More like the easy commute you had in San Francisco on muni (the bus and subway network of San Francisco) becomes an annoying hour and a half-long commute on bart (The regional train system) with 2-3 transfers

This will never happen and the Hyperloop was a lie. Your comment reads like Elon propaganda.

By that time current senior staff is retired

How big is their network so far?

0

They have 2 or 3 tunnels of which at most 2 are actively in use.

It's really large, it spans the whole world! At last if you're high on drugs and remember to pray to your Lord and Savior Elon Musk, Tony Stark in the flesh!!

I haven't looked into it recently, however their Las Vegas network is going and expanding; 40 million people per year travel to Vegas, a great testbed and for exposure.

I wouldn't bring up the Las Vegas network if you're trying to advocate for the boring company, it's quite possibly the worst system of transportation that's ever been created. A farce in every aspect, benefiting no one.

Imagine if SpaceX stopped testing reusable rockets after the 2nd test-failure. Maybe you’re right and Elon should give up right now with Boring Company - I mean, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, Twitter-X, and who knows what else I’m forgetting or they’re developing in secret - have all done soooo badly, clearly a serial failure of an entrepreneur; oh right, Starlink, where they’re on the path to $5 billion monthly of revenues which will fund the Mars colony.

The farce is the irrational, resentful-emotionally corrupt logic of people being pessimistic, if not hateful, and completely failing in understanding how innovation occurs - instead being grumpy and lost in bipolar, all-or-nothing thinking making ridiculous claims like "benefiting no one;" maybe learn to brainstorm better, developing your creativity, and probably you also need to learn to put yourself in other people's shoes.

Maybe work on not being miserable in your life so you can not view the world in shit-covered goggles.

I used the underground Tesla thing to get between the halls of the convention center during NAB - it was pretty reasonable, but not really scalable...

This is not the sort of thing you should measure on an individual user experience basis. Try running the numbers for the system, it would essentially get beaten by a medium-sized bus in capacity and times, at a fraction of the cost.

Not to mention the large delta between what was promised versus what was delivered. There's probably a good case for fraud, if it were not for the fact that the purchasers want to save face they could probably sue.

... that is what I said. Good experience, not scalable.

However, transit advocates need to realize that the experience of individual users _does_ matter.

Is that the one that’s just teslas driving in a pretty normal tunnel at fairly unimpressive speeds & throughput?

Teslas which still don't have reliable enough FSD to drive on a one-way only track so they need human drivers to drive 1-3 people at a time.

Why is the number of people in LA relevant when the ridership peak is 1,355 an hour.

You're talking about Loop/Hyperloop rides? They could do 10+ tunnels deep if the traffic-economics warrant it.

Or they could do one bigger tunnel and put a train into it like every other city with a functional public transport?

I like how the Vegas Loop tunnels are almost the same diameter as the London Underground deep lines. Glasgow subway is even smaller. Which means the tunnels are big enough to run metro and carry lots of people.

It would be better to use larger tunnel, buy normal sized trains, and keep tall people from hitting their heads. It would also make sense to use one of the automated systems instead of trying to build pod system.

It is also curious that Musk always want to do his way. Cause there is company that makes automated pods used at Heathrow. They should work for the current service and wouldn't be Tesla 3 with driver.

"if" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

The criticisms of TBC fall into three camps: (1) this is terrifyingly unsafe, if a vehicle catches fire in those tunnels the occupants can't even open the doors and no vehicle behind them has a way to safely evacuate either; (2) they are still really expensive, like all other tunnels; (3) this compared poorly with all other modes of transport on every measure.

Thanks for replying with some depth-specific concerns.

Okay, so perhaps the worst case scenario is only goods are shipped in the tunnels - taking all semi-trucks off the roads for at least the major long-haul routes?

All-or-nothing thinking without critically thinking or brainstorming through how adaptations for adoption could be made isn't helpful.

Re: Safety

Perhaps battery tech that eventually is safer than currently driving a vehicle, perhaps even safer then with the casualties from airplane crashes, or other solutions like before entering the tunnels everyone is provided emergency kit/safety-oxygen masks/goggles, etc; and maybe necessary for doors that have an emergency "blowout" handle to pull and have doors pop off their hinges? I'm not sure you're correct about being unable to open and get out of a vehicle in such the tunnels.

We go through security checks, etc, at airports to save time - what level of "inconvenience" are people willing to implement or follow if a ~5 hour drive can turn into say a ~30 minute ride in a Hyperloop?

Also, in the Hyperloop almost vacuum state that's planned, fire will be less of a problem - and perhaps a safety system could be implemented, especially if everyone is temporarily given an oxygen mask-goggles for each longer ride or all rides, that at certain points a fire extinguishing-suppression system could be implemented where non-oxygen gases are flooded into the tunnel between the point a fire is detected?

Arguably so long as cost of implementation is less than or the same cost than current existing infrastructure costs, where the time savings are arguably up to invaluable - but a cost per ride for each person using the system will be determinable, then it can be a great alternative especially with the positives of how it allows transport regardless of winter weather conditions, etc.

> Okay, so perhaps the worst case scenario is only goods are shipped in the tunnels - taking all semi-trucks off the roads for at least the major long-haul routes?

So, in this scenario, you could only do that if each major long-haul route had a tunnel. And you made the tunnel wider, as the current tunnels — where the only cost-saving TBC has demonstrated of any kind so far is by limiting the size — aren't big enough to fit an American standard intermodal container, and only just fit the ISO containers (with so little margin you have to care about the turning circle even if you could fit the carrier into the circular gap around the boxy cross-section). And that's without also considering that current trucks definitely don't fit no matter which size standard is considered, so either you'd need the tunnels even wider or you'd need something custom-designed to fit.

High axle weights cause more damage to the surface, which is really bad for a tunnel where you can't just go around a pot-hole, so you want something hard-wearing, something like steel. Even if you use maglev, looking at current maglev research trains, you've got a speed-up zone where you still have contact.

But you don't need to cover the whole surface in steel, because unlike a road where the vehicles might move sideways, this is so tight that there's only one place for the wheels to even be. And if you do that, you could get rid of the batteries entirely by hooking these steel wheel-paths to the mains.

But then you can save money on the vacuum systems, because if you put all the ISO containers in a row: as each container will be in the slip-steam of the one ahead of it, a chain of 10 will have the same impact as a 10x reduction in air resistance.

Oh look, it's now either a railway or a subway depending on if you bother with the "underground" part.

> I'm not sure you're correct about being unable to open and get out of a vehicle in such the tunnels.

The pictures I've seen show negligible clearance between the bottom of the car doors and the curve of the wall. Also, I talked to a civil engineer.

But if you're talking about an evacuated tunnel, then leaving is lethal even if it's physically possible.

> We go through security checks, etc, at airports to save time - what level of "inconvenience" are people willing to implement or follow if a ~5 hour drive can turn into say a ~30 minute ride in a Hyperloop?

Hyperloop in particular (as in, not just the tunnel) is about the speed, so it only makes sense to wait 30 minutes for security etc. if you can go sufficiently faster than a car would have. But is this a point-to-point system in a network that connects everywhere to everywhere else, like a road, or a hub-to-hub system? If it's the former, then those 30 minutes could've taken you 15 miles at residential speeds or 35 miles at motorway speeds (in the UK, I don't know US norms) — a delay like that means there's no point even trying to make it like the road network, so QED it will be hub-to-hub; but if it's hub-to-hub, you now also need to factor in the time it takes to get from wherever you are to your closest starting hub, and in reverse at the far end the time between your ultimate destination and its nearest finishing hub in addition to factoring in the delay for security.

But hub-to-hub can't replace all semi-trucks off the road — at least around here, they go to each supermarket, and I've got something like 8 supermarkets with articulated lorry loading bays within a 15 minute walk from my apartment.

Given the big-rigs aren't going away without an absurd degree of extra infrastructure build-out (never mind tunnelling, that kind of density is more like "raise city by 10 meters and rebrand old roads as 'hyperloop'"), if you're going to have a setup with hubs that far apart, why not just use a plane (for long distances, with security delays) or a train (for shorter distances, without the hassle of security)?

> Also, in the Hyperloop almost vacuum state that's planned, fire will be less of a problem

Not so, li-ion can undergo runaway thermal failure even in a total vacuum. And a vacuum is a great insulator, so that will stay hot for a long time. I'm having trouble finding how hot these get (the numbers are all over the place, and are in any case mostly about car fires), but the lower ranges are still in the "melt aluminium" range of temperatures. And if this is in the configuration where you take a car onto a pod or other travel vehicle, that's in the section with air anyway. If you can't take your car with you, it looks a lot like conventional public transport.

> Arguably so long as cost of implementation is less than or the same cost than current existing infrastructure costs, where the time savings are arguably up to invaluable - but a cost per ride for each person using the system will be determinable, then it can be a great alternative especially with the positives of how it allows transport regardless of winter weather conditions, etc.

Those conditionals are load-bearing.

The creation of a tunnel is generally more expensive than the same length of railway. Where land is expensive enough to make up the difference (e.g. old cities), or where terrain adds complications (go from one side of a mountain range to the other), tunnels are already used and quite often (but not always) rails are put in those tunnels — with a lot of safety considerations and backups for when things inevitably do go wrong, many of which can't work in an evacuated tunnel. TBC hasn't made any newsworthy dents to that price (sadly), all they've done to reduce costs is make the tunnels so narrow they barely fit a car.

Busses also reduce congestion on surface roads, just by having more people per square meter. Down-side is the same hub-to-hub consideration, up-side is flexibility when one route is unavailable for repairs.

For long distances where high speed is the critical issue, aircraft already exist. Extra cost-saving: no need to evacuate the tunnel, gravity already did it for you. And if you need to rapidly leave the evacuated section, not only do the oxygen masks drop, so does the plane — and, unlike in a tunnel emergency, this doesn't cause all the planes behind it to get stuck.

If weather is a critical issue, then you would need an everywhere-to-everywhere network, but as previously mentioned, that doesn't work with a 30-minute delay to get started — to give a concrete example, 30 minutes into my commute is when I get off the underground and walk the rest of the way to my office.

Loop and Hyperloop are two completely different things. Loop is Tesla cars in a tunnel, and Hyperloop is theoretically capsules in evacuated tube. The former is not very good way to get around city, and the later is a not very good to get between cities.

... Wait, is it actually _that_ low? That's, like, a high-frequency conventional bus route (ie not BRT). Like, what on earth was the point? Either use buses for same capacity, or build a real rail line for ten times the capacity. The highest capacity metro systems can do something like 40k/hour each direction (though one of those would clearly be overkill in this case, and something far more modest could be used).

Is this comment satire? It's really hard to tell.

If it's not I encourage you to go look at the stellar success of the boring company in places like Las Vegas and reconsider your assessment of the future.

Hey dang, what exactly in my comment above warrants -5 (or more) downvotes?

You’re telling people to commute with a thing that doesn’t and very unlikely ever will exist?

https://www.boringcompany.com/vegas-loop - doesn't exist?

That is literally just a tunnel where people drive teslas around

Because theres a snowball's chance in hell that will ever happen. Just build normal trains and expand the public transportation like every developed country on Earth.

Extreme sycophancy without much critical thought.

Might as well argue he’s going to give all his employees time machines to go buy $AAPL in the 90s as part of their comp plan. Would also get downvoted.

"Extreme sycophancy without much critical thought."

A claim you make with no supportive arguments.

My comment is packed with critical thought. Maybe you're just lacking understanding to unpack it? Or are you too arrogant to not think that you know all?

And then ridiculous ad hominem that you think was clever enough to actually waste time to type out; what work do you have that you hate that you're procrastinating from working on?

I'm really curious if you know what sycophancy means, and if so, how exactly my comment is benefitting me? I think it's more likely you're jealous of Elon's success, have past trauma from personal work experiences you're projecting onto him, and taking it out on anyone who notes his successes and extrapolates to estimate where his projects will lead to.

wat.

I don't think you know what ad hominem nor sycophancy mean.

Have a good week!

This is a very anti-Musk thread and generally anti-Musk crowd. Pro-Musk comments should be expected to be downvoted, unfortunately. It's days like these one has to be brave and burn some magical internet karma points in order to present an opposing view and to call out the one-sided discussions.

I don't think the comment is being voted because it's "pro-Musk", but because no one believes they're going to do any of that. I even thought it was a joke, until they asked why they were being downvoted.

The true is, there's a huge gap between what was promised early on and what they seem to be able to do. After a certain point people start calling it "bs" and have no patience for those repeating the initial claims.

You need CalTrain to get to San Jose. BART should have gone all the way around the bay by now but CalTrain defends its turf like a honey badger.

Transit in the Bay Area has very fragmented governance: 27 different transit agencies for 7.6m people in 9 counties with little coordination and no regional vision. By most measures, the Bay Area has the most fragmented public transit network in the country. See Seamless Bay Area if you want to make your voice heard for fixing this: https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/

For a map and list of the organizational insanity, see https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/transitagencieslist (2019).

(Large tech companies like Google, Meta, Apple avoid all this by using private employee-only shuttles which take the freeway where possible).

BART from the East Bay is in the process of being extended to downtown SJ (latest estimate: "2036", they are still debating single-bore vs twin-bore tunnel, to save money in construction).

It's not fair to just blame BART vs Caltrain though, there are multiple cities that need to cooperate with other too: as we saw in the neverending saga of the CA High-Speed Rail project, people wanted a midpeninsula stop, but no midpeninsula city (Redwood City vs Palo Alto vs Mountain View) wanted to be the one to incur the increased traffic and enormous construction disruption from underground multistorey parking lots, so it was dropped.

At least, Caltrain electrification is finally promised, fall 2024: https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification/project-be... (more reliable (=> fewer breakdowns and delays), less noise, cleaner air quality)

They still haven't finished that leg? I was there 7 years ago and the plan was advertised on the maps.

You can get to San Jose on BART now but have to go all the way under and around the bay instead of directly south, so it’s not really worth it to go from SF to SJ using anything other than Caltrain.

You can take Caltrain to San Jose. I did this commute for several years when I lived in SF and worked in SJ. With electrification coming top Caltrain this fall, it should be faster than the current diesel trains. Depending on where Twitter's offices are in Palo Alto and San Jose, it probably won't be that bad.

BART runs with 20 minute headways on longer routes (and as little as 4 minutes through San Francisco). The six CalTrain "baby bullet" express trains run hourly at best, with long service lapses mid-day and in the late evenings. Locals run more often (about every 10--20 minutes during peak commute hours) but add a half-hour to the just over one-hour express schedule.

(Both are still faster by far than driving, particularly during rush hour.)

CalTrain: <https://www.caltrain.com/media/22502/download>

BART's Green Line (Daly City - Beryessa / North San Jose) departs every 20 minutes from 4:55 am though 7:36 pm (southbound) and 4:59 am through 6:49 pm (northbound):

<https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2024-01/January%201...>

I commuted for several years to Palo Alto from SF. If you manage to get on a "baby bullet" it was a 37 minute ride, but you also have to get to/from a Caltrain station on each end. In PA, I was lucky that the office was a few minute walk, but in SF it was a taxi or bus ride (this was pre-Uber etc).

As an X employee, if you had optimized your commute around the mid-market area, you could be living less than 45 minutes away on a single mode of public transit, but it could double or triple to commute to the new X offices. Any time you have a transfer with the commuter systems in the Bay Area, it's going to be a clusterfuck from time to time.

Are they upgrading the tracks as well? Diesel trains can run at 80mph no problem, which is about the maximum any standard US railroad supports. If the track is built to high speed standards you could go faster.

The track has a lot of at-grade intersections with roads running through the mid-peninsula - it seems unlikely they'll be running trains at 80mph.

At-grade intersections can be removed.

Melbourne, Australia has been running a project since 2015 – scheduled to continue until at least 2030 – to remove at-grade intersections (or "level crossings" as we call them) on suburban rail lines. They've already removed 83, and by 2030 plan to have removed 110. I'm not sure of the total cost, but I'd say in the ballpark of US$5-10 billion. The removal is done by a combination of elevating the rail line, trenching the rail line, and leaving the rail line at the same level but building road bridges over it – adopting whichever solution is most feasible and cost-effective for any given at-grade intersection. The project is run and paid for by the state government, with the federal government contributing some of the funding.

Australia's State of Victoria: population close to 7 million, economy almost US$300 billion (Gross State Product), annual state government budget around US$70 billion. California: population close to 40 million, economy almost US$4 trillion (GSP), annual state government budget of almost US$300 billion. If Victoria can afford it, California can too.

The plan is to run the high speed rail along the same tracks at reduced speed, so if that doesn't get cancelled they'll eventually remove all those

.. and being "close" to the occasional death: The inter-city CalTrain (the outside of the train) is used frequently by those amongst us who pursue suicide, and aside from that dropping a mini-nuke on society / friends + family, another side-effect is 2-3 hours of delay on CalTrain. Overall, a traumatic and unhealthy commute.

Living in SF and working in South Bay sucked for me, when I did that, for that reason in particular.

The Bay area is fairly constrained in terms of transportation. Commuting in a car is not possible (unless you enjoy deadlock traffic + paying for parking). Public transportation exists but only works on specific segments.

I would guess a large portion of the individuals in the SF office would live within SF/East bay and have a fairly reasonable commute going to the SF office. I am not sure how far Bart goes south now but typically you would take Caltrain so thats a 45min ride from SF to Palo Alto. Then tack on however long it takes you to get to Caltrain. Easily a 1hr commute.

Commuting in a car is not possible because most people do it, I suppose.

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

oh god i forgot Caltrain exists

People actually live everywhere in the Bay Area, and do every commute, and there is extensive mediocre transit in the South Bay. Commuting Santa Cruz into town, Livermore into town, every single suburb has people going to San Francisco, or to another suburb, or San Jose, or Oakland. In heavy traffic they are much longer than 1 hr apart, and the fastest train is 1hr 10min iirc.

If they relocate engineers to Palo Alto, that's halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. And a lot of engineers (not necessarily at X but in general in Silicon Valley) live in the suburbs between SF and SJ already. It might be mildly less convenient for some, but also mildly more convenient for many.

Twitter sold a lot of people on living in SF proper as opposed to Palo Alto, if memory serves they were one of the first big shops to set up on Market

Yeah, unless you live in Oakland, this probably will be irrelevant to everyone who lives north of Palo Alto.

I'm imagining hordes of 20-something engineers living in the Mission with a 15 minute flat bicycle commute to the X office now having to grapple with getting to San Jose. Probably pretty rough news for a decent amount of people.

they will just work remote

Are they permitted to?

No, not anymore post-Elon.

Wrong thread, this is Elon's company we are talking about

You mean they won't switch to a 3-4 hour, mostly flat, 50 mile bike ride?

San Jose is bigger than SF, and tech people tend to age out of the city and move south into the peninsula- so probably a good portion of the employees are getting an improved or neutral commute.

I commute to Palo Alto from SF. It takes ~90 minutes. 1 hour on the CalTrain + 15*2 minutes of last mile transport.

Caltrain's main issue is that trains run every hour. (with 1 super slow train in the middle). Miss a train, and you're screwed.