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posted by Fnord666 on Monday December 19 2016, @07:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the boring-doesn't-have-to-be-boring dept.

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/12/elon-musk-hates-sitting-in-traffic-so-now-hes-going-to-build-tunnels/

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:16AM

    by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:16AM (#443613)

    Where does all the water come from/go?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:57AM (#443636)

    Another consideration is where they are digging.

    Take something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway [wikipedia.org]

    They are using pretty much all of the ways of digging tunnels. They have about 1/8th of it done. It may even open in a couple of weeks. It took them about 5-6 years just to dig that one section.

    Why? Well there is a city in the way. Existing tunnels, buildings, wires, sewage, etc. People do not like it when you cut them off or destroy their multi million dollar building. By either cutting through them or collapsing them.

    Another consideration is the soil/rock they are digging through is not uniform. On the project I showed above they have at least 5 different types they are cutting through.

    Then on top of that they have only so many people who can actually do the job. Those people are busy rebuilding the 9/11 stuff. Yep that is still being fixed. They could hire more but they also need to keep the budget down and not bankrupt the city while doing it. They are also building a whole 2 sets of levels under grand central. For storage, exchange and wait. Then trying to connect it up to an existing 90+ year old system for which finding parts is nearly impossible.

    Oh and they are out of money at this point and need to issue more bonds to pay for the next 2 phases. Phase 4 probably will not happen for 15+ years.