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Elon Musk's Boring Company has received permission to dig 10.1 miles of tunnel in Maryland:
On Thursday, Maryland officials gave Elon Musk's Boring Company permission to dig a 10.1-mile tunnel "beneath the state-owned portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, between the Baltimore city line and Maryland 175 in Hanover," according to the Baltimore Sun.
According to Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn, The Boring Company (which Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk founded to advance tunneling technology) wants to build two 35-mile tunnels between Baltimore and Washington, DC. The federal government owns about two-thirds of the land that Musk's company would need to dig underneath. As of Friday, it was unclear whether that permission had been granted. (A Department of Transportation spokeswoman told Ars that the land in question was owned by the National Park Service, which did not immediately respond to request for comment.)
But the 10 miles that have been approved by the state of Maryland will for the first leg of an underground system that could contain a Hyperloop system. Musk first floated the idea of a Hyperloop—which would ferry passengers through a low-pressure tube in levitating pods floating above a track using air-bearings—in 2013. But the CEO determined that he didn't have time to see his idea through to fruition, so he issued a white paper and challenged startups and students alike to make headway on the concept.
Also at The Washington Post (archive).
Previously: Elon Musk Claims to Have "Verbal Approval" to Build New York to Washington, D.C. Hyperloop
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 23 2017, @02:08PM (5 children)
But I digress. Theoretically a hyperloop between NYC and DC makes perfect sense. There's already a lot of rail traffic between DC, NYC, and Boston. It's an efficient way to travel because you can go from city center to city center without the hassle of taking a taxi to the airport (because mass transit never can seem to connect to airports in America), waiting two hours for your anal probe and fondling from the TSA, and getting shoe-horned into a tiny seat and imprisoned for the duration of the flight. Walk out of work, walk into Penn Station, hop on the Acela, work in your seat with the outlet and wifi, and before you know it you're in city center DC or Boston.
But work downtown in NY and Penn is hardly walking distance, and in many cases it's 2 metro lines away. DCA isn't far from central washington, indeed nearer to some locations than Union. It's on the metro too.
That said LGA isn't great with the current roadworks, and most of the time I do take the train -- last time I took a delta LGA-DCA though and took 2.5 hours from hotel in lower east side to office in georgetown.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 23 2017, @02:23PM (4 children)
Herald Square in NYC (adjacent to Penn Station, where Macy's is) hosts a lot more companies these days beyond the Fashion District; so it's walkable for those guys. You can take the A train there in a couple hops from Wall Street or from Midtown, too. So it's fast, much faster than taking a car.
LGA and JFK both should have subway stations in the airports, the way Schiphol does in Amsterdam. It is profoundly irritating that the Taxi & Limousine Commission has perennially killed that obvious measure.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 23 2017, @06:20PM (3 children)
Indeed, Heathrow has aa subway and a fast rail link into London. Stanstead and Gatwick have fast rail links too, as to Manchester and Birmingham into their cities (Birmingham has links to London too). Toronto too, and Singapore. I think Delhi does, but I've not used that. DME does - I always take the train when I go to Moscow. Tokyo NRT is clearly a train only due to the distance. PEK has a train which I've taken in the past. Shanghai has a maglev, although you then have to transfer to metro. Hong Kong has a fast train. Berlin isn't great, but Rome is fine with trains, Athens is on the metro, Paris CDG has a TGV station and RER, Edinburgh on the tram. Brussels is on a train line, but again it's quicker to get a taxi if you're not going to where the train is.
There's a few stations that are lacking -- in the UK Liverpool, Glasgow, Luton (bus then train), Bristol, and the famous Teeside airport, which has 1 train a week (and the station is nowhere near the airport, hence the parliamentary service)
In the US though it's not all terrible: Washington DCA has a metro, with IAD getting a metro extension. PHL had a rail link into town. EWR and BWI have airport links to a station too, not great, but not awful. I think BOS has a metro.
Even JFK has an 'airtrain' link to the metro, but a direct metro (or LIRR) station would have been far better. Still Uber does the job (no way I'm paying for one of those hideous NYC cabs)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 23 2017, @07:40PM (1 child)
You forgot LAX, where they are finally building a light rail ... to a shuttle to get you in the same traffic jam as everyone else trying to get to the actual terminals.
I used to grumble about ORD being dated, before I realized the insanity of LAX.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 23 2017, @08:16PM
LAX is its own special type of stupid :(
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Monday October 23 2017, @10:23PM
Sometimes the existence of a subway station is not advertised. I have flown for years in/out of Mexico City Airport and until last year I didn’t know there was a Metro station right there, just kind of hidden in a corner out of the way.
Now Frankfurt is to me one of the best airports, you can practically get to anywhere else via bus or rail right from the airport and it is clearly marked.