Especially with all of this irrational "stopping progress" sentiment motivated by Musk's unrelenting hype campaign, there will be public pressure on already corrupt Illinois elected officials to bow to the Muskman.

yea this is kind of what i was getting at. in the scheme of things, sitting down on the vehicle to get you to from the airport to your final destination...regardless if you choose a cab, or the blue line, or a new technology...at the end of the day its splitting hairs IMO. once youve got your baggage and are on your way...mentally you feel "arrived". sitting in traffic sucks, as does the blue line, but youve already cleared 95% of the hurdles that have been thrown in front of you. if the cab or CTA is taking long, you sit there and stare at your phone like everyone else and the minutes stop mattering (especially when its only a difference between getting there in 15 minutes, and getting there in 30 minutes)

I have a hard time figuring out how this would work. By definition, if you clear TSA at Block 37 MuskRail would need to drop you off at ORD airside, beyond the normal TSA checkpoints (or have some other secured path from the station.) The former means the trains would need to delve quite a way into the terminals, and with them being a fair walk apart would mean a fair bit of walking unless the tunnel path split into multiple spurs at ORD. What about T5 departures which are in an unconnected terminal. You'd clear security at Block 37 and then again at T5? The other option would mean carving out secure paths from wherever the train actually ends to the various terminals. And in either case, what about those with checked bags? Bag check is outside security, would the airlines need to provide a second set of baggage checking stations? This would also mean that TSA at Block 37 would need to screen checked bags, something they are not equipped to do, only hand luggage. I suppose they could split Block 37 into "hand luggage only, cleared" and "checked bags, not cleared" but then you'd need to also segregate them at ORD. Seems messy.

Then, think about the return. For domestic, baggage reclaim is outside security, this would mean you'd need to reclear security just to get to the MuskRail station, unless there were multiple places to board. If you chose a single station by baggage claim, that would imply two stations - one for departures inside security and another for arrivals outside security.

I've never thought about this, but ORD always seems like a sea of cabs, 600 a day seems intuitively low. I guess maybe many of the cabs are suburban or not going to the loop.

There are also 75 other community areas for travelers to go and come.
Pre-uber 1,851,000 a year city total, post-uber 833,000

Like I said before, Oslo has a private express train to the airport. That's about $25, only saves 5-10 minutes but yet it's still pretty popular for business travelers and rich people. It also runs frequently at odd hours, so is more convenient if you are leaving on a early redeye. For business travelers it's a big perk to have for a city, and this will save much more time.

Excuse the typos with my earlier post... I was on the train headed in to work. That said, this seems to be a more reasoned, thoughtful post on your part. Your earlier posts had a more decidedly biased tone to them which smacks of some sort of hidden agenda. Just throwing it out there... but maybe you stand to lose money if Musk succeeds? There is no question that with every technological advancement, there are those on the losing end as well. Just wondering... because in truth, why are you so concerned about Musk's ability to recover multi-billions in a timely fashion?

I mean, in theory I get where you are going with that but in actuality, lawyers will handle all of that. I am not a contract lawyer but I surmise and suspect that there will be all sorts of stipulations and contingencies in this deal... so much so that the Chicagoans should be well protected in the end. That is the one thing we need to be sure of if anything. There needs to be open disclosure/transparency at every stage of this process so that the public is assured that there is no way for this to come back and bite us in the arse.

But that is different from blatantly arguing against this. The argument should be for transparency and safeguards... not against this development as a whole.

A few points:

1) I don’t believe Musk actually intends to make an economic profit on the project alone. This project is more or less a proof of concept; he practically said so in his press conference with Rahm, stating that covering operating costs will be easy but capital not so much.

2) The pie isn’t fixed. How often is the concept of induced or latent demand brought up in this thread? Not to mention the massive expansion of O’Hare to come and continued employment growth in the CBD.

3) There are likely to be revenue sources associated with the project other than fare collection.

I want this tunnel to succeed! I just don't see how it's possible for Elon Musk's Boring Co. to do this project at the stated goals of:

*Breaking ground in 2019 and finish on time
*Coming in at under $1 billion for the stations, tunnel, and pods
*Construction being 100% entirely privately funded
*Having a positive ROI with passenger revenue being sufficient to recapture the initial capital outlays as well as operating, maintenance, and profit or any other strategy that would keep the managing company out of bankruptcy.

If Elon Musk gets just one of the above four, color me impressed! Elon Musk has an opportunity to prove the haters wrong, but it's hard to take seriously when this is the same company that sells flamethrowers.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...eMhqUUoPJPf7qX

This. It is so obvious. This is what visionaries do. They see the bigger picture. He is looking 3, 4 and 5 moves ahead -- playing chess; not checkers.

Anyone can have a vision. But can he turn that vision into reality before Tesla/Boring Company/Space X goes bankrupt?

It's a win-win for Chicago either way, because they'll have the money being spent in the city and some infrastructure in place.

I just want someone to bump this thread and point out the blind followers of Elon Musk if he can't come close to delivering what he promised. Contrarily, if Elon Musk does delivery, I will gladly print out and eat every last one of my words in this thread.

I see a lot of odd ideas in this thread.

Monopolies - If there are 4 ways to get to the airport and someone comes along and creates a 5th way that some people like better, that isn't a monopoly on travel to the airport. There don't need to be two competing tunnels, just alternates.

Existing public transit will shutdown - Loop to O'Hare is a niche market. Even at 15 minutes, is someone in Wicker Park going to go into the loop to catch this tunnel rather than head directly to O'Hare? No one in the Loop will ever want to go to Logan Square?

Eminent Domain - Strange to be concerned about private companies when government has been the biggest abuser. I fail to see how Musk could do more damage to the urban fabric than the interstates did as they bulldozed their way through the city.

Tunneling under the "undesirables" - Is this an argument that transit needs to be more egalitarian. Is it wrong to get on the interstate and speed past all the little farm towns instead of driving through each? Is it wrong to get in an airplane and fly over whole states rather than drive through? Maybe some businesses would feel they lose a potential sale, but most people either shop close to home or seek out a retail destination. Most people don't wander the city hoping to just run into a store. They use their phone and seek it out.

I'm no cheerleader for this scheme, but I think folks comparing it to conventional subway transit tunnels and sneering at the $1 billion total are simply looking at the wrong set of numbers. With no surface or immediate subsurface (utility relocation) construction issues, the X tunnel seems much more like a sewer interceptor or water supply tunnel, dozens of which have been built quite economically under Chicago, whether through blue clay at -30 or through dolomite at -100. Kenny Construction has a couple of used boring machines that they keep fairly busy for the city or MWRDGC, and Deep Tunnel sections of roughly similar length seem to come in at $150-$250 million including drop shafts. The big question is what sort of life-safety measures and evacuation shafts will be required to allow passenger transport through such tunnels.

It's basically just a narrow loading gauge subway tunnel like the old London and Glasgow subways. There are many reasons why all subsequent subway lines have been built to handle larger trains and to permit service walkways and emergency exits. The 11-foot diameter Glasgow Tunnel was built back in the 1890s to...save money. What's old is new again in Musk's future.

Granted, the 14-foot diameter of Musk's sewer pipe (incidentally, dug with a TBM built by another company for that exact purpose) is a whole lot roomier than Glasgow's, but there a bunch of really good reasons why all modern systems are much larger. For example, the LA Regional Connector subway is 21 feet as is the new Seattle University Link tunnel.

I believe that 21 feet is the exterior diameter, so the interior diameter is more like 19 feet. How do people escape from Muskrail in the event of a breakdown if there is no room for a side walkway like the new Seattle tunnel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy5tS0uhQVM

As has already been mentioned, an escape from a train in Glasgow means walking out of the end of the train onto the tracks, then walking to the next station. There, the stations are very close. In Chicago they will be miles and miles and miles away. Each emergency exist is very expensive to build. Like tens of millions per exit.

Thinking as an engineer on safety, what can go wrong? Traffic will be computer controlled, one way. Makes it hard to crash into anything. No rails, so it can’t derail. No real signaling issues. Battery power so that there can’t be a system outage and stalled cars. Pretty easy to make sure a car (skate?) has enough charge to make the run before launching it.

Main concern is a Li-ion battery fire. So I’d design it with two separate traction motors and batteries. In the event of a battery failure, a smoking battery could be dropped, and the trip completed on the spare. The spare also protects against a car stalling out and blocking the track.

Maybe the tunnel could have a vault in the floor every mile or so that a smoking battery could be dropped into?

The only reason I know is to use larger vehicles, either for capacity or comfort. But frequency is much more important to passenger convenience than vehicle capacity, and can often substitute for it. That's why we keep inventing the 8-20 passenger omnibus over and over again in a dizzying variety of gadgetbahnen, whether it's called SkyBus, ALRT, H-Bahn, ICTS, Astram, AGT, DLR, VAL, Crystal Mover, or Innovia.

As for safety, I'd expect an onboard foam fire suppression system for the Li-ion batteries, and oxygen masks and tanks under the seats for evacuation through smoke. A 30-inch catwalk just below sill level. An escape hatch, possibly with a hoistway (for the disabled) next to switchback stairs, every 3000 feet or so. Doesn't seem that daunting.

Did Mr. D really say something positive or am I not reading his post right or is it just a sarcastic post?


I'm not used to seeing anything positive posted by him so perhaps I am the sucker for not reading into it fully.

The quote " every 3000 feet or so" sounds rather demanding kind of like how shadows are oppressive to parking lots and all future buildings must come before the board of the Friends of the Parking lots. I don't get it? What am I missing here. Is Mr. D a pseudonym for Juanita Irizarry?

^ Lol. So true. Mr D is a walking Chicagopedia, but he is almost unilaterally opposed to every single thing that most forumers here get excited about

I thought this is neat. A Wall St analyst predicts that, with completing the OHare-Downtown link, the Boring Company would be worth $16 billion. It would also provide a significant boost to Tesla:

https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-...-ohare-tunnel/

I kind of think Rahm should use some leverage here. He is really giving this company a vote of confidence here. Maybe he should bargain for a HQ, or at least a major office...

Foam won't do it, neither will dropping the battery into a pickle barrel at 125 mph.
Here's what Tesla manual says about battery fires;

FIREFIGHTING
USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons of water, applied directly to the battery,to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. If water is not immediately available, use dry chemicals, CO2, foam, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.
Extinguish small fires that do not involve the high voltage battery using typical vehicle firefighting procedures.
During overhaul, do not make contact with any high voltage components. Always use insulated tools for overhaul.
Heat and flames can compromise airbag inflators, stored gas inflation cylinders, gas struts, and other components which can result inan unexpected explosion. Perform an adequate knock down before entering a hot zone.
Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.
After all fire and smoke has visibly subsided, a thermal imaging camera can be used to actively measure the temperature of the high voltage battery and monitor the trend of heating or cooling. There must not be fire, smoke, or heating present in the high voltage battery for at least one hour before the vehicle can be released to second responders (such as law enforcement, vehicle transporters,etc.). The battery must be completely cooled before releasing the vehicle to second responders or otherwise leaving the incident.
Always advise second responders that there is a risk of battery re-ignition.
Due to potential re-ignition, a Model 3 that has been involved in a submersion, fire, or a collision that has compromised the high voltage battery should be stored in an open area at least 50 ft (15 m) from any exposure.
Warning: When fire is involved, consider the entire vehicle energized. Always wear full PPE, including a SCBA.
HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY - FIRE DAMAGE
A burning or heated battery releases toxic vapors. These vapors may include volatile organic compounds, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide , carbon monoxide, soot, particulates containing oxides of nickel, aluminum, lithium, copper, cobalt, and hydrogen fluoride.
Responders should always protect themselves with full PPE, including a SCBA, and take appropriate measures to protect civilians downwind from the incident. Use fog streams or positive-pressure ventilation fans (PPV) to direct smoke and vapors.


Frankly, this shit is scary enough in the open air. Inside a tunnel, it gives me the screamin' heebie-jeebies.

I predict that the Boring Company will indeed complete this project.

-Tunneling will proceed approximately as suggested by Musk. Mr Downtown is right, this is much more like a water tunnel than a traditional subway. Construction of water tunnels is very predictable.

-They will get somewhat bogged down in the question of surface construction for escape hatches and ventilation, since they are probably underestimating the life safety systems that regulators will require.

-Everything Elon Musk has ever done has been an iterative process, so systems will take time to mature. In the press conference he mentioned that they will be giving some rides prior to revenue service, probably while they iterate on pod designs and control software. This will be a fairly long period.

-The O'Hare station will be expensive but only requires coordination with one agency so will proceed mostly according to plan.

-Completing the station at Block 37 will be expensive and will be a major pain point, perhaps the biggest, because it will involve the largest number of stakeholders. This will eventually become the long pole in the tent. Perhaps they will consider alternate locations (Union Station? Grant Park?) because of this.

-As a result they will blow the schedule by a wide margin, like nearly all of Musk's projects, and get to full revenue operation as much as two years later than planned.


-The budget will also be blown, mostly because they are trying to experiment and figure out how to make the construction process repeatable.

"Chicago is Boring. Boring is Chicago."

:haha:

Aaron (Glowrock)

Those flamethrowers were only $500! I really considered making it a late Xmas present for myself, but thank god they sold out in two or three days and I didn't even get the option to make such a financially dumb decision :)

Honestly, Musk is indeed probably somewhat over optimistic, and I am sure its going to take a hell of a lot more time to build than he is saying, as most things do. The cost will probably exceed his estimations as well. I feel that he and his organization already know about both of those factors however, and is merely announcing faster completion/cheaper construction in order to make this project seem more realistic to the outside world.

Regardless of what the tunnel costs in the end, or how long of a time period it will take to get it paid off from fare revenue, I believe Musk is more interested in just getting a working example of his idea out there. The cost is an afterthought at this point.
The Boring Company is following the same path as his electric car, solar panel, and space launch businesses... start with an expensive initial model, and then through mass production and economies of scale, bring the costs down by several orders of magnitude. But to get there, he needs to get that very first example operational.

Once its done, you better believe every major city on the planet with traffic issues to and from their main airports (pssst... its all of them!) will be visiting Chicago for Musk and his people to showcase the ORD-Loop tunnel and start getting customers. They however, may end up having to pay some portion of their tunnel, or give Musk more flexibility in pricing or tapping other revenue streams. Chicago on the other hand gets it free because we gave him the opportunity to build the showroom model that he can then sell to the world.

In a perfect world, at least. ;)

I wasn’t suggesting anything as small as a pickle barrel. And an overheating battery can be detected quickly enough to come to a stop first.
3000 gallons of water is only 400 cubic feet. A hole 5 feet square and 20 feet deep holds 3700 gallons. Dump the battery fire in that and drive away to safety. Give it a separate vent and the tunnel doesn’t fill with smoke.

Not that complicated. It’s just a concrete pit and a lid.

And what, again, is the idea again? What is the radical new technology that will be demonstrated?

Small tunnels to save money? Done back in the 1890s. All sorts of compromises to save money, has never been done since.

Private construction and operation? Done in New York City and elsewhere between the 1890s and 1940. One-by-one, all for-profit transit companies in the United States were taken over by subsidized public companies. Private ownership and for-profit operation ripe territory for scams.

High speed airport shuttles? Shanghai Maglev goes 300mph. Nobody cares. Proof-of-concept proved why maglevs are bad ideas and have virtually zero practical applications. Like monorails. Musk's sewer pipe don't offer a particularly impressive max speed. 125mph? Doesn't BART hit 80mph in the transbay?

The main technological innovation we're seeing here is...battery operated 1-car trains? Wow. Strike up the band.

Yes, I agree that Block 37 poses challenges. The station cavern is only at the level of the Red/Blue Line tracks (Level -2) and it lies on an angle, so Musk will probably need to dig deeper. Based on his earlier promotional videos, he might put in elevators that bring the cars from the existing cavern down to the new tunnel level, and back up... but there will still need to be a giant pit dug inside of an existing basement, and the Blue Line tunnel will probably need to be underpinned.

What tech does Uber or Lyft demonstrate? They are just cab companies. Those apps save only a few seconds from hailing a cab or a few minutes from calling for a cab. Clearly they are so very low tech, there is no way they can be worth billions of dollars and completely uproot the industry they are in.

Right?

Space travel was also once the domain only of government, whether that is NASA, RosCosmos, ESA, etc. SpaceX and Blue Origin are clearly breaking that mold. Re-using rockets to save billions of dollars and thousands of man hours? Wow, amazing. Except private enterprise is the devil and we hates it! /Gollum

So simply because Musk's proposal isn't going to break any speed records, its an entirely worthless proposal? People should simply be content to be stuck in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway when going to/from ORD and the Loop, because its either that, or an overcrowded and slow conventional rail line. We cannot think outside the box, ever.
Except, that's what America does best. We didn't put a man on the moon by simply doing whats always been done before. You can't simply stop innovating because you run across a few bad ideas.

Yeah, so?

Battery powered homes and vehicles are showing a hell of a lot of promise for the near future, with a more localized power grid from solar panels/home batteries powering homes with renewable energy and electric vehicles lessening America's dependence on foreign oil and making a huge dent in atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

But hey, batteries have been around for like, a long time. Or something. Cant possibly be ground breaking. Excuse me while I tank up my Model T with some good ole kerosene distillate.


There are two outcomes here, either it works or it doesn't. No loss to the city of Chicago if it doesn't. But if it does, it could revolutionize tunneling and transit construction across the US, and that would be a fantastic thing. Not sure why you are so aggressively against Musk even just *attempting* to pull this off. Did he insult your girlfriend or send you a threatening email? Seriously, whats the deal?

Argonne National - The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research
 

Bully for Chicago for being at the forefront with the practical commercial uses for battery technology. By implementing the ChiOrdIing tunnel the parties are putting high level research into high level applications. And if Musk want to use Chicago as a laboratory great.
As TUP mentioned, maybe Chicago can get a permanent Boring R&D presence here. Certainly the institutional ecoshphere already exists. Chicago is home to the Argonne Joint Center for Energy Storage which is run jointly by The University of Chicago and the Dept of Energy.
The mission is to research and facilitate the creation of new energy storage capabilities for transportation, utility grid and buildings. I see a synergy..

Your response proved my point. I have now asked the internet here and on other pages what is so "revolutionary" about this proposed project and nobody can provide an answer other than, like yourself, bringing up unrelated stuff like rideshare.

I'll repeat that Musk's various enterprises are a lot like Theranos -- a "tech" back story and the superficial veneer of "tech", but the actual activity is not tech. One of my better friends and former band mate has been the head of a blood bank and hemotology lab for more than 10 years -- he called out Theranos as a fraud the first time he heard about it.

Another friend of mine does research for venture capitalists (he's one of the people listed here...I'm going to refrain from using his name so he doesn't get harassed by Musk's bots http://www.luxresearchinc.com/about-...rch-management). He has been steering big money away from Musk for the past 5 years because he long ago left the realm of tech but is tricking speculators with the old-fashioned tech story.

There is no new tunneling technology. The Boring Company has yet to build its own machine -- it simply bought an old one from LA and leased another one. There are many companies around the world digging tunnels with a purpose. Musk is hobbyist and a huckster.

Elon Musk's companies approach "traditional" problems from a "tech" standpoint. That is: they bring agile, iterative development with continuous integration, and corresponding organizational structures, to both car and rocket manufacturing.

Both of these industries are traditionally quite slow-moving, heavily laden with bureaucratic processes, management overhead, complicated supply chains with too many hands in the pot (some of which are there for the sole purpose of collecting rent.) Basically, there was plenty of fat to cut by rethinking things from the ground up.

The process wasn't smooth at all in either case, and in Tesla's case it's not even certain at all that it will pan out in the end - but at least in the case of SpaceX, the end result is much leaner than the incumbents and (arguably) more capable too.

Tunnel and transit construction in the US is nothing if not loaded down with bureaucracy and grift. If he can shake up the industry like he did with rockets, even if much of the technology he proposes doesn't pan out, then we all win anyway.

I would imagine that the ORD end will also present challenges. Those two together could soak up a lot of $$ especially with the city having control over both.

Maybe no new tunneling technology, but you are assuming there is nothing new to discover in energy storage technology, that we've reached the pinnacle of knowledge, and that a large scale project will yield nothing new, so ill restate my post..

(btw-good thing those small thinkers weren't involved with the Panama Canal or the Continental railroad.

Could Gary’s airport be getting regularly scheduled commercial service in the next year or two? It’s mentioned as a location for a potential new airline from the man who created JetBlue.

JetBlue’s Founder May Start A New US Airline

^ There is no need for Gary airport. Sounds like a big fail.

Spot on.. Draw a radius around Gary Airport. The closer you get the less affluent, mobile and likely the residents are to fly. Conversely the farther away the more you overlap with areas that are near Midway or Chi Downtown. Look at any demographic map on this board and the development is Downtown or on the Orange and Blue lines, with the exception of Hyde Park, Combined with the lower auto ownership and the abundance of destination and departure choices offered MDW and ORD and the expansion of ORD it just doesn't look good for GRY, and that radius holds true in all directions. Is Gary going to draw consumers from the South Bend market, or Indy. no way. Also Chicago collar county growth is heavily skewed to SW Will county which will default to MDW. And Lake County IL already uses Milw Mitchell as an alternate.
Finally the very discussion we are having on the Ohare express just points out how far GRY has to go to get any kind of transit access... MDW has the orange line and a huge bus transit connection, Ohare has the blue line and the NCS Metra and a bus system and remote parking people mover, and Milw has an Amtrak station that resident of the North Shore and Chicago can access 10 rides a day each way.
Gary airport future is as a cargo airport, they have already acknowledged that. Any pax airline service will be heavily subsidized.

With a 21st century rail link (HSR not just the old SSL), Gary could be a be successful functioning as a relief airport for the metro. Not sure why this isn't obvious to everyone.

Gary airport is very close to South Shore Line, if the airport can get flights it shouldn't be a big deal route it to the airport or run buses. The Region has almost 1,000,000 people, it's not the most affluent but certainly some flights can be run there. It may even be easier for people from South Shore than hiking out to Midway.

Gary will not be a player in passenger traffic. Guaranteed to fail. It has many times already. No reason to think anything has changed.

Obvious it is..30 years down the road! Before that the Chicago-Mitchell rail will have 20+ round trips a day. ChiOrdIng or some other super express will happen at ORD. MDW maybe home to vertical lift off planes. All of this is Possible, same as hsr to GRY.