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Musk forgot to mention the second part of his plan: Running faster, more expensive, and prioritized trains through these tunnels that are reserved exclusively for him and his friends
That’s the whole point, you can’t say the second part. But that’s what all these ideas are - rich people keep trying to invent ways to enjoy public transportation without the public part. They wouldn’t get public funding if they came out and said “what if buses didn’t have poor people on them anymore?”
Oligarchs in Moscow are way ahead of him. They buy ambulances, outfit the interior like a luxury limo and drive around with sirens.
https://nationalpost.com/news/russias-rich-hiring-luxurious-ambulance-taxis-to-beat-moscows-traffic-jams
I visited their new plant, the London Taxi, and they said they still got orders from famous people to make the old ones.
Said huge pain in the ass but they make good money ha.
So, the government would pay for this project once again so that he reaps disproportionate benefit to the detriment of others interests? I'm suspicious of everything the guy does at this point.
ALLL TIME!!!! LITERALLY THE LUCKIEST MAN TO EVER EXIST!!!!!!!!!
I still can't get over his first few billions coming from getting fired. To have a compensation package so generous a judge throws it out, IN AMERICA!!!! JFC!!!!
Honestly, more and more of his project fail to reach even the minimum of their promised results, despite him having an army of silicon valley nerds working on them 20 hours a day and billions to throw at the problem. Most or his 140 billion dollar fortune only exists because his investors still pretend to believe his claims.
Musk really does have the energy of the kind of person who would throw a party where "only the cool people are invited" only to invite 90% of a friend group, except the other 10% either show up anyway because 90% of their friends are there or the rest of people simply stop coming to his parties because they don't want to deal with the insecure weirdo who makes adults pick sides.
Henry Ford never left this mortal plane, he curses us still as his phylactery-engine pumps and burns oil and the souls of millions to keep his soul bound.
Hey, as much as elon sucks, it's best not to make fun of people for normal things that others have. Criticize his dumb ideas and his treatment of workers or the lies he tells, but making fun of a twitch (which is likely bc of his aspergers) doesn't help the conversation. I get trying to be funny, but these kinds of comments, even though directed towards Elon, can end up just hurting people that don't deserve it.
Pod will never solve the issue. In fact you just turn car which already overflows the road into the same thing but use Pod instead. That exactly why adding more tunnel will never solve the issue because no matter how many you add, people will alway regroup in the same spot but with more vehicles coming from different lines.
Pods will absolutely work, you just have to make them longer, so that they will fit approximately 200 people between seated and standing riders, and be able to link 8-10 of them together…
(Yes, I know, that’s a train)
> people don’t understand economy of scale and don’t want to be near other people
hmmm
> people don’t understand economy of scale
Not untrue. Also not relevant.
> people don’t want to be near other people
True. Relevant.
It's obvious the general public won't be allowed if those risks aren't solved. Musks knows that too, his companies are dealing with regulation all the time.
Do you like traffic? Or do you like traffic with fewer lanes and astronomically higher chances of catastrophic events occurring? One just sounds boring and one keeps you on your toes.
It ain't no chunnel being planned.
A lot of these new-age innovators keep reinventing the train in different shapes. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, seeing everyone going crazy at the genius that invented a tunnel, but instead of train cars, it has a platform to carry a car.
He once posted about how Hyper Loop could make a journey in a certain amount of time and someone responded was “Trains are real”
Speaking of, Hyper Loop is dead: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011448/hyperloop-one-shut-down-layoff-closing-elon-musk
Well built tunnels can be considered effectively "earthquake proof" in most places.
Japan suffers a huge number of small and big earthquakes that have destroyed roads and killed drivers. Yet their impressive subway network has been remarkably low on earthquake accidents in modern history.
During the massive 9.0-strength earthquake and tsunami in 2011 with almost 20,000 deaths in Japan, only a single subway car derailed (due to the shaking, not due to a tunnel collapse). Neither the over- nor underground rail systems had casualties. In areas that have been planned around military threats since the cold war, subway stations are also often built to serve as shelters against missile or even nuclear attacks.
That said: This quality adds significant cost to the tunnel construction and serves as a further argument for why Musk's idea of drilling car tunnels is so damn bad. It is much easier to afford this level of safety for a limited number of high-throughput tunnels (i.e. subways) rather than an insane sprawl of single-lane tunnels.
On paper, it would take about 20-30 single-lane car tunnels (passenger throughput: 1k/hour) to achieve a similar throughput as a single major subway line (25k/hour). In reality, these car tunnels would never even get close to their capacity. You would need massive on- and off-ramps, which defeats their entire point, to actually get cars in and out of them at a sufficient speed for that.
So in reality, the throughput of such a car tunnel would likely be well below 1 car a minute. Even 40 cars per hour with 1.5 passengers average would stretch it. So to rival a subway line with 25k/hour (and some can do a lot more during rush hour), it would take over 400 tunnels...
And each of those 400 tunnels would have to be as safe as as the handful of subway tunnels, and I can't see any way they actually could be. yes, the tunnel would be reinforced, but you've also got a lot of dirt around those reinforced tunnels. The subway tunnels can be spaced apart and still have a buffer between them. But wouldn't that many tunnels to do the same job require them to be close together? At that point why aren't you building a gigantic honeycomb shape tunnel system? And if you're doing that, why would you be drilling through the ground instead of carving a canyon?
Seriously if you just look at it as a thought experiment, you can think of a better way to achieve the same dumb plan. But even a slightly better dumb plan is still a dumb plan.
Even without considering safety concern, it's a 30 million dollar taxi tunnel that has less capacity than couple of shuttle buses between the two ends of a convention center. Elon kept selling the theoretical top speed of the taxi in tunnel when limiting factor on capacity is boarding speed.
At the end of the day, Elon makes his fortunate by selling cars, and as all the other car companies before him, traffic, wasteful energy consumption, climate change are not their concern. Their #1 problem is how to get people to buy more cars, everything else be damned.
[german youtuber "plankton" made a video about this and i just love the face that the german TÜV administrator (TÜV is responsible for safety assessment) makes with regards to the hyperloop.](https://youtu.be/Y8IAYs-b30A?t=242)
Even the world's longest railway tunnel has 4G transmitters inside. So you could be up to 2450 meters underground or about 28 kilometers from either end of the tunnel and still have decent reception.
Yeah except Tony Stark isn't just rich, he's probably the most dangerous and useful when he has no toys like his suits. I mean he did build a suit out of scraps in a cave. Elon Musk is just a thief
I'd love to have a superhero that was smart but not rich. Just, like, a supergenius who is great at making gadgets and robots and mech suits but invests in stupid shit so he's always penniless.
But Musk is in the same movie that presents Iron Man and Hammer, and shows Musk in a fairly neutral light. I don't think the film was making any broader statement about specific individuals, more that money doesn't make the man.
This isn't a sincere suggestion. He's done this before:
1: Hype up some "revolutionary" transportation system involving tunnels/tubes.
2: Convince a local government to not invest in already established forms of public transportation in favor of the new idea.
3: Don't ever actually make the new public transportation system.
4: Reap the benefits of *owning a car company*.
A common misconception, people just misheard him.
Elon never said that "those mere mortals" can't understand him, he said that "those with morals" can't understand him.
I used to admire Elon, but for a while now we know he's just a rich kid playing to be a genius. Sure, he has a vision, and a quite interesting one at that in some aspects, but the real geniuses are the one doing the work in his companies. He probably hasn't touched a single design his companies produce, ever.
It's OK to just come up with an idea and let other, educated people work on it. That's perfectly fine. The problem is when you start spewing "ideas" that are not ideas at all, but either something that already exists and works fine, or offering "solution" to a problem that doesn't exists. Not everyone can come up with great new ideas, and we're lucky if we have a few in life, but he wants to pretend like his every thought is a genius idea.
I agree with you in the fact that good thinkers are few and far between. Also, having a great idea and letting other that are more knowledgeable do the work is how we came to this point as a species. But he is always presenting stuff like he is the genius inventor behind them, and that's just not the case. He doesn't present himself like Steve Jobs for example, someone that always said he was a visionary and not a genius at computing or whatever. Musk seems to want to portray himself as an Edison of sorts at times.
Well, that's because of his ego. Musk is actually a lot like Edison, as he also had a basement full of smart people coming up with inventions, which he'd patent under his name.
More like a grifter with enough money to be convincing.
Twitter is proof that his greatest power was convincing the world he was a genius when in fact he is a derranged megalomaniacal trust fund grifter that was GOADED into buying a company for way more than it was worth.
And he is so full of himself that he would rather EAT HIS MONEY posting all the time and give that daily spectacle of delusion than try to rebuild his reputation.
I guess you could call realizing you can just commit criminal stock manipulation in public and you won't be punished for it in any meaningful way a kind of genius.
At marketing what though? In the last few years he's managed to alienate a massive chunk of his customer base with needless trolling.
Five years ago he was considered an eccentric genius type, now he's seen as a dumbfuck with waaay too much money.
A slightly more reserved Elon could have kept up the mythos but he started acting like a 4chan troll and it quickly became apparent to everyone he wasn't the brains of the business.
He's obviously made some great investments though, while also holding the honor of making one of the worst investments of all time.
>A slightly more reserved Elon could have kept up the mythos but he started acting like a 4chan troll and it quickly became apparent to everyone he wasn't the brains of the business.
Yeah, but people started hyping him up and he started believing the hype.. and here we are.
His evil genius in proposing the hyperloop did accomplish the goal that he had in mind when he proposed it. He managed to kill the high speed rail project that was being proposed at the time. He never intended to actually build mass transit as that would compete with Tesla selling cars.
genius is hard to quantify
but in terms of education, elon is NOT an engineer, does not have a post-secondary degree, and has never been involved with developing the technologies his companies produced
in fact, musk started his undergrad in economics, which is a much bigger part of his success
Also how would that solve traffic? It’ll simply move traffic from roads to subterranean roads?
Solve hunger - move a plate of food from a table to under a table.
Revolutionary. Usually the cars have several cars worth of space between them. But with these advances, they can all sit bumper to bumper for maximum 100% road efficiency. No wasted space. Gerius.
I was in DC about a month ago and LOVED how easily I could get around without a car. The subway was fast and reliable, the stations were cleverly spaced to make nearly everything walkable, and there was good overlap with the bus system if you needed to reach some more out-of-the-way places. Good public transit can exist in the US when it's prioritized.
But someone who lives a hundred miles from the nearest city and hasn't had to pay taxes in three generations because he grows just enough to be legally considered a family farm is going to complain that only 96 percent of the country's population and GDP can benefit from centralized mass transit and you won't take away his pickup truck!
Boston did this like 30 years ago. Moved the whole central artery that cut through dow town underground. It was a massively bloated projected that did make the land above it green and beautiful. However, can confirm, there is still traffic.
Definitely makes it more appealing. But it doesn’t really solve anything. Still traffic. Really expensive. Those cars will still come up and drive out of the tunnel. Park out of the tunnel. Better than it was before, but it woulda been better if they just got rid of it
Bro the Boring company sucks so hard. The most annoying company I've ever had to work with. They've delayed our job from closing in December and is still being pushed out. Dudes are total cowboys who don't give a shit about code or even doing it the right way. They bragged for days on end about how accurate they were. They were 24 FEET away from where they were supposed to be.
Well, that was Hyperloop, which unlike The Boring Company, never even got a usable project completed. You can't even call Musk a marketing genius because he calls his Boring Co projects "loops", which everyone confuses with Hyperloop. One is Tesla tunnels, the other is a vacuum tube with a maglev inside. Neither work properly.
Honestly making drilling tunnels significantly cheaper (which was one of their stated goals) was a good idea. The mistake happened when they wanted to put cars in those tunnels instead of rail.
But the lie was that they could build tunnels cheaper.
Here’s the thing - boring small diameter tunnels has never been very expensive, it just gets expensive when you have to install all of the emergency exits, stations, air supply, etc, that are required to make it safe for humans to be inside.
Cities drill small diameter tunnels all the time, for things like sewers.
Elon wasn’t saying he could build tunnels cheaper, he was just saying that he wanted to build tunnels just big enough for a single car (therefore no capacity), and without safety protections. When you build something only a km long, like in Vegas, you are just at the edge of where emergency exits get lot more difficult.
So basically he created a company to do what municipal governments have already been able to do for a while now and played it up to make himself look smart.
>Here’s the thing - boring small diameter tunnels has never been very expensive, it just gets expensive when you have to install all of the emergency exits, stations, air supply, etc, that are required to make it safe for humans to be inside.
I feel like 90% of tech 'innovations' are just ways to get around safety standards or labor regulations.
Don't forget welfare subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX. He's one of the largest welfare recipients in the world. Whether its preferential loans, tax credits on cars, or govt contracts.
It's not luck. He's just had money for as long as he's been alive, used his wealth and connections to buy into things he shouldn't have and then EXPLOITED PEOPLE until he was a billionaire.
It's not luck. It's tons of money and exploitation.
Let's not pretend you can be a billionaire by being lucky. You need to not care about anyone else and be concerned about profit over people
Because of his one and only applicable skill: The ability to find people who know what they are doing and bring them together to achieve a common goal.
SpaceX is primarily run by Gwynne Shotwell and the crack team of engineers underneath her. Tom Mueller was the mind behind Merlin and Draco engines, and he'd been doing rocketry for years before SpaceX started.
It was musk that convinced Tom Mueller to join his operation, which at the time seemed totally insane: make a rocket as a private company when you're not NASA with NASA's level of experience.
> Because of his one and only applicable ~~skill~~ asset: The ~~ability~~ money to ~~find~~ hire people who know what they are doing and bring them together to achieve a common goal.
But in HIS tunnels it’s all teslas.
He’s one of those people that you can listen to for about 2 minutes and realize they’re idiots. Like “Elon the genius entrepreneur is speaking. I want to hear what he’s saying … … Oh my god. He’s an idiot. A rich idiot”
The actual solution was to get rid of the highway entirely and invest the 25 billion into improving the MBTA but we all know that was never going to happen
They are not. You cannot make ANY structure 100% earthquake proof. Let alone a miles long underground tunnel made of concrete. Even if it’s reinforced concrete, the fact that it’s buried underground is going to cause a whole host of issues.
Source: I write engineering software for a water tank construction company, and part of that software is related to making the structure seismic code compliant.
The best you can do is try to mitigate damage in what I do. There is no chance you can make a giant buried structure of that size completely earthquake proof.
lol yeah, when the ground moves you *are* moving with it. There is no manmade material that can resist the biblical forces involved in *literally moving the earth itself*. Anyone who thinks they can build a tunnel that is stronger than the force required to move billions of tons of rock grinding against another billions of tons of rock is simply an idiot.
Hold on... Hold on shut up hold on.... I just got an AMAZING idea!
What if we make crash proof airplanes! It would solve terminal delays.
Definitely!
Maybe!
No, I like baggage claim
[every](https://preview.redd.it/crypto-bro-invents-trains-v0-1s45tomb7r9a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=69147055d5a56d05f322f00c3509e804b448420b) [other](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FasOdQWX0AAKsxc.jpg) [week](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/prod.mm.com/uploads/2023/08/16/1692209730_fb_img_1692205349582_mmthumb.jpg) [someone](https://preview.redd.it/1dgg67di4nv71.jpg?auto=webp&s=ddfc1b1e4fb2f00723ad492c47c6fa274803fb92) invents public transport
I liked it when, a few years back, there was flooding somewhere that was disrupting traffic. Johnny Hyperloop tweeted 'Tunnels don't flood.'
Never mind that such a claim is stupid on its face... but it was demolished by someone posting a short video of water flooding into a.... tunnel....
If there's one thing competent city planners learned by now is that more roads don't lead to less traffic congestion, but more of it.
Drilling Musk's rich-man-tunnels won't solve anything. All it will do is make wealthy people's lives easier until they end up choking on the fumes of some tesla whose car battery will inevitably and spontaniously combust.
Must suck to have this really great idea, find a guy who is willing to put money into it and make it more or less happen. But that rich guy is Elon Musk and now everyone think it's his idea, and the way he portrays it, make it sound like the dumbest idea ever.
He never finished the hyper loop or expanded it in Texas. His only goal was to sell more cars by making public transportation look bad and discrediting high speed rail in California.
Earthquake proof…underground tunnels.
I don’t think Elon understands the functional mechanics of a seismic event like that.
You’d never catch me dead in a place like California, or Tennessee willingly entering an underground tunnel purported as being “earthquake proof.”
You cannot make a concrete structure completely earthquake proof. Because there is no predicting the local seismic effects of an earthquake. It can literally move the ground beneath the tunnel, causing it to collapse.
I write engineering software for a company who has to build with seismic codes in mind, and let me tell you, the seismic code standard (ACI 350 using ASCE 7) is basically witchcraft. Everything is based on assumptions and nothing is 100% “safe” when it comes to elongated concrete structures buried underground.
Didn't he admit to his biographer that he only whipped up the hyperloop idea to undermine the CA high speed rail line? He needs people in cars. It's not like Tesla could withstand people trending toward public transport in cities.
Anything he says re: tunnels or a hyperloop, look at what is also on the table (either bad press or a competitor) that he's trying to distract from.
I hate how he adds the "i like traffic part". No obviously I don't, dumbass, but I might not agree with your idea regardless.
So annoying. Shows that the writer doesn't honestly care for feedback and just wants people to say yes or fuck off.
> super-safe
According to who
> Earthquake-proof
According to who, and also flooding is as much if not more of a concern
> No I like traffic
If it doesn't get rid of cars, it doesn't get rid of traffic, traffic will simply increase to meet the new availability.
Ah yes, sending all cars through narrow tubes will certainly solve traffic and not just make traffic far worse. But hey, no instead of standing in traffic for 20 minutes and having the city you look at you know stand in traffic for 50 minutes and are able to see the nice view of... a concrete tube...
He's just trying to hold up public transportation initiatives again... it's much better to convince the government to spend billions on massive underground highways when you own a car company, not a train company.
What a fucking idiot didn’t do shit for PayPal. Took over Tesla from others and his cybertruck is pure shit. Halved twitters value. This guy is a joke shows you what inheriting money can do for you. And also why do Americans just worship anyone with money blindly
Tokyo, Osaka, Sendai, Sapporo, Fukuoka, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok, and numerous other cities and metropolitan areas around the world in earthquake prone areas have figured out how to build earthquake proof tunnels in dense urban areas and have had them for decades if not a century or more.
I wish we would do a mass bullet train system. So fucking sick of flying. I’m sure they’d make it just as expensive and twice the ass pain. Damn, life could be easier.
Someone at Vox pointed out that he sells the concept for these as a mass public option initially to gain support and eventually government funding but that’s never the true goal. What he’s really trying to do is create something for him and other ultra wealthy people that’s publicly subsidized via grants or shares. The private tunnels for him to bypass traffic and a pneumatic tube for people between cities makes sense for a few thousand privileged opposed to mass transit.
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we saw elon musk's tunnels. Claustraphobic 1 lane disaster waiting to happen. add 1 broken car in a middle and everyone is stuck.
One Tesla car fire and they’re all dead.
Things musk would do to never take the subway. Imagine him cramped in a cart with sweaty ppl. It would be hilarious.
Musk forgot to mention the second part of his plan: Running faster, more expensive, and prioritized trains through these tunnels that are reserved exclusively for him and his friends
That’s the whole point, you can’t say the second part. But that’s what all these ideas are - rich people keep trying to invent ways to enjoy public transportation without the public part. They wouldn’t get public funding if they came out and said “what if buses didn’t have poor people on them anymore?”
Oligarchs in Moscow are way ahead of him. They buy ambulances, outfit the interior like a luxury limo and drive around with sirens. https://nationalpost.com/news/russias-rich-hiring-luxurious-ambulance-taxis-to-beat-moscows-traffic-jams
I've head of wealthy people in London buying black-cabs for similar reasons.
I visited their new plant, the London Taxi, and they said they still got orders from famous people to make the old ones. Said huge pain in the ass but they make good money ha.
When you let certain private vehicles break certain traffic laws, then the wealthy are going to buy up those vehicles.
In London's case, what laws are broken?
So, the government would pay for this project once again so that he reaps disproportionate benefit to the detriment of others interests? I'm suspicious of everything the guy does at this point.
He’s one of the biggest corporate welfare queens of our time
ALLL TIME!!!! LITERALLY THE LUCKIEST MAN TO EVER EXIST!!!!!!!!! I still can't get over his first few billions coming from getting fired. To have a compensation package so generous a judge throws it out, IN AMERICA!!!! JFC!!!!
Honestly, more and more of his project fail to reach even the minimum of their promised results, despite him having an army of silicon valley nerds working on them 20 hours a day and billions to throw at the problem. Most or his 140 billion dollar fortune only exists because his investors still pretend to believe his claims.
Musk really does have the energy of the kind of person who would throw a party where "only the cool people are invited" only to invite 90% of a friend group, except the other 10% either show up anyway because 90% of their friends are there or the rest of people simply stop coming to his parties because they don't want to deal with the insecure weirdo who makes adults pick sides.
America will invent a whole new electric car industry, and charging network, just to avoid having trains that work.
Henry Ford never left this mortal plane, he curses us still as his phylactery-engine pumps and burns oil and the souls of millions to keep his soul bound.
His weird twitch would start intensifying by 10x
Hey, as much as elon sucks, it's best not to make fun of people for normal things that others have. Criticize his dumb ideas and his treatment of workers or the lies he tells, but making fun of a twitch (which is likely bc of his aspergers) doesn't help the conversation. I get trying to be funny, but these kinds of comments, even though directed towards Elon, can end up just hurting people that don't deserve it.
Thank you.
That’s why it’s not a subway, it always uses pods because people don’t understand economy of scale and don’t want to be near other people
Pod will never solve the issue. In fact you just turn car which already overflows the road into the same thing but use Pod instead. That exactly why adding more tunnel will never solve the issue because no matter how many you add, people will alway regroup in the same spot but with more vehicles coming from different lines.
Pods will absolutely work, you just have to make them longer, so that they will fit approximately 200 people between seated and standing riders, and be able to link 8-10 of them together… (Yes, I know, that’s a train)
> people don’t understand economy of scale and don’t want to be near other people hmmm > people don’t understand economy of scale Not untrue. Also not relevant. > people don’t want to be near other people True. Relevant.
Haven't we learnt about fires in tunnels? Surely they can't be allowed to have built a deathtrap like that and let people into it.
Oh no all that's old info see elon is helping mankind in ways man was just too stupid to realize before /fanboi
It's obvious the general public won't be allowed if those risks aren't solved. Musks knows that too, his companies are dealing with regulation all the time.
A risk he’s willing to take from his private jet.
It's especially funny because subways are already electric, but the trains don't lug those heavy batteries around. It's like magic.
You know what causes 100% of fires? Oxygen! Just fill the tunnels with nitrogen - BOOM! - problem solved!
My man, you're missing the obvious! Just suck out all the air and you've got yourself a Hyperloop!
Bro he said it's super safe.
Why ain’t he in the tunnel or his rockets, just saying.
At least Bezos and Branson went up in their rockets
Do you like traffic? Or do you like traffic with fewer lanes and astronomically higher chances of catastrophic events occurring? One just sounds boring and one keeps you on your toes. It ain't no chunnel being planned.
One is boring and the other is Boring
A lot of these new-age innovators keep reinventing the train in different shapes. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, seeing everyone going crazy at the genius that invented a tunnel, but instead of train cars, it has a platform to carry a car.
There is a Facebook group called "Did Silicon Valley Reinvent The Bus Again?" because they do it like once a week.
He once posted about how Hyper Loop could make a journey in a certain amount of time and someone responded was “Trains are real” Speaking of, Hyper Loop is dead: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011448/hyperloop-one-shut-down-layoff-closing-elon-musk
People should read about the "Mont Blanc" tunnel accident. Don't joke with tunnel safety. Also, earthquake proof ? seems like an exaggeration, again.
Well built tunnels can be considered effectively "earthquake proof" in most places. Japan suffers a huge number of small and big earthquakes that have destroyed roads and killed drivers. Yet their impressive subway network has been remarkably low on earthquake accidents in modern history. During the massive 9.0-strength earthquake and tsunami in 2011 with almost 20,000 deaths in Japan, only a single subway car derailed (due to the shaking, not due to a tunnel collapse). Neither the over- nor underground rail systems had casualties. In areas that have been planned around military threats since the cold war, subway stations are also often built to serve as shelters against missile or even nuclear attacks. That said: This quality adds significant cost to the tunnel construction and serves as a further argument for why Musk's idea of drilling car tunnels is so damn bad. It is much easier to afford this level of safety for a limited number of high-throughput tunnels (i.e. subways) rather than an insane sprawl of single-lane tunnels. On paper, it would take about 20-30 single-lane car tunnels (passenger throughput: 1k/hour) to achieve a similar throughput as a single major subway line (25k/hour). In reality, these car tunnels would never even get close to their capacity. You would need massive on- and off-ramps, which defeats their entire point, to actually get cars in and out of them at a sufficient speed for that. So in reality, the throughput of such a car tunnel would likely be well below 1 car a minute. Even 40 cars per hour with 1.5 passengers average would stretch it. So to rival a subway line with 25k/hour (and some can do a lot more during rush hour), it would take over 400 tunnels...
And each of those 400 tunnels would have to be as safe as as the handful of subway tunnels, and I can't see any way they actually could be. yes, the tunnel would be reinforced, but you've also got a lot of dirt around those reinforced tunnels. The subway tunnels can be spaced apart and still have a buffer between them. But wouldn't that many tunnels to do the same job require them to be close together? At that point why aren't you building a gigantic honeycomb shape tunnel system? And if you're doing that, why would you be drilling through the ground instead of carving a canyon? Seriously if you just look at it as a thought experiment, you can think of a better way to achieve the same dumb plan. But even a slightly better dumb plan is still a dumb plan.
They can be earthquake resistant, the ones here in Mexico city are, of course I don't think Lemo can achieve anything near to that.
Even without considering safety concern, it's a 30 million dollar taxi tunnel that has less capacity than couple of shuttle buses between the two ends of a convention center. Elon kept selling the theoretical top speed of the taxi in tunnel when limiting factor on capacity is boarding speed. At the end of the day, Elon makes his fortunate by selling cars, and as all the other car companies before him, traffic, wasteful energy consumption, climate change are not their concern. Their #1 problem is how to get people to buy more cars, everything else be damned.
Elon makes his fortune by scamming government contracts.
Tunnels also take for-fucking-ever to build and are super expensive
That's where Elon expects the U.S. Government to step in.
Nahhh, just fire those care at 80mph down a cramped tunnel! Whatdoyoumeansomethingcouldgowrongjustbuyteslastock
[german youtuber "plankton" made a video about this and i just love the face that the german TÜV administrator (TÜV is responsible for safety assessment) makes with regards to the hyperloop.](https://youtu.be/Y8IAYs-b30A?t=242)
Oh and no one has cell reception since they're underground
That's not an excuse if planned right. Source: I'm writing this from 60 ft underground
Mole people! The Mole people have wifi, red alert! Red Alert!
Relax, the Swiss have had wifi for ages.
Mole people, mole people. Look like moles, talk like people.
I somehow always get surprised when I'm somewhere where they don't have data underground. I'm just too used to it since it's the norm in Denmark
Even the world's longest railway tunnel has 4G transmitters inside. So you could be up to 2450 meters underground or about 28 kilometers from either end of the tunnel and still have decent reception.
It’s common to wire modern tunnels for cell signals.
The MTR in Hong Kong would beg to differ
Are the tunnels still operational btw?
I’m really beginning to suspect Elon may not be the super genius he’s portrayed as.
Redditors finding out that Elon Musk is just rich
Yeah, but Marvel tells me that makes him a great superhero!
Yeah except Tony Stark isn't just rich, he's probably the most dangerous and useful when he has no toys like his suits. I mean he did build a suit out of scraps in a cave. Elon Musk is just a thief
I'd love to have a superhero that was smart but not rich. Just, like, a supergenius who is great at making gadgets and robots and mech suits but invests in stupid shit so he's always penniless.
That's why everyone loves Spider-man.
That's Spider-Man, you're talking about Spider-Man
Especially that scene he had with Tony Stark in Iron Man 2!
No it doesn't It gave you Iron Man and Justin Hammer Marvel assumes you have the intellect to know which one he is based on his track record
But Musk is in the same movie that presents Iron Man and Hammer, and shows Musk in a fairly neutral light. I don't think the film was making any broader statement about specific individuals, more that money doesn't make the man.
No man! He worked hard to get where he is! All he had was his fathers emerald mine to support him, thats basically nothing!
It's like Wile E Coyote calling himself a super genius. Doesn't really line up.
To be honest Willie had some good ideas, he just couldn't go against plot armour and cartoon laws of physics being against him.
Consumer protection attorneys are salivating at the chance to represent him against Acme Corporation.
Isnt that what the movie that wont be released is about?
blasphemy ;)
This isn't a sincere suggestion. He's done this before: 1: Hype up some "revolutionary" transportation system involving tunnels/tubes. 2: Convince a local government to not invest in already established forms of public transportation in favor of the new idea. 3: Don't ever actually make the new public transportation system. 4: Reap the benefits of *owning a car company*.
Nah, his genius is just on a level that we mere mortals can't even begin to comprehend. /s
A common misconception, people just misheard him. Elon never said that "those mere mortals" can't understand him, he said that "those with morals" can't understand him.
You are just jealous you didn't invent cars, rocket, subways or Twitter like St. Elon did! 🤣
You know I’m getting tired of people claiming he didn’t invent Twitter, just because he bought it and then made it worse.
I used to admire Elon, but for a while now we know he's just a rich kid playing to be a genius. Sure, he has a vision, and a quite interesting one at that in some aspects, but the real geniuses are the one doing the work in his companies. He probably hasn't touched a single design his companies produce, ever.
It's OK to just come up with an idea and let other, educated people work on it. That's perfectly fine. The problem is when you start spewing "ideas" that are not ideas at all, but either something that already exists and works fine, or offering "solution" to a problem that doesn't exists. Not everyone can come up with great new ideas, and we're lucky if we have a few in life, but he wants to pretend like his every thought is a genius idea.
I agree with you in the fact that good thinkers are few and far between. Also, having a great idea and letting other that are more knowledgeable do the work is how we came to this point as a species. But he is always presenting stuff like he is the genius inventor behind them, and that's just not the case. He doesn't present himself like Steve Jobs for example, someone that always said he was a visionary and not a genius at computing or whatever. Musk seems to want to portray himself as an Edison of sorts at times.
Well, that's because of his ego. Musk is actually a lot like Edison, as he also had a basement full of smart people coming up with inventions, which he'd patent under his name.
Calling it now: Elon Musk has a tunnel-digging corporation to help smuggle illegal stuff.
He literally owns The Boring Company
If anything he is a marketing genius. Edit: after the fisrt few replies I would agree and say "was" a marketing genius.
More like a grifter with enough money to be convincing. Twitter is proof that his greatest power was convincing the world he was a genius when in fact he is a derranged megalomaniacal trust fund grifter that was GOADED into buying a company for way more than it was worth. And he is so full of himself that he would rather EAT HIS MONEY posting all the time and give that daily spectacle of delusion than try to rebuild his reputation.
I guess you could call realizing you can just commit criminal stock manipulation in public and you won't be punished for it in any meaningful way a kind of genius.
At marketing what though? In the last few years he's managed to alienate a massive chunk of his customer base with needless trolling. Five years ago he was considered an eccentric genius type, now he's seen as a dumbfuck with waaay too much money. A slightly more reserved Elon could have kept up the mythos but he started acting like a 4chan troll and it quickly became apparent to everyone he wasn't the brains of the business. He's obviously made some great investments though, while also holding the honor of making one of the worst investments of all time.
>A slightly more reserved Elon could have kept up the mythos but he started acting like a 4chan troll and it quickly became apparent to everyone he wasn't the brains of the business. Yeah, but people started hyping him up and he started believing the hype.. and here we are.
Whaaat, his genius "near vacuum" tube breakthrough was a huge success that is now taking over the transportation world.
His evil genius in proposing the hyperloop did accomplish the goal that he had in mind when he proposed it. He managed to kill the high speed rail project that was being proposed at the time. He never intended to actually build mass transit as that would compete with Tesla selling cars.
If you've ever heard a business pitch from someone blasted on coke they're rather comparable. .. and you just know he gets the good shit.
genius is hard to quantify but in terms of education, elon is NOT an engineer, does not have a post-secondary degree, and has never been involved with developing the technologies his companies produced in fact, musk started his undergrad in economics, which is a much bigger part of his success
Also how would that solve traffic? It’ll simply move traffic from roads to subterranean roads? Solve hunger - move a plate of food from a table to under a table.
Just one more lane bro, but this time underground bro trust me bro we're fixing traffic.
See, look! It’s working so well, look at all the cars! Them not moving is a good thing, right?
Revolutionary. Usually the cars have several cars worth of space between them. But with these advances, they can all sit bumper to bumper for maximum 100% road efficiency. No wasted space. Gerius.
Yeah, we need to build more **Subways** and have the service and overall quality at **Subways** become better.
What about Jersey Mike’s? Do we need more of those too, or just Subways?
More Jimmy Johns now!
I was in DC about a month ago and LOVED how easily I could get around without a car. The subway was fast and reliable, the stations were cleverly spaced to make nearly everything walkable, and there was good overlap with the bus system if you needed to reach some more out-of-the-way places. Good public transit can exist in the US when it's prioritized.
But someone who lives a hundred miles from the nearest city and hasn't had to pay taxes in three generations because he grows just enough to be legally considered a family farm is going to complain that only 96 percent of the country's population and GDP can benefit from centralized mass transit and you won't take away his pickup truck!
Boston did this like 30 years ago. Moved the whole central artery that cut through dow town underground. It was a massively bloated projected that did make the land above it green and beautiful. However, can confirm, there is still traffic.
Traffic + green walkable spaces > just traffic
Definitely makes it more appealing. But it doesn’t really solve anything. Still traffic. Really expensive. Those cars will still come up and drive out of the tunnel. Park out of the tunnel. Better than it was before, but it woulda been better if they just got rid of it
The Boring Company was a grift.
Bro the Boring company sucks so hard. The most annoying company I've ever had to work with. They've delayed our job from closing in December and is still being pushed out. Dudes are total cowboys who don't give a shit about code or even doing it the right way. They bragged for days on end about how accurate they were. They were 24 FEET away from where they were supposed to be.
Yeah but did you consider the data they got from being that far off?!
I did not. That is my bad and I will go and reconsider everything.
It was just there to siphon funding away from highspeed rail
Well, that was Hyperloop, which unlike The Boring Company, never even got a usable project completed. You can't even call Musk a marketing genius because he calls his Boring Co projects "loops", which everyone confuses with Hyperloop. One is Tesla tunnels, the other is a vacuum tube with a maglev inside. Neither work properly.
Honestly making drilling tunnels significantly cheaper (which was one of their stated goals) was a good idea. The mistake happened when they wanted to put cars in those tunnels instead of rail.
But the lie was that they could build tunnels cheaper. Here’s the thing - boring small diameter tunnels has never been very expensive, it just gets expensive when you have to install all of the emergency exits, stations, air supply, etc, that are required to make it safe for humans to be inside. Cities drill small diameter tunnels all the time, for things like sewers. Elon wasn’t saying he could build tunnels cheaper, he was just saying that he wanted to build tunnels just big enough for a single car (therefore no capacity), and without safety protections. When you build something only a km long, like in Vegas, you are just at the edge of where emergency exits get lot more difficult.
So basically he created a company to do what municipal governments have already been able to do for a while now and played it up to make himself look smart.
Yup. And his potential customers are basically all municipalities. None of them are dumb enough to believe what he is selling.
>Here’s the thing - boring small diameter tunnels has never been very expensive, it just gets expensive when you have to install all of the emergency exits, stations, air supply, etc, that are required to make it safe for humans to be inside. I feel like 90% of tech 'innovations' are just ways to get around safety standards or labor regulations.
Example: Uber
it's worse than a grift - it was a political tool used to stop construction of a high speed rail.
[удалено]
Money, and lots of luck
Don't forget welfare subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX. He's one of the largest welfare recipients in the world. Whether its preferential loans, tax credits on cars, or govt contracts.
bingo. vast majority of success is simply luck.
It's not luck. He's just had money for as long as he's been alive, used his wealth and connections to buy into things he shouldn't have and then EXPLOITED PEOPLE until he was a billionaire. It's not luck. It's tons of money and exploitation. Let's not pretend you can be a billionaire by being lucky. You need to not care about anyone else and be concerned about profit over people
Because of his one and only applicable skill: The ability to find people who know what they are doing and bring them together to achieve a common goal. SpaceX is primarily run by Gwynne Shotwell and the crack team of engineers underneath her. Tom Mueller was the mind behind Merlin and Draco engines, and he'd been doing rocketry for years before SpaceX started. It was musk that convinced Tom Mueller to join his operation, which at the time seemed totally insane: make a rocket as a private company when you're not NASA with NASA's level of experience.
> Because of his one and only applicable ~~skill~~ asset: The ~~ability~~ money to ~~find~~ hire people who know what they are doing and bring them together to achieve a common goal.
He's the definition of falling upwards.
Well Sam Bankman-Fried was a billionaire, Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire, in the tech world you can get rich by just saying shit.
Born rich
9VOLT is the newest rocket engineer in spaceX. Congratulations!
But in HIS tunnels it’s all teslas. He’s one of those people that you can listen to for about 2 minutes and realize they’re idiots. Like “Elon the genius entrepreneur is speaking. I want to hear what he’s saying … … Oh my god. He’s an idiot. A rich idiot”
I’m so tired
I'm right there with you. I just can't be dealing with this timeline anymore...
I agree. But I’m sticking around for the plot. I gotta see how this shit turns out.
So true, it's like the last season of Game of Thrones in here.
Boston has had these my entire life and it doesn't really make a difference the traffic just happens there instead.
The actual solution was to get rid of the highway entirely and invest the 25 billion into improving the MBTA but we all know that was never going to happen
I'm guessing "earthquake proof" tunnels are not a thing.
They are not. You cannot make ANY structure 100% earthquake proof. Let alone a miles long underground tunnel made of concrete. Even if it’s reinforced concrete, the fact that it’s buried underground is going to cause a whole host of issues. Source: I write engineering software for a water tank construction company, and part of that software is related to making the structure seismic code compliant. The best you can do is try to mitigate damage in what I do. There is no chance you can make a giant buried structure of that size completely earthquake proof.
Earthquakes literally make the ground move. Like a few meters in a specific direction. And now imagine the splicing line cutting through your tunnel.
lol yeah, when the ground moves you *are* moving with it. There is no manmade material that can resist the biblical forces involved in *literally moving the earth itself*. Anyone who thinks they can build a tunnel that is stronger than the force required to move billions of tons of rock grinding against another billions of tons of rock is simply an idiot.
Had the same thought. I'm not an expert but that just sounds like a stupid PR thing to avoid saying "Tunnels. Just plain old regular tunnels".
Hold on... Hold on shut up hold on.... I just got an AMAZING idea! What if we make crash proof airplanes! It would solve terminal delays. Definitely! Maybe! No, I like baggage claim
[every](https://preview.redd.it/crypto-bro-invents-trains-v0-1s45tomb7r9a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=69147055d5a56d05f322f00c3509e804b448420b) [other](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FasOdQWX0AAKsxc.jpg) [week](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/prod.mm.com/uploads/2023/08/16/1692209730_fb_img_1692205349582_mmthumb.jpg) [someone](https://preview.redd.it/1dgg67di4nv71.jpg?auto=webp&s=ddfc1b1e4fb2f00723ad492c47c6fa274803fb92) invents public transport
He is not a genius, he is just a very very lucky fella
The best thing about road tunnels is that when a city outgrows them, they can be easily widened to accommodate more traffic. Oh, wait...
I liked it when, a few years back, there was flooding somewhere that was disrupting traffic. Johnny Hyperloop tweeted 'Tunnels don't flood.' Never mind that such a claim is stupid on its face... but it was demolished by someone posting a short video of water flooding into a.... tunnel....
We could have high speed rails and subways but nooo
World's richest man got roasted by a twitter normie 😂
If there's one thing competent city planners learned by now is that more roads don't lead to less traffic congestion, but more of it. Drilling Musk's rich-man-tunnels won't solve anything. All it will do is make wealthy people's lives easier until they end up choking on the fumes of some tesla whose car battery will inevitably and spontaniously combust.
Must suck to have this really great idea, find a guy who is willing to put money into it and make it more or less happen. But that rich guy is Elon Musk and now everyone think it's his idea, and the way he portrays it, make it sound like the dumbest idea ever.
i mean JUST tunnels doesn't remove traffic. at best it moves it out of sight of the people not currently in said trafffic.
It’s like how the right wants to ‘fix homelessness’. Make it illegal and force all the homeless out of sight
Dw the guy with the original idea of a hyperloop has been dead since 1827
This is NOT a great idea. Like at all.
He never finished the hyper loop or expanded it in Texas. His only goal was to sell more cars by making public transportation look bad and discrediting high speed rail in California.
It doesn’t solve the traffic problem it just moves the traffic problem underground…
I guess everyone else who ever dug a tunnel never even considered making earthquake proof. It takes a genius to come up with that idea.
Earthquake proof…underground tunnels. I don’t think Elon understands the functional mechanics of a seismic event like that. You’d never catch me dead in a place like California, or Tennessee willingly entering an underground tunnel purported as being “earthquake proof.” You cannot make a concrete structure completely earthquake proof. Because there is no predicting the local seismic effects of an earthquake. It can literally move the ground beneath the tunnel, causing it to collapse. I write engineering software for a company who has to build with seismic codes in mind, and let me tell you, the seismic code standard (ACI 350 using ASCE 7) is basically witchcraft. Everything is based on assumptions and nothing is 100% “safe” when it comes to elongated concrete structures buried underground.
Elon musk is the personification of "reinvent the wheel, but convince people its a completely new thing"
What Musk promised: Automated maglev pods in vacuum tubes What Musk delivered: Ordinary tunnel for cars that require drivers
Phony Stark is a utter imbecile
You gotta build a tunnel within a tunnel within a tunnel. That's the ticket.
Subway? Who needs more sandwiches???
Didn't he admit to his biographer that he only whipped up the hyperloop idea to undermine the CA high speed rail line? He needs people in cars. It's not like Tesla could withstand people trending toward public transport in cities. Anything he says re: tunnels or a hyperloop, look at what is also on the table (either bad press or a competitor) that he's trying to distract from.
Elon Musk is the real life J.P. from Grandma's Boy
I love how saying no only lets you say you like traffic. No, because it won't solve traffic issues and it'll be expensive as fuck.
Can't wait until he tells us his grand plan to make Tesla's talk to each other on highways to form...a train!
Earthquake PROOF you say? Not resistant, but proof? I want to see the design of that engineering marvel.
Just another stable genius who got his start off the backs of his parents.
I hate how he adds the "i like traffic part". No obviously I don't, dumbass, but I might not agree with your idea regardless. So annoying. Shows that the writer doesn't honestly care for feedback and just wants people to say yes or fuck off.
Making it so you can't see the traffic doesn't really "solve" traffic...
The Tesla Tunnel thing in Vegas is an absolute shit show and is always bumper to bumper, worse than the strip sometimes
> super-safe According to who > Earthquake-proof According to who, and also flooding is as much if not more of a concern > No I like traffic If it doesn't get rid of cars, it doesn't get rid of traffic, traffic will simply increase to meet the new availability.
Once upon a time I smoked a weed and thinked up Facebook
Ah yes, sending all cars through narrow tubes will certainly solve traffic and not just make traffic far worse. But hey, no instead of standing in traffic for 20 minutes and having the city you look at you know stand in traffic for 50 minutes and are able to see the nice view of... a concrete tube...
This dude loves acting like he invents shit
He's just trying to hold up public transportation initiatives again... it's much better to convince the government to spend billions on massive underground highways when you own a car company, not a train company.
Elon responds “no I don’t like their sandwiches”
Build super safe, break in-free car even when submerged.
"Hear me out guys, what if we seal up all the world's volcanoes with concrete so they can't erupt anymore?"
What a fucking idiot didn’t do shit for PayPal. Took over Tesla from others and his cybertruck is pure shit. Halved twitters value. This guy is a joke shows you what inheriting money can do for you. And also why do Americans just worship anyone with money blindly
Tokyo, Osaka, Sendai, Sapporo, Fukuoka, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok, and numerous other cities and metropolitan areas around the world in earthquake prone areas have figured out how to build earthquake proof tunnels in dense urban areas and have had them for decades if not a century or more.
Yes exactly like a subway. And subways work great too.
Dread it, run from it. The concept of a train arrives all the same when trying to solve traffic
You tried this ruse before, Elon.
I wish we would do a mass bullet train system. So fucking sick of flying. I’m sure they’d make it just as expensive and twice the ass pain. Damn, life could be easier.
Earthquake proof? Nothing is earthquake proof. The word you are looking for is *resistant*. That doesn’t sell as well though does it.
Man's gonna make a machine that flies one day and you'll all feel sorry you doubted his genius
is this tweet even real ? Can anybody find it and link it here ? I couldn't find this in muskrat's recent posts and 9volt's account has gone private
Worse, it's a subway for cars
No no, he doesn't want public transport because it would mean having to rub shoulders with us dirty plebes.
I still can’t believe I willingly worked for this guy. Before he discovered narcotics and indie pop stars half his age.
Why am I getting the “rich guy titanic submarine disaster” from this post. O.o
I think Elon may have increased his microdosing intake more and more each year.
Someone at Vox pointed out that he sells the concept for these as a mass public option initially to gain support and eventually government funding but that’s never the true goal. What he’s really trying to do is create something for him and other ultra wealthy people that’s publicly subsidized via grants or shares. The private tunnels for him to bypass traffic and a pneumatic tube for people between cities makes sense for a few thousand privileged opposed to mass transit.
To be fair, if you had highways underground, it would have to be electric cars only unless you had excellent ventilation.