Boring Co applied for a 15 mile loop in Las Vegas

[Sam1]

Elon Musk company seeks extension to underground transit system

 

[CyberGus]

The city of Austin is planning underground rail downtown. Maybe talk to Elon...?

 

[Grendal]

Elon Musk’s Boring Company expands Las Vegas' Tesla vehicles Loop system - Electrek

 

[Cosmacelf]

The city of Austin is planning underground rail downtown. Maybe talk to Elon...?

You should give your mayor a call. Boring company system, while not proven yet, is conceptually way better than any traditional subway or rail system.

 

[Cosmacelf]

BTW, you can download a 5MB high res PDF of the proposed Las Vegas loop system in the link below. Note that the turn around tunnels are shown as "conceptual only" which means to me they haven't done the traffic engineering yet to figure out how long each turn around tunnel needs to be (turn around tunnels will be queuing points since they must wait for traffic in the main tunnel to clear before merging in, just like on and off ramps are queuing points for freeways).

BTW, this begs the question in my mind. The architecture of the Loop system seems to imply local control. ie. each vehicle is autonomously controlled and judges for itself when to merge, speed up, slow down, etc. This gets complicated with you throw in on ramps into the design. If you had a naïve design where you had an on ramp tunnel getting close to the main tunnel and then the tunnels merge, the onramp tunnel would have zero visibility into the main artery tunnel. The only way to make that work would be to have centralized control where a central computer knows exactly where each vehicle is and informs onramping vehicles when it is safe to merge. And maybe that's the way they'll architect it. The alternative is to have long parallel sections, essentially a double width tunnel, so that merging cars can see the oncoming traffic before merging. This is much more expensive though.

Of all Elon's projects, this is the one that excites me the most!

Las Vegas News Bureau

 

[kjksd]

BTW, this begs the question in my mind. The architecture of the Loop system seems to imply local control. ie. each vehicle is autonomously controlled and judges for itself when to merge, speed up, slow down, etc.

I think it'll be hybrid i.e. intelligence sharing between car and central signaling. I'm thinking the equivalent of red/green lights but signaled electronically, not visually.

Here's a job description for software eng in Boring Company: The Boring Company - Software Engineer

It says:

Responsibilities

• Iterate and optimize the traffic control algorithms to achieve maximum system efficiency.
• Design and develop software to allow for complete autonomous operations within tunnel transportation.
• Implement safe and reliable vehicle control algorithms to achieve full autonomy.
• Architect and implement high quality code for safety critical controls to run all aspects of traffic controls.

This implies there will be a centralized traffic control but I also think that it'll be designed to co-operate with autopilot software in the car, not fully replace it.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I think it'll be hybrid i.e. intelligence sharing between car and central signaling. I'm thinking the equivalent of red/green lights but signaled electronically, not visually.

Here's a job description for software eng in Boring Company: The Boring Company - Software Engineer

It says:

Responsibilities

• Iterate and optimize the traffic control algorithms to achieve maximum system efficiency.
• Design and develop software to allow for complete autonomous operations within tunnel transportation.
• Implement safe and reliable vehicle control algorithms to achieve full autonomy.
• Architect and implement high quality code for safety critical controls to run all aspects of traffic controls.

This implies there will be a centralized traffic control but I also think that it'll be designed to co-operate with autopilot software in the car, not fully replace it.

Man that job looks so fun. I almost wish I were still a programming grunt so that I could apply

 

[ThomasD]

How hard would it be to scale up moving thousands of people to the Convention Center. Say there is an event and now you have to scale up to transporting 30.000 people to and from the convention center. Will they be able to add more transport vehicles easily

 

[CyberGus]

How hard would it be to scale up moving thousands of people to the Convention Center. Say there is an event and now you have to scale up to transporting 30.000 people to and from the convention center. Will they be able to add more transport vehicles easily

This is one of the benefits of using individual vehicles, instead of a train on a fixed loop. The vehicles in the system can be redirected toward high-traffic areas while still providing service to stations with lower demand.

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's moving along. Quick 18 minute video at the City of Las Vegas Planning Commission. They loved it. https://twitter.com/CityOfLasVegas/status/1326348008158453760

BTW, I've gotta say this was the most professional planning commission hearing I've ever seen. Kudos.