Versus an electric train. Theoretically, since the energy is transported into the tunnel via power lines, wouldn’t fire suppression and ventilation systems be cheaper since they wouldn’t need to handle so much stored energy potential (via batteries) traveling through a tunnel?
Simply using private funds without numerous contractors can decreases costs by an order of magnitude with no technological improvements.
NYC only has a big subway system because it gobbled up all the failing private railways over the years. LA used to have the largest rail transportation network in the world, it was private, and it too failed to turn a profit and failed. Transportation runs at a loss.
This is false. The biggest cost to tunnels is moving and replacing utility lines (power, internet, sewage, water, etc.) that were not properly recorded by private entities when they constructed their buildings.
It's precisely where government bureaucracy was involved that tunneling is the cheapest, because then moving and replacing the utility lines can happen all at once instead of over the course of months as the tunneling machine bores into them, and bureaucracy can coordinate road closures, utility shutoffs, etc.
Also, private entities use subcontractors not because bureaucracy requires it but because it lets them delegate out responsibility for areas in which they do not have competence for less than the cost of developing such competence in-house. It's simply the way the construction industry works. Even Joe Blow Contractor rebuilding someone's bathroom will hire contractors to do specific parts of the rebuild (like the plumbing, or the tiles). Another example: the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood has hundreds of subcontractors, and is fully privately funded.
To answer your question: He’s not building subway tunnels. It’s tunnels for Tesla vehicles.
From the perspective of the city, the ROI of a subway train is high.
From the perspective of an individual, the ROI of using my own car in a tunnel, exactly when I want to, without parking, waiting, embarking, smelling the vagrants, disembarking, walking or getting a cab, ... Priceless!
My corrections in CAPS.
I don't think I need to say more, it should be obvious way tunnels for cars are a bad idea.
What about everyone else and their cars?
Weird then that he didn't ask the individual to pay for it.
Because if you keep downvoting every statement that you don’t agree with, that’s what you’ll soon have!
Musk has not proposed any improvements to the expensive parts of tunneling.