Generally bid that is not "technically complete" .i.e. does not demonstrate a real ability to undertake and complete the project can be rejected. There is some engineering discretion to this.
Most large infrastructure projects have a large number of trades for a short amount of time
Contractors have people,experience and equipment that would be cost prohibitive to maintain full time but can be relatively inexpensive when hired for just their needed duration.
The kinds of work that you describe fall more under maintenance and basic repair, which most public agencies have full time employees that perform that roles. For instance the NYC subway has signaling workers for a constant stream of signal work, track workers to maintain track and sign workers for endless lifecycle replacement of signs. New construction work, like tunnels and stations is done by contractors.
There is a non-zero chance that May is replaced by a hard brexiter and they insist, by will of the referendum, that a hard brexit must occur. You can see UKIP bubbling back up in frustration.
When you consider what a soft brexit is, it's genuinely nothing of what leave wanted. The UK still doesn't have a solid border between itself and the EU because of the Good Friday Agreement, the UK still had to pay the EU and follow it's regulations and for all that it gets zero say in the EU legislature.
So there is a real chance of a hard brexit and it's going to be very messy.
This is regular insulin, its quite unstable (by unstable I mean that its release mechanism is quite slow and requires a lot of planning compared to more modern 'fast acting' insulins.
with that said, as a type 1 - if I was in a predicament you bet i would go, if i recall they sell it for 25 a vial, whereas a vial of normal, fast acting insuling is ~250.
As a random piece of trivia, in cab signaling was pioneered in the 1920's and implemented commercially by Pennsylvania Railroad the 1930's while upgrading their main line between New York City and Washington D.C. You can see in this photo that the engineer had one indicator that would light up for each signal aspect: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/31/85/83/3185833fba11b79498ff...
Okay, my bachelors was in civil engineering and I have worked in construction and engineering for just over two years now.
Most public projects today have generous structured incentives that are given to companies for meeting goals for time and budget. We work to these incentives.
Keep in mind that often you cannot be aware of the things that will go wrong until you actually do them. This happens in software development quite a bit.
I am not aware of any extensive private tunnel construction that has occurred without public financing inside of the U.S.
So here are the drawbacks to Musk's plan:
1. He may prioritize speed over safety, either unintentionally causing loss of life or limb because of construction practices or geotechnically destablize the foundations of the buildings and infrastructure that he's traveling under.
2. I firmly believe that it's going to cost far, far more than 1 billion. That leaves the chance of a big hole in the ground that may eventually fill with water.
If he hits the $1 billion target this will be the civil engineering project of the century. It's hard to overstate just how optimistic that figure is compared to literally every other mass transit project worldwide.
The craziest part is that there is already a much cheaper and not that much slower option to get to the airport. This project seems rather Quixotic.
Why is it so unrealistic? For example, this line in Mumbai metro ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_3_(Mumbai_Metro) ), with 34 km of big tunnels and 27 stations is supposed to cost 3.4 billion. Surely, Chicago's 25-30 km line with just two stations (one sort of half built already) and smaller tunnels won't cost so much.
Two things. 1 is that they're planning to use a lot of cut and cover which is a lot cheaper but more disruptive. 2 is that the project isn't complete yet so those final cost figures are still fiction.
No, only the stations are cut and cover. They have ordered 17 tbm for the tunnels.
About the cost estimate, I don't have any other completely underground metro line in a developing country to compare. But Is it the labor costs in developed countries?
If the Boring company could produce a reliable boring machine that dug at 10x speed, the boring machine would far far more valuable than these tunnels. It makes me think that the claims are exaggerated or misleading.
It makes me think that the claims are exaggerated or misleading.
Which is why they need to get their first paid job so they can prove it. They can make lots of bold claims for their own tunnel, but if they prove it's true on a real job, then their technology suddenly becomes much more valuable.
The history of the telegraph is entertaining. It was so good, investors thought Morse was just flim-flam man. Morse finally wised up, and devised a demonstration that could not be faked.
He set up a line between Washington and Baltimore, and transmitted the news from a convention in Baltimore. It arrived in Washington 64 minutes before the train bearing the news did, thus proving it worked.
Within 2 years, there was 2,000 miles strung, within 4 years, 12,000 miles. People had discovered they could make money by using the telegraph. People who received news faster made money.
Note he didn't fund it himself, the US Government gave him $30K:
In March 1843, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 to Samuel Morse to lay a telegraph line from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland, along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
$30K in 1843 was around $1M in today's money. I wonder if that $30K paid for the whole project or if Morse had to kick in some of his own.
Without environmental and employee protection laws, or permitting concerns, maybe it would be doable for under $1M today. Since copper is so expensive, I thought the cost of wire would dominate the expenses, but 5000 ft of uninsulated 16 gauge wire sells for $400 on ebay, so 45 miles worth of a pair of wires would cost around $40K
Not sure. Did finishing in 1/10th time part of the contract? If not, then it we can think of the '10 times faster' claim to be bullshit which was only meant to win the bid...
There's no advantage to promising more than needed to get the contract, and there's a big disadvantage in that projects universally tend to take too long, whether the tech is 10x better or not.
> If the Boring company could produce a reliable boring machine that dug at 10x speed, the boring machine would far far more valuable than these tunnels.
My understanding is that the way he gets most of the way to 10x is to dramatically decrease tunnel size and to have the machine dig and create the tunnel simultaneously. The second part may be valuable to other tunnel boring companies, but most municipal projects tend to use quite large tunnels, where Musk's machines wouldn't be a viable solution.
I think there's another, more prosaic aspect to consider. It's possible that when Musk did his research, he found that the reasons tunnel boring were unreasonably slow weren't actually technical in nature. But actually coming right out and accusing an entire industry of essentially graft wouldn't be good PR. So he alludes to it by giving BS reasons.
Well, we're already seeing Musk's approach to human resources in Tesla. And the regulatory issue he probably thinks he can get around simply by being useful enough to the government that they'd be willing to give him political cover.
As far as I know, there are already boring machines that assemble the tunnel as they go. I recall seeing video of one being operated, though perhaps it was a prototype? Perhaps those manufacturers' machines don't operate at the speed of Elon's but if that's the distinguishing factor then it's not really much of a distinguishing factor.
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
The second part has been available for decades. I visited the prep site of a TBM doing exactly that back in the 90s, and there was nothing new about it back then.
I think both of the latter approaches make sense in the context of their era. With classical train / subway-style approaches, it made sense to have a bigger upfront cost, so that you could have fewer (but larger) trains. On the other hand, with today's relatively reliable small-scale electric vehicles and automated driving, I can certainly see lots of smaller pods being perfectly viable.
That said, I don't have any particular insight into the field itself; however I do have a respect for Musk's ability to rephrase the problem just slightly (e.g. landing boosters to save costs) and to turn the whole economics of the situation on its head.
> On the other hand, with today's relatively reliable small-scale electric vehicles and automated driving, I can certainly see lots of smaller pods being perfectly viable.
How? These pods take 16 people, and per the article, only one can set off every 30 seconds. This limits capacity to 2k people per hour (even assuming that it manages the promised numbers, and historically Musk stuff doesn't), which is far less than one would expect of a decent bus rapid transport line, never mind an underground train.
With a 10x increase in tunnel-boring speed, it may be possible to build several parallel tunnels, all serving the same route. In this case, each individual tunnel would be launching 16 people every 30 seconds.
Or, for 10% more cost, you could build a regular subway and move the same amount of people in much less space. You even reduce the truly expensive part of subways (i.e., stations), since you only have to have a mezzanine that covers two tracks rather than 20 tracks.
Not really. If the other tunnels are essentially full up with other trains, then there's no space to squeeze in the trains from the blocked line. Furthermore, you'd have to have crossovers in place to enable that kind of routing, and those underground switching crossovers are not going to come cheap.
small pods introduce the insanity of the highway system into spaces meant for trains. perhaps there are some improvements to be made through automation and scheduling of lanes but it seems possible pods would prove to be significantly less efficient when compared to the traditional use of lanes with large vessels that hundreds of people fit into
I guess it depends on just what size vehicles we're talking about. I agree that having tiny one or few person pods would probably not be efficient. But a "10-person cars on rails", type of scenario might not be as insane as you make it sound. Since it neatly side-steps the most complex parts of automated driving, we could have the reality of a well orchestrated fleet of smaller units. These could link up for efficiency on demand (maybe even while in motion), then separate again if they are operating in a complex web. Having a cheaper way of making tunnels feeds back again into the loop. Without doing any rigorous analysis, I can't comment much, but I wouldn't dismiss it offhand.
So, it would presumably be like loading small trams at a ski area--if they had lots of intermediate stops rather than maybe just one. Yes, those work. Everyone is typically also able-bodied enough to be skiing and you have attendants supervising the loading and unloading.
Generally, every city has big transportation hubs - airports, train stations and so on - located at strategic places within the city. Musk's idea is to ditch these hubs and replace them with more frequent and much smaller stations which get you closer to your destination. On the other side if they don't have to move millions of people to the same hub but rather move a much smaller number of people, they can afford to dig smaller tunnels and stations which are way more easy and fast to build.
For instance, in London every time they build a new transportation hub, it takes years. These stations are massive, they literally dig in every direction for several meters.
I don't know if it's going to work but surely there's thinking behind it.
I think if this tech proves to somehow work (aka actually reduce expenses by at least 10x) the real play becomes PtP tunnels that don't follow the traditional "heavy rail" subway routes, but connect to those stations for transfer.
This also could really only be the long time play anyways - it's the only reason using autonomous battery powered model X's as the "cars" makes much sense.
I think it's an interesting idea, Musk obviously likes his sci-fi. He is basically attempting to implement packet switching for human mass transport vs. the current circuit switching we have.
> On the other side if they don't have to move millions of people to the same hub but rather move a much smaller number of people, they can afford to dig smaller tunnels and stations which are way more easy and fast to build.
The actual cost of tunneling itself is generally fairly cheap--somewhere around $50 million / mile. The expensive part is the stations. You can probably save money without having to build mezzanines, but the lower utilization of the tunnel and the greater number of vertical access shafts needed (not to mention the challenges inherent in moving through that very crowded portion of real estate) is probably going to cause cost blowouts compared to subways. Particularly if you design the tunnels to move cars, not people (SOV cars being about the worst use of space possible).
He has specifically said they are making smaller tunnels to dig faster and will use transportation tech that fits in smaller tunnels to take advantage of this efficiency. I think many industries could benefit from this kind of thinking. "Because that's how we've always done it" is a great way to stagnate
I think the grandparent is nitpicking the "faster" claim here. To make your comment more specifically address that, Musk isn't claiming to have technology that can bore 10x more volume than competitors. He's reframing the market needs from cubic volume bored to distance bored.
But that really isn't the metric you actually care about. The only things that matter is distance tunneled per time and that the resulting tunnel can handle your transport needs. Musks believe is that the transport needs can be handled by smaller diameter tunnels than everyone else is boring. At least if they also built the "trains" and casually looking at subway networks that very well might be true.
Why would it be? If you can run fast in a small tunnel you can run just as fast in a big one. The size of a tunnel is a factor of what you want to do with it and what you want to run through it. TBM manufacturers can scale down to 3ft if that's what you need.
Fun fact: a subway trunk line is more frequently physically occupied by a train than a highway lane is by a car.
The factors that limit train frequency are station dwell times and switching time. A subway line can generally hit 26TPH, and the top speed of most subways is usually about 70mph, with average speeds generally being in the realm of 30mph. Making trains faster actually reduces capacity; a HSR that goes 220mph is considered to have a capacity of around 4-6TPH. You can also improve throughput by cutting out all branching; Moscow gets about 40TPH as a result, which is about the feasible limit of rail systems.
I’ve been to Moscow twice in the early 2000s. The metro system there is still my mental benchmark for a metro system. The scale of everything is impressive. The number of people moved as well as the grand scale art. Say what you will about the soviet system, but you have to give them style points for one hell of a metro.
30 MPH which is low = 5280 * 30 = 158,400 feet per hour / 26 TPH = 6092 feet per train. Actual subway trains are 600 feet or less long ~= 10% utilization. At 30MPH cars don't keep 126 feet between each other. Bump that to 60MPH and the trains are at 5% or less utilization and again cars don't keep 266 feet between each other even if they should. And again this is very long 600 feet subway trains most are significantly shorter than that.
Further trains have a stopping distance @ 62MPH of 820 ft with (0.15 g) deceleration. High speed trains can get an extra 0.3 m/s2 deceleration which could also be added to normal subway trains but would be an emergency situation as they knock people over.
PS: At 60MPH the theoretical limit is over 220 trains per hour assuming all trains can stop before hitting the train in front of them. But you can only approach that with full automation and multiple lines for acceleration.
There are 40 trains on the Victoria line at peak, each about 125m in length, which gives a total length of 5km. The length of the line is about 21km, so that's 5 / (2 * 21) = 12% occupancy.
Trains travel in each direction so 20 trains per direction or 6%, unless this is entirely single tracked.
We can also exclude any car stopped at a station, as you can have multiple cars unloading at the same station or have a train bypass a station without making a wider tunnel.
I included both directions in my calculation, hence the denominator being (2 * 21km). And for the Underground there are no passing trains or multiple trains unloading at a station, platforms are generally only a few metres longer than the train itself.
The Victoria Line in London runs at 36 trains per hour at peak, one every 100 seconds. Station dwell times are already a limiting factor at this point, and having separate load/unload platforms would provide only a small decrease in dwell time as you'd need to open the unload doors before the loading doors to prevent people just exiting the wrong side.
You can have multiple platforms and send trains to each not just separate load/unload platforms. This was very common with passenger trains as boarding times could extend for long periods. Even when it was a single line for loading and unloading they would normally have a bypass line to avoid the station.
> You can have multiple platforms and send trains to each not just separate load/unload platforms.
Sure, but we're talking about subway networks underneath major metropolises, and adding extra tunnels and platforms is basically as expensive as digging a whole new line - when it is even possible due to space or geological constraints.
Building a new network would not be constrained by existing implementations. For example, you can't just drive the trains faster on existing systems. Everything would have to be redesigned/upgraded to do it - the motors, tracks, track bed, brakes, suspension, safety equipment, schedules, signals, everything.
If the units/hour capacity can be met with a smaller tunnel running fast little pods on a single track, then boring out a larger tunnel that could fit perhaps three tracks would be redundant.
And that assumes that the pods could run on adjacent open tracks like railcars, whereas the intended design may require a smaller tunnel bore that is close to the size of each pod.
Air resistance is greater in smaller tunnels though, and aerodynamic drag is the most significant factor on speed when considering underground high-speed trains. This is one of the reasons for building tunnels significantly larger than the size of the train.
That’s assuming the current system speeds are being met - as I recall the New York subways are run at lower and lower speeds than capacity to avoid other problems and accidents.
If you can still get people through the smaller tunnel you have dug more quickly (because you're using smaller, low-profile vehicles on 'skates') then it's not snake-oil, it's smart.
Don't forget also being able to handle evacuations and emergency situations. A lot of tunnel design isn't just getting a train through, it's getting people out.
According to boring company: Many of the speed improvements come from the design of the system. Smaller tunnels, automatic stone placement, removal of dirt.
Building rockets wasn’t new, landing rockets wasn’t new, grid fins weren’t new. But now we have an 80% reusable orbital launch system and he’s working hard on the other 20%.
Likewise with the Boring Company. Of course they still need to prove themselves, but the factors that work in their favour in tunnel construction are the same ones that favoured SpaceX.
ULA and the established rocket manufacturers made big profits off the fact that launching rockets is stupidly expensive. That meant their profit margins ended up being stupidly large quantities of money. Musk’s contention on big tunnelling projects is that big construction companies have similar incentives not to reduce the costs of tunnelling. However Musk as an outsider is free to innovate and develop the engineering and technology because he doesn’t have big fat profits he’s already tied to.
Others weren't doing the same, because they very specifically claimed that doing it at all was flat out technically impossible, so they didn't even consider looking at the economics.
Landing and reusing the first stage booster. This is why Vulcan is designed to only recover the engines, because recovering the whole booster while still launching a useful payload was thought to be impossible. It was thought that the stresses of re-entry would be too severe without excessive weight increases and that it would not be possible to retain enough fuel for a propulsive landing.
These things have existed for a century now. The fact that no one tried and it took a person with money from early dot com start up exit means others goofed up enormously.
Anybody could have tried. They didn't. Pulling down other peoples achievements because one didn't try the obvious themselves already reeks of envy.
It will be, it's just not ready for sale yet. "Currently under development as of May 2018." The company still needs revenue, so they bid projects, which is probably the best way to test new technology, I mean, other than drilling random tunnels in the desert.
A boring machine that could dig 10x as quickly (and hold all other desirable characteristics equal) would save tens of billion of dollars in infrastructure projects around the world and substantially increase the financial viability of tunneling globally. It would totally transform the sector, much more profitability and meaningfully than these tunnels will change transportation.
apple makes a chip that's 2x faster than their previous model, why are they putting it in their own phone when they could sell it to other phone manufacturers?
Building underground interchanges that include complete grade separation would entail building cloverleaf interchanges underground. Cloverleaf interchanges usually cost somewhere from 500 million USD to 2 billion USD above ground.
