Elon Musk's grand transportation vision

[k1052]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Yeah, welcome to 1994:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls


Musk's star depends on the public not knowing that everything he's doing has already been done. His fanboys think he invented the TBM. Home battery packs for solar power already existed. Electric cars are 100 years old. etc, etc.

As a person who admires what he's achieved at SpaceX and Tesla (considerable incremental progress that entrenched industry said could not be done or didn't care to do) from a practical standpoint I have to say this tunnel venture is unlikely to succeed just like the hyper loop. I have no problem viewing him skeptically until he produces.

If he wants to dig a couple tunnels here at his cost I really don't care much. We can use them later for something if/when it fails.

[Leveled]

He sure pisses off the right wingers, he’s good for that at least.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by Leveled

He sure pisses off the right wingers, he’s good for that at least.

Since when? Only people he seems to piss off are stock traders.

[dubu]

the tunnels will probably end up being a place where driverless cars park and charge. whos going to want to take off and put on those big skates all the time?

[emathias]

The analysis I've seen of the LA car tunnel show that tunnels of that size (12-14 feet diameter) typically cost around $10 million per mile for just the tunnel, which is what he did. So he showed he can match industry standards. The real costs are then installing the parts that enable transportation within the tunnel, building out stations or portals, and implementing health and safety systems. Maybe there are gains to be made in boring methods, but so far, the only way he going to be able to really save money overall is if he can find a way to safely make narrow-bore tunnels efficient in their actual use. Can he come up with a way to efficiently transport people in 12-foot tunnels instead of tunnels the width of standard subway systems. But even then, it's hard to see how he dramatically reduces the costs of building out stations. He's also overly focused on enabling cars in tunnels instead of moving people. With automatic cars, taking a personal car anywhere is fast becoming a thing of the past, plus if you're going into a city center, where are you parking all these cars? Better to sell this as a service where a car picks you up, drops you at a station near you, you take a train-type service at high speed to near your ultimate destination, and a self-driving car picks you up and delivers you to your final destination. I could see that being a reality in the coming decades, but he's not talking about that as his solution

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by emathias

The analysis I've seen of the LA car tunnel show that tunnels of that size (12-14 feet diameter) typically cost around $10 million per mile for just the tunnel, which is what he did. So he showed he can match industry standards. The real costs are then installing the parts that enable transportation within the tunnel, building out stations or portals, and implementing health and safety systems. Maybe there are gains to be made in boring methods, but so far, the only way he going to be able to really save money overall is if he can find a way to safely make narrow-bore tunnels efficient in their actual use. Can he come up with a way to efficiently transport people in 12-foot tunnels instead of tunnels the width of standard subway systems. But even then, it's hard to see how he dramatically reduces the costs of building out stations. He's also overly focused on enabling cars in tunnels instead of moving people. With automatic cars, taking a personal car anywhere is fast becoming a thing of the past, plus if you're going into a city center, where are you parking all these cars? Better to sell this as a service where a car picks you up, drops you at a station near you, you take a train-type service at high speed to near your ultimate destination, and a self-driving car picks you up and delivers you to your final destination. I could see that being a reality in the coming decades, but he's not talking about that as his solution

I mean, he bought a sewer TBM right? Not surprising he achieves industry-standard results...

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by emathias

The analysis I've seen of the LA car tunnel show that tunnels of that size (12-14 feet diameter) typically cost around $10 million per mile for just the tunnel, which is what he did. So he showed he can match industry standards. The real costs are then installing the parts that enable transportation within the tunnel, building out stations or portals, and implementing health and safety systems. Maybe there are gains to be made in boring methods, but so far, the only way he going to be able to really save money overall is if he can find a way to safely make narrow-bore tunnels efficient in their actual use. Can he come up with a way to efficiently transport people in 12-foot tunnels instead of tunnels the width of standard subway systems. But even then, it's hard to see how he dramatically reduces the costs of building out stations. He's also overly focused on enabling cars in tunnels instead of moving people. With automatic cars, taking a personal car anywhere is fast becoming a thing of the past, plus if you're going into a city center, where are you parking all these cars? Better to sell this as a service where a car picks you up, drops you at a station near you, you take a train-type service at high speed to near your ultimate destination, and a self-driving car picks you up and delivers you to your final destination. I could see that being a reality in the coming decades, but he's not talking about that as his solution

The old parts of the London Underground and Glasgow subways are very small -- like 12-14 foot bores. There are many reasons why that narrow width is unacceptable for modern systems. Safe exists is one, the safety of maintenance workers is another. A third, and a fairly significant one, is the ability to buy off-the-shelf standard gauge ight rail and rapid transit trains from established manufacturers. So a smaller tunnel might be feasible and might save money up-front, but will cost more over time in higher maintenance costs and the need to purchase custom rolling stock.

Here in the U.S. we are all familiar with the unusual characteristics of the BART system and how the wide rail gauge, loading gauge, and longest platform length in the world has made expansion of the system and replacement of its rolling stock horrendously expensive.

So the whole problem with Musk's plan is that the tunnels themselves might be cheaper because they are small, but then he's having to reinvent absolutely everything else from the car's mode of transportation to the way the tunnel is outfitted to how it is accessed.

BTW, the typical tunnel bore for traditional rail transit varies between 19 feet and 21 feet. A light rail train is usually 8.5 or 9 feet wide whereas a rapid transit train is usually 10 feet wide. The aforementioned BART is 10.5 feet wide.

[orulz]

The idea that Boring has shown so far is preposterous as proposed. And yet some of the things they are doing may yet be useful.

I have seen lots of criticism based on the outrageous targets of 1 vehicle per second at 150mph, which sounds both unsafe and inefficient, or the idea that this will all pencil out even for private single occupancy vehicles and the idea we will be able to have garage elevators. I agree with these critics. Building more infrastructure for shuffling around people one at a time in 5000 pound steel boxes does not solve energy problems, even if those vehicles are battery powered. I completely agree with all these critics.

I also agree that the hype over this several orders of magnitude out of proportion with what they have actually done so far. This is entirely due to the cult of personality around Musk and everything he touches. You have to look through all that and evaluate it on its merits alone.

I have also seen a lot of criticism based on things like "They haven't invented anything!", this being a conventional TBM, curb guided vehicles have been around for a long time, subways already exist, the Paris Metro already uses tires, etc. These criticisms are shallow and miss the point.

I have seen a near complete paucity of actual critical analysis.

What is most notable is how this differs from conventional transit tunnels. The diameter is obvious and has been discussed here and elsewhere as nauseam. What I haven't seen is an analysis of the entire system. mostly in terms of what has been left out, and what it is proposed to be replaced with.

Generally, the theme is replacing expensive fixed systems in the tunnels themselves, with systems that are mostly housed in the vehicles themselves.

1. Power systems like third rails are gone. These are replaced by batteries. This is mature technology.
2. Wayside signals based on track circuits, radio frequency, and central dispatching are gone. These are an extremely expensive part of any subway. Presumably that is replaced by Autonomous Vehicle technology based on cameras, lidar, sonar, and whatever. This is becoming mature technology as well, and putting it into a tunnel environment where operating constraints are tightly bound makes the problem easier.
3. They claim the needs for ventilation are less, although I am not sure how that works. Maybe they mean compared to tunnels that are meant for cars with internal combustion engines.
4. There are no emergency walkways that I can see, which allows the tunnels to be modestly shorter. Perhaps they intend to make th AV tech failsafe enough that they can use the tunnel floors for evacuation.
5. Last and perhaps most important, there are no underground finished spaces (ie: stations). These are replaced by elevators, ramps to the surface, paternosters, something else. Stations with platforms and waiting areas underground are the biggest cost components of subway construction today. Although they have not demonstrated their replacement, or clearly articulated their vision for a solution either, I think it is a promising Avenue for investigation.

All in all I think the philosophy of investigating the absolute minimum physical plant that can support an underground transportation system is something that might prove productive. It certainly wasn't going to be the MTAs, Alstoms, or Parsons of the world to do these investigations, because they are so entrenched in the status quo.

There have been countless PRT hucksters over the years with proposals to do something kind of like this. This is the first time somebody appears to be putting real money behind it. IMO there is more good likely to come out of this than an equivalent amount of money dropped into the MTA's capital budget, for example, and the money appears to be mostly private, so why not?

[dubu]

i think it has to be simple with no skate crap. a small tunnel is good, rail in a small tunnel wont work great though. motorcycles on the road are dangerous so why not save a bunch of peoples lives and have them in tunnels? with advanced technology have a program to have a set top speed of 30 mph and if you fall off it wont hurt bad because its a tunnel and you will slide. you just have to have good riders and bikes that are low made to be safer for it. the only thing is water would make it slippery.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by orulz

1. Power systems like third rails are gone. These are replaced by batteries. This is mature technology.
2. Wayside signals based on track circuits, radio frequency, and central dispatching are gone. These are an extremely expensive part of any subway. Presumably that is replaced by Autonomous Vehicle technology based on cameras, lidar, sonar, and whatever. This is becoming mature technology as well, and putting it into a tunnel environment where operating constraints are tightly bound makes the problem easier.

I am not an electrical engineer but I am worried about the long-term effects of large-scale battery production and disposal as compared to conventional third rail and overhead catenary. However, a big advantage for battery power is the ability to run during power outages.

As for signaling, conventional rail signaling works very well. Collisions of any kind are very rare.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

I am not an electrical engineer but I am worried about the long-term effects of large-scale battery production and disposal as compared to conventional third rail and overhead catenary. However, a big advantage for battery power is the ability to run during power outages.

As for signaling, conventional rail signaling works very well. Collisions of any kind are very rare.

But as orulz pointed out, horrendously expensive in a tunnel environment. You're installing, maintaining, and running cable between many complex and sensitive pieces of equipment, all in an extremely harsh environment subject to noise, vibration, moisture/flooding, vermin, etc.

If you can put all that tech in the vehicles themselves, then all installation and maintenance of those systems can be done above-ground in a shop instead of down in an active tunnel. That's a big if; I have to imagine the constrained sightlines of a tunnel will make truly wireless detection very difficult. At the very least it will require robust and redundant sets of wireless repeaters so a message can be carried down the tunnel from vehicle to vehicle.

Also the elimination of true stations removes a huge expense. A station cavern with elevators, escalators, etc costs hundreds of millions to build underground. An elevator shaft and the structure to connect it into the tunnel should be cheaper. For a point-to-point shuttle system like the O'Hare proposal without intermediate stops, you just need to build inclines or elevators at each end up to the surface, and all the passenger facilities can be built in a traditional, above-ground structure.

[jmecklenborg]

^Yes, I am very concerned about the wireless signaling. We had a project in my city in 2016 that saved a few hundred thousand dollars by doing wireless real-time arrival signs instead of hard-wiring them in conduit alongside the track. It has been riddled with problems since operation began. This is a system that is entirely above-ground.

Obviously, accurate real-time arrival information is not necessary for trains to operate. But it illustrates that the tech isn't there for even the simplest applications without a huge amount of IT investment.

[SIGSEGV]

Wireless is a potential jamming risk (perhaps accidentally) and signals don't propagate all that well in tunnels anyway...

[emathias]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

...
But it illustrates that the tech isn't there for even the simplest applications without a huge amount of IT investment.

I think it's more accurate to say that choosing the appropriate tech when using wireless in a distributed, enterprise-class system exceeds the skillset of many engineers who otherwise may be brilliant. The skillset to make that determination only has a little overlap with things like wired networks, general software development, operations monitoring, etc. But if you do the proper analysis, it is very much possible to have reliable wireless solutions. But you absolutely can't just hook up a bunch of, for example, 4G cards to your system that was designed to be hardwired and expect them to work. Nor, for example, can it be assumed that if there's a municipal WiFi network that it will be reliable enough for any given system. The solution may not even be to use networks, there are times when utilizing SMS solutions would greatly increase transmission reliability without a noticeable reduction in update speed when the actual amount of data needed can be measured in bytes. In cases like that, you might also want a wireless network for things like software updates, but those may be able to tolerate less-than-perfect network reliability as opposed to providing live, real-time schedule updates, which are useless unless they're reliably timely.

[emathias]

At the end of the day, i'm still really interested in how Spain managed to greatly expand their Madrid and Barcelona systems at costs much lower than industry averages. Personally, I'd be a lot more interested in replicating something pro-rata comparable to Barcelona's public transit system by supplementing existing systems in cities that already have a good core system, or creating a whole system from scratch for places that don't.

The 20 or so most populous US metro areas might be big enough to do something like that (top 20 would be all metro areas with populations above about 2.75 million. And certainly the top 10 most populous metro areas could benefit from such an enhancement. New York might not need too many additional lines, if any, to match Barcelona's level of utility, and cities like Boston, Chicago, Philly, San Francisco, and maybe Washington could use some, but already have a good core, so it would still just be supplemental additions. Then you're looking at places like LA, Atlanta and Miami, with a solid start but vast room for improvement. And finally, cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston.

Those would be the 12 most-populous areas, adding the next ten would probably require a fair bit of work, but some of these mid-sized metro areas would definitely love to have the investment and are at least trending toward an urbanization pattern that might support extensive transit - places like Seattle, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Denver, San Diego, but some of the other metro areas in that size might be hard-pressed to ever be converted into a city that could take advantage of excellent transit - places like Riverside and Tampa. And the "in-between" places like Detroit and St. Louis could, in theory, become wonderful, transit-oriented places but have had their cores so badly depopulated, that any massive mass transit investment would have to be paired with really strong financial incentives to re-populate them.

If the Feds decided it was necessary for the long-term health of the country to have dense urban centers around the country, and decided to practically pay people to move back into dense parts of cities (new or old). But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by emathias

At the end of the day, i'm still really interested in how Spain managed to greatly expand their Madrid and Barcelona systems at costs much lower than industry averages.

In at least a few examples, they built the station within the traditional bore of the TBM. This creates a less-than-ideal station, and certainly nothing on par with the Washington Metro's stations, but it is functional.

What if a TBM could drill a wider bore when it arrives at a station site, enabling better stations than the ones they built in Spain? Nobody has solved this problem.

How does a two-bore tunnel pair create cross-passages automatically? Nobody has solved this.

How does a TBM truly finish a tunnel as it proceeds through the ground? Or could a second machine follow the TBM and lay the track and do the electrical conduit and signaling and lighting all in one pass?

This is the "tunneling innovation" that is left out there to be figured out. Musk simply digging a sewer pipe and driving an electric car through it doesn't solve any of the real problems with tunneling costs.

[Leveled]

What is your problem with him spending his own money to try things out?

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Leveled

What is your problem with him spending his own money to try things out?

Because he is deceiving the public into thinking that a) he's a super-genius and b) to abandon steady improvement to traditional public transportation in favor of his preposterous tunnel and hyperloop schemes.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Because he is deceiving the public into thinking that a) he's a super-genius and b) to abandon steady improvement to traditional public transportation in favor of his preposterous tunnel and hyperloop schemes.

Also I fully expect Chicago to bail out his O'Hare scheme (not to mention the $250 million white elephant donation of the vacant superstation).

[Leveled]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Because he is deceiving the public into thinking that a) he's a super-genius and b) to abandon steady improvement to traditional public transportation in favor of his preposterous tunnel and hyperloop schemes.

Deceiving? Are you projecting or something? Did he promise you this, directly?

Super genius? That’s an internet meme. Jealous about it?

Abandon traditional public transit? Yeah we were building the crap out of that, then he showed up, and we stopped.

Your motivations make no sense.