<story><title>Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co&apos;s First Tunnel</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-elon-musk-tunnel-20181218-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>konschubert</author><text>If they manage to reduce the cost of tunnel boring then that&amp;#x27;s super exciting and I congratulate them.&lt;p&gt;But all this discussion of what to put in the tunnel seems very silly to me.
Are they just re-discovering subways? Do they know that there are subways in the world (e.g. Paris) that run out rubber tires?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>Tunneling is currently so expensive that there are few companies doing any innovation on how to properly utilize them. A big part of the problem is actually digging them in a way that is cheap and scaleable. Another part of the problem is the organizations doing the digging and doing the exploitation are typically have misaligned incentives and goals.&lt;p&gt;For example, expanding subway systems is currently in the hands of very badly run semi government institutions who are arguably quite bad at even utilizing the tunnels they have. E.g. the new york subway system is famously less efficient than ever due to the fact that they keep reducing the speed at which trains travel through it. Digging new tunnels is relatively rare for them; and when they do dig new tunnels, they tend to just use them exactly the same way as their existing tunnels, which is not very efficiently. Also, like most government infrastructure projects, progress is slow and things tend to go way over budget.&lt;p&gt;Musk&amp;#x27;s approach is twofold: 1) turn tunnel digging into a scaleable business. 2) provide concrete things to do with these tunnels that are not backwards and stupid that he can sell. For example, if you have autonomous vehicles, you don&amp;#x27;t need a lot of expensive infrastructure inside the tunnels to get from A to B. Infrastructure like rails, signaling equipment, power lines for the trains, etc. It so happens he has a business for autonomous vehicles already. He sells the whole package. That&amp;#x27;s why he&amp;#x27;s emphasizing the use cases.&lt;p&gt;This is classic Musk, he thinks end to end an he might actually pull it off.</text></comment>
<story><title>Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co&apos;s First Tunnel</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-elon-musk-tunnel-20181218-story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>konschubert</author><text>If they manage to reduce the cost of tunnel boring then that&amp;#x27;s super exciting and I congratulate them.&lt;p&gt;But all this discussion of what to put in the tunnel seems very silly to me.
Are they just re-discovering subways? Do they know that there are subways in the world (e.g. Paris) that run out rubber tires?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ztjio</author><text>During the presentation, Musk &lt;i&gt;specifically&lt;/i&gt; compared to subways and how their vision is an improvement. I didn&amp;#x27;t and won&amp;#x27;t read the article, since I watched the presentation, but, if it doesn&amp;#x27;t even mention that fact, this article is a waste of time. The presentation was quite informative of their ideas and visions for using the tunnels and gave clear explanations of how their approach is superior to existing ones.</text></comment>