I design both boring machines and tunnels and am a regular reader on HN.

I have worked on tunnels ranging from the smallest to the largest, rock to soil, and all forms of construction.

I have stopped commenting on any tunnel related Elon topic due to people refusing to believe my experience and expertise when it does not align with what Elon Musk and his team of "experts" have said or published in their desk studies.

Awesome! I've got a question that I have not been able to answer. Seattle's "Big Bertha" is surplus once they finish the Alaska Viaduct project in a few months. What process could I use to establish whether or not one could use that machine locally? Assume I can get an inventory of all parts used in the machine. And a related question, is there a way to estimate the cost to retarget a used machine to a new mission?

I doubt Bertha will be purchasable given the litigation on the SR 99 job. I don't know what you would be able or want to use it for - it's 58.5 ft in diameter. It is unlikely that you will get an inventory of all the parts in the machine.

If you really want a machine then you would just call the contractor and ask them their price. You would likely have to pay for delivery.

The process to establish whether or not one could use that machine locally is just whether or not you have a job that needs a 58.5 ft diameter TBM set up the way theirs is. In other words, the process to establish whether or not one could use the machine again locally is basically to go through the design process for the tunnel (preliminary design, geotechnical exploration, laboratory testing, final design, etc.).

   > I doubt Bertha will be purchasable given the
   > litigation on the SR 99 job.

Can you say a bit more about this? I had reasoned that the litigation would make it more likely that Bertha would be purchasable as a way to offset costs/losses for the party that holds title to the equipment.

   > I don't know what you would be able or want to 
   > use it for - it's 58.5 ft in diameter.

One of the longest bus routes in the Bay Area is the '22'. It travels up and down El Camino Real from San Jose to Palo Alto. El Camino Real keeps going north right up the peninsula to San Francisco. To the south it goes down to Gilroy. My proposal is to tunnel from the where it crosses Highway 152, up past Palo Alto and into Milbrae where there is both a CalTrain and BART station about 200' off of El Camino Real. My proposal would be to create bus stops along the way that took you up to the surface street of El Camino along the way. Then run bus service north south, with several different bus types "express", "local", "intercity", etc. The tunnel diameter can support four lanes of traffic (two in each direction) allowing for buses to pass one another and to support multiple schedules in the same tunnel.

Based on my evaluation of the Viaduct plan this plan would use it in substantially the same way.

Running a bit late here, but Bertha is widely considered by informed laypeople in Seattle to be the wrong solution: two smaller TBMs would have been better. The Big Bertha solution is widely considered to have been picked as a part of civic pride "a yuge tunnel!!!" rather than on engineering concerns.

I'd suggest looking at the Sound Transit "ST2" tunnel boring project, it's been massively simpler in execution.

Late indeed, is there even a tunnel in the ST2 project? Looking here: http://www.soundtransit.org/st2 was not bringing anything up with a quick parse. (search for tunnel, boring, underground all came up empty)

ST2 bored from Westlake to University of Washington, and is continuing out to the Northgate station. I'm slightly unsure how the "Eastlink" system plays out with ST2 - but they are boring around there.

That page reads like a man page, and the associated pdf's are worse! :-o

The soils vary quite significantly between the two projects with the soils up at Northlink being much more amenable to tunneling than those that plagued the SR 99 job at the start (and might at the finish).

I have close ties to both jobs.

Yeah, I've heard a bit about it, but I've not really heard enough to Know What I'm Talking About. My impression is the early phase of SR99 was running through infill from early Seattle and thus a significant amount of debris etc was involved in the problems getting Bertha going.

Do you know of any good resources on these projects for the transit / infrastructure geek who's willing to read technical information? Executive summaries and dog-and-pony documents only go so far. :)

You may be able to get the bid documents from the Owners (e.g. - WSDOT and SoundTransit) although I'm not sure. This would give you information on the soils and what the original consultants thought.

Anything past that probably hasn't come out yet since the jobs are aren't in a position where much has been published about them. If you want more information in general you can read conference proceedings (RETC, WTC, NATC).

Much of the deeper analysis and such isn't really accessible to the layman because it's really buried in the litigation.

SR 99 is likely your best bet between the two jobs because WSDOT has had an open book policy on the job. I think they've been too much of an open book, but that's neither here nor there.

>Can you say a bit more about this?

No, I can't.

Regarding the rest of your post, you would need to carry out a geotechnical investigation to see if the soils are amenable to a machine like Bertha. I would guess not, based on my experience in both areas, due to the differences in the geology.

What's the going rate for a used tunnel boring machine?

EDIT:

"New machines normally cost at least $15 million, but a decade of frantic subway construction in China has created a glut, and lightly used models can be had for 90 percent off sticker."

I could Kickstart a tunnel boring machine purchase. What a time to be alive.

Everything you have to say on this topic may be perfectly correct. But you have to remember that Musk has a habit of producing major technological advances that the all experts had previously agreed were simply impossible.

I look forward to his major technological advances, especially in the fields of property and easement acquisition, third party impacts and claims, and environmental and safety regulations.

Hopefully Elon's advances aren't the same as the cure for AIDS: http://southpark.cc.com/clips/164373/they-found-a-cure-for-a...

   > I have stopped commenting on any tunnel related 
   > Elon topic due to people refusing to believe my
   > experience and expertise when it does not align
   > with what Elon Musk and his team of "experts" 
   > have said or published in their desk studies.

I think you may be misreading the response here. When you write comments in a snarky way (as you did in the parent of this comment) it completely obscures your information to the reader because they respond emotionally to the snark first. I truly believe that the number of people with your experience reading this is probably in the low single digits, so you have a tremendous amount to offer. It is easier to hear it if you put it out there with respect rather than disdain.

Had you phrased it like this

"The challenges are less technical and more in the political side of infrastructure, property and easement acquisition, dealing with spurious suits from third parties, and the ever present complex series of environmental and safety regulations. While I admire Elon's ambition and desire to get things done, these political issues have stymied projects literally for decades, and I can't see even his star power being able to defeat rampant NIMBYism."

It would be easier to hear your expertise in your writing.

I used to post reasonable and non-snarky comments like this. I stopped doing it after about the fourth or fifth time that the commenters responding to my posts told me that I clearly had no idea what I was talking about and was uninformed because they had read the Hyperloop white paper. This literally only happens in Musk related threads.

Your profile says you work in machine learning - imagine if every thread you posted in about machine learning you were told that you were an idiot because someone had read I, Robot and the AI in that doesn't match your idea of ML so of course you're wrong.

So I just try not to post in most tunneling related topics, especially those related to Musk, any more unless I see something interesting (like your original comment for this whole thread noting that nobody here knows anything about tunneling). When I do find something interesting I try to respond honestly and directly, as you can see with my other responses in this thread; however, the GP comment here offers nothing to the debate other than basically saying "Elon is a superhero".

I would not be surprised if others in their respective fields take a similar approach in other cult of personality topics (Uber, Elon, Apple, etc.).

> I would not be surprised if others in their respective fields take a similar approach in other cult of personality topics (Uber, Elon, Apple, etc.).

I no longer read the comments for things relating to medical testing, my professional field, and I try my best to avoid medicine generally.

It to me feels like many commenters are somewhat clueless on the topic, and many others have strongly held opinions that lack foundation. It's a frustrating environment to comment within: it takes a lot of energy to write a thoughtful comment that can fill in missing domain knowledge for an earnest reader, and subsequently demoralizing to have a popular frequent poster on this website to dismiss my comment with snark because they consider themselves to be informed in this area. My comments became gray. I deleted the password to my account when that happened and rarely post since, the frustration is not worthwhile.

   > This literally only happens in Musk related threads.

In my experience there are a number of people and companies that have advocates here. And they can be rather harsh when their world view is threatened. Many of my own most down voted comments are those that involve Google and its inability to make money on anything other than search advertising :-) I have also learned a lot from people who have been dismissive of my comments once I got them to help me understand where they were coming from. And that leads to this:

   > Your profile says you work in machine learning - imagine if every 
   > thread you posted in about machine learning you were told that 
   > you were an idiot because someone had read I, Robot and the AI 
   > in that doesn't match your idea of ML so of course you're wrong.

The reason that is in my profile is so that when someone is wondering about my comment, if they check my profile they can see where I am coming from. I also put my gmail address there so that folks can email me if they really disagree and they sometimes do. I also look at people's profiles to see if that can help contextualize their comments. When there is nothing in the 'about' field I have no way of knowing what their experience is. And I realize that many people don't put information in their profile because they wish to maintain a level of anonymity which might allow them to comment more freely than their employer (or acquaintances) would appreciate. But the bottom line is that asserting a counter argument from an anonymous account is much weaker than asserting a counter argument from a non-anonymous account. Counter arguments posted by throw away accounts that were created just to post the counter argument have the least weight of all.

And that brings us to this:

   > I would not be surprised if others in their respective fields take 
   > a similar approach in other cult of personality topics (Uber, 
   > Elon, Apple, etc.).

When you're writing a comment there are things you can include which will inflame the discussion emotionally. The rhetoric term I find most useful for this are 'dog whistles'. Dog whistles being ultrasonic whistles that when you blow on them dogs can hear them but most people can't. Similarly in communication you can use a phrase or keyword that relates back to a particular group of people.

In your comment you call these "cult of personality topics" and that hits two interesting points. The first is that cults are, by and large, considered to be organizations which control their hapless members. The second is that personality is not a quantitative statement. "Fanboys", "Groupees", "Sycophants" are all negatively connotative words to describe someone who irrationally favors some topic or group.

The challenge though is that these people don't see themselves coming from that perspective, and they come by their admiration of founders or companies honestly. And it is important to recognize and acknowledge that someone can both admire Elon Musk's accomplishments and companies, without being "duped." And how you disagree can be just as important as what you disagree on.

So to wrap up, if you're comfortable with it, I recommend a bit of background/bio information in your profile to help people understand your expertise. When people comment with information you know to be incorrect, ask how they came to that understanding so that you can understand how to help them learn something new. And when people are dismissive of your expertise or your comments, help them learn by pointing them to the same sources and material you used to get to your understanding. Thanks to you I've got a copy of Dunn's "Fundamentals of Geotechnical Analysis" coming via inter-library loan. Until your comment I didn't have a name for the activity that analyzes the feasibility of tunneling projects, now I do. With that I can learn more.

Recognize that everyone here comes from a different background and have different levels of expertise. When someone disagrees with you or dismisses your comment take that as an opportunity to learn something new, not about about your area of expertise but about how to communicate it clearly to a non-expert.