SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the boring-doesn't-have-to-be-boring dept.
Brunel had his ships. Trump had his walls. And now Musk wants to make... tunnels, tunnels under cities to reduce traffic congestion and make the world a better, cleaner, less rage-filled place.
Over the weekend, probably while sitting in traffic behind the wheel of an autonomous Tesla, Musk tweeted: "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging." An hour later, probably while still sitting in traffic, giving him plenty of time to think of a witty pun, he declared: "It shall be called 'The Boring Company.' Boring, it's what we do."
And finally, an hour after that, just in case any of us were foolish enough to think the billionaire multi-CEO was joking, Musk said, "I am actually going to do this." He also changed his Twitter bio to include "Tunnels."
So, unless Musk was suffering from a prolonged bout of entrepreneurial road rage, we now know roughly how long it takes a pedigree industrialist to pick a new disruptible domain: two hours, give or take.
Tunnels are indeed a pretty good solution for traffic congestion, though they take a long time to build, and the construction usually causes a huge amount of disruption above ground—especially if those tunnels are being built in a metropolitan area, which is where you'll find most of the world's congestion.
Depending on the setting, it can be very difficult and expensive to build tunnels as well. Cut-and-cover—where you dig up an existing road, build a tunnel, and put the road back—is the only "cheap" tunnel building method, but it's so incredibly disruptive that most tunnels nowadays are built at deeper depths by automated tunnel boring machines (TBMs). Cost-wise, you're looking at about £1 billion per mile for TBMs: London's Crossrail, with 13 miles of new tunnel, will cost around £15 billion; Manhattan's second avenue subway line, with 8.5 miles of new tunnel, will cost about $17 billion. The costs are much lower if you just want to bore through a mountain—the just-completed 35-mile Gotthard Base Tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland cost a mere £10 billion (and took 17 years to build!)—but I doubt Musk has those kinds of tunnels in mind.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 19 2016, @09:48PM
190years is wishful thinking. Here in NYC, they mill the road, wait a few weeks or months as you mentioned, and then pave it. Problem is, the road always fails in the winter at the seams where the pavement overlaps. I have seen roads paved in the spring/summer only to need extensive patching along those seams the following spring. The joke is it's a conspiracy to keep road maintenance contractors perpetually busy.
I remember reading about a machine that was developed in Europe which can drive at speeds up to 30-50 km/h and fill potholes as it drives. It scans the road, develops a profile and quickly calculates the amount of fill to send to a bunch of nozzles in an array. Once the hole reaches the nozzles, the system delivers a precisely measured batch of fill and the hole is plugged. This was 15-20 years ago.
And further more, there are real-time recyclers/pavers too. I haven't found much info yet but it appears to be doable. But like all fancy tech, the US mindset it, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I'm sure labor unions dont like them either. It's always an uphill battle when faced with legacy thinking, unions, and red tape.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:08AM
What do you mean "joke"?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:50AM
It is such a conspiracy. It's a joke. They could fix it right, once, and let it last for 40 years instead of having gaping potholes that take out tires and rims and closing off lanes of traffic on the highways to lay down another temporary layer of asphalt.
I grouse about it to my in-laws, who grew up in NYC, and they think it's because there's so much traffic and because they have winter here. I pointed out there are no such decrepit roads out West, where the semi traffic is endless and the seasonal temperature swings are worse. They stare blankly.
It is easy to perpetuate corruption when the people you're scamming don't even know you're corrupt...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tathra on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:07AM
you need more than just temperature swings to destroy roads. water gets down inside the pavement and then freezes and expands, tearing the road apart. repeat through several freeze/thaw cycles and you get a destroyed road. it doesnt matter how hot it gets, what matters is that it goes above and below freezing (and stays below freezing for a while) over and over again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:21AM
Heat can soften asphalt.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:50PM
That's exactly why they fail at the seams. The seams run both parallel with the road and diagonal. They do try to plug the seams with liquid tar but it never appears to work. The constant road salting plus winter temperatures that fluctuate above and below freezing on a daily basis destroys them. Even if it stays below freezing the salt keeps a fresh supply of liquid water seeping into those seams.