Comment by AlexandrB
9 years ago
I don't get it. Much of the USA is faced with crumbling infrastructure and a lack of money for maintaining that infrastructure. How is creating a network of powered tunnels - which are much more expensive to maintain than surface roads - going to interact with this economic reality?
This seems like technology that addresses mostly fun, theoretical problems - like traffic optimization, not ugly, practical ones like tight municipal budgets and urban sprawl.
I am not sure the poor state of existing infrastructure precludes someone from building their own new infrastructure. Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money.
Even in the US, passenger rail is typically run by the government or government-like bodies, while freight rail is just private companies. I don't think there's an intrinsic reason for that, it's just how it is. (More like, people with goods to transport are willing to pay, but people with only themselves to transport aren't. Or we see public transportation as a "public good" that's worth subsidizing, but of course the government super subsidizes the road network too.)
The fact that your local politician doesn't want to allocate public funds to shoring up a collapsing bridge doesn't mean that Elon Musk can't spend his own money to build his own bridge (tunnel in this case), right?
Many US passenger rail systems were private but stopped turning a profit and were "nationalized".
They stopped turning a profit because the government regulated their profits (after throwing money at them hand over fist, which was naturally exploited) and then federalized it when it fell apart when they decided finally to go to war.
During World War I, regulation prevented the rail industry from properly responding to an uptick in rail demand for exports to fuel the war's various foreign factions (ship capacity had been greatly reduced by German submarines). After the rail companies asked for a rate increase in order to help deal with the increased traffic (which was rejected), the President seized the rail network in order to sidestep the debacle and get their exports out.
The rails were de-nationalized when the war ended 2 years later. After that, the use for passenger travel steadily declined as automobile and bus transportation grew, and the rails never recovered (except during WWII). In 1971, when the entire network was about to collapse, the government created Amtrak. Amazingly, most of the network is still limited in capacity and speed due to regulations from 1947. And most of the improvements in the system have come since 2000. Any subsidies that could have upgraded the network or increased capacity or efficiency over a period of 80 years went into building highways and airport control towers (but not more efficient public buses or light rail).
Of course, Amtrak still leased its rail lines from the railroads, so the old rail companies became the new landlords and freight providers, while Amtrak serviced passengers. Amtrak basically cut passenger service and available rail lines in half, with whole corridors becoming freight-only. Later Amtrak bought bankrupted railroad track, and currently something like 25% of the rails Amtrak travels are owned by it.
The parent is half-correct. The freight customers don't have the same needs as the passengers, and "more convenient" methods of transportation exist for them, but for some reason the government demands that passenger rail remain (for the next big war?) so it got bailed out and nationalized.
I am not sure the poor state of existing infrastructure precludes someone from building their own new infrastructure. Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money.
It would be relatively easy (which is to say, it would be easier than doing it to private cars) to fit the municipal bus fleet with the equipment to also become automatically piloted "packets." For that matter, it would also be possible to bake-in such functionality to Tesla cars.
> Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money.
It would be interesting to learn details: How often? Who is making how much? And in what circumstances does it tend to work and not work?
In Europe there are plenty of private companies offering public transportation and they are almost always subsidized by the government in one way or another.
> The fact that your local politician doesn't want to allocate public funds to shoring up a collapsing bridge doesn't mean that Elon Musk can't spend his own money to build his own bridge (tunnel in this case), right?
If you're advocating for a private transportation network, then I'm theoretically OK with that as long as it's not subsidized directly or indirectly by the taxpayer. No special tax loopholes or favourable deals on digging rights please.
The problem with such tunnels is that they're natural monopolies, not least because underground space in reasonable depth is finite. It's not a service you'll get competition on.
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Degradation of infrastructure is caused by heavy vehicules (trucks), weather and bad driving. Tunnels solve these 3 issues.
How do tunnels solve bad driving? Tunnel accidents are even worse than those on the surface.
It doesn't look like you get to drive in the tunnels. You get put on a car that is on fixed tracks.
They are clearly pictured as being private tunnels for Tesla owners, which allow the rich technologist to avoid surface traffic, charge their car while on the tunnel platform, and avoid driving through all those uncomfortable poor regions.
It will interact with the surface economic reality in the same way that flying Audis in tunnels interact with the dystopian wilderness in Hollywood sci-fi films.
Lack of money for maintenance is a problem of overextension and overconstruction. Urban sprawls result in the same thing.
Creating a powered tunnel, especially if it can be engineered to be done faster and cheaper, could result in increased urban density?
It's unclear why this centralized control car-train approach even needs to be underground. Seems like you could do something very similar above-ground. It's basically freeways but without human operation.
But getting rights of way are more complicated above ground. That's probably the one thing that's going to kill the Hyperloop and it already strangles passenger rail in the US.
And it's unlikely that any technological/engineering innovation will make that cheaper. I can see why going the underground route is an attractive idea, you can hope to drive the cost down there.
That being said the cost is currently extremely high, the tunnel that is finished boring and still under construction is estimated to cost 4.2 billion for 2 miles dug over 3 years.
Well, since the Internet was once described as a series of tubes(tm), the Boring company is just extending this metaphor to create the Mole People Highway of The Future. That said, it seems like a great experiment to run somewhere in the middle of nowhere in China the next time they want to build another one of those nearly empty cities they wish to fill with future citizens some day.
But seriously, Elon Musk appears to be dating hot and crazy at the moment. Let's just let him get through this phase of his bucket list so he can get back to being visionary once he realizes why one should never marry hot and crazy.
The easy solution is using private project finance instead of public funds.
But I seriously doubt this thing is actually cost efficient.
I feel as though a large scale privatization of roads would see an explosion in toll roads, which I don't believe is a sustainable solution to infrastructure problems.
municipal budget problems are only a problem for the people in office when it goes downhill.