Boring Company Selected to Build O’Hare Express in Chicago.

[mongo]

So Elon under the Boring company is making a long-term financial bet by footing the bill for the construction and hoping to get a return from the fares. It is unclear to me whether the $1 billion estimate includes the cost of the pods or only the tunnel. Even if we assume that it is total cost including pods and station infrastructure and the whole thing will not run over-budget (big assumptions!), he will need ~50 million rides to pay for it if a ride costs $25 and the operating cost fits within $5 (more assumptions that may not hold). How many years will it take to sell 50 million tickets ?

Two tunnels at 18 miles each.
Land costs 0 for tunnel (city easement)
Elon is shooting for $10 million a mile
$360 million in tunneling cost.
Call is $600 million total
$25 fare, $20 net, 1,000/ hour avg * 20 hours a day = 400k/ day.
1,500 days / 5 years to recoup costs.
Double cost/ half profit, still only 20 years. If financing was <5% it is cash flow positive from day 1.

I think...

 

[SW2Fiddler]

$25 fare, $20 net, 1,000/ hour avg * 20 hours a day = 400k/ day.
1,500 days / 5 years to recoup costs.

$40 special for a round-trip ticket airport and back, for people like me who just want to ride it.

The Musk Mountain ride.

Mountain.

 

[electracity]

Secondly, in the European market one of the biggest costs of underground tunnelling for mass transit is the need for escape / service shafts every 500m-1000m. What’s proposed here? You’ll see on YouTube a great docco all about London’s Crossrail project and the pains they’ve taken to prevent surface structures being affected by the tunnelling below. This needed countless vertical shafts to be dug in the city centre so grouting could be injected into the ground. All of this needs complicated and expensive work sites in the middle of the city. Is the difference all in Chicago’s geology? Safety regs? What am I missing?

The cost per mile for a sound and safe tunnel should not be any different than a standard subway for the reasons you state. This project only makes sense if it evolves into a larger transport system. I assume the vehicles are on tires, so later they can run above ground. I also assume that eventually Tesla private cars will be controllable by the system.

I think they can maybe achieve ~15,000 people per hour in each direction.? Freeway throughput is about 2000 vehicles an hour. An optimized system can perhaps do 3000- 4000 vehicles. 4-6 riders per vehicle?

Stage two the vehicles leave the tunnel and drop the passengers at their location.

 

[mongo]

I dunno. A long train is aerodynamically the most efficient way of moving large numbers of people from one high density area to another. I take a driverless, electric and air conditioned tunneled ride to work every day. I don’t see whats new here. Some of the London lines have a frequency of every 100 seconds but with a capacity of 1,500 per vehicle. This line only manages that capacity per hour.

Agree not the most energy efficient division.

Grouting as you tunnel is interesting - maybe the absence of interim stations is what makes this possible?

Grouting as you go is a the standard method. I think side tunnels require a second TBM to bore through the first TBMs tunnel...

I'm doubtful about the no intermediate stops. Tesla will need the highest occupancy they can achieve, and that will mean some skates with passengers going to different drop off points, so for some travellers the skate will stop to allow other people off (and/or to pick up other people)

The key metric for capacity is people per second or feet of track per person. With a high enough number of skates to always have some on standby, there is no reason to combine routes (other than energy efficiency).

A multi stop train with 1,500 and 4 destinations is moving 375 people each stop. Call it one minute load/unload and 2 minutes between trains. So every 3 minutes 1,500 people cycle past. With 50% full skates, that is 188 skates worth in 3 minutes, or 63 skaters per minute. At 60 MPH, skate spacing to match train people rate is about an 84 foot separation.

That seemed to be common in Japan when I've been there. Minor stations have side tracks and platforms on the outside. All trains travel at same cruising speed, but stopping-trains stop in every station and that is an opportunity for a following express-trains to "overtake" along the central express through-tracks. Major stations have platforms between express through-track and stopping side-track, and a stopping train will already be waiting when Express arrives, so can travel by Express train to main station before destination, cross over platform onto [the already] waiting stopping-train, and then continue to destination station. Don't know if that is common elsewhere in the world, I haven't seen anything like it on British Rail

Sure, it can be done but requires switches, switching control, and creates discontinuities. Sticking with wheels eliminates all that complexity, material, and maintenance cost.

 

[Singer3000]

Tesla will be 25% faster than London Paddington to Heathrow Airport, which (I believe) is a dedicated track / train. And that's assuming I don't just miss one, which would effectively double my travel time ... if I can be on a Skate with a wait measure in single minutes its going to be a lot more convenient. Maybe the "30 seconds" thing is to manage expectations of wait time, rather than minimum interval between Skates in the tunnel?

Overall journey time might be a bit quicker but it still looks like a pretty fringe solution. What we really need is a cheaper way of building transit capacity for high density cities that are growing by several millions in population each decade. This looks like a scheme that allows a select few to buy their way to downtown quicker than the masses (and without having to share space with them!).

All the same, it is Mr Musk’s money. If he thinks he can get a return and that it serves a useful purpose (as he kept emphasising in the announcement), then good luck to him.

 

[mongo]

Overall journey time might be a bit quicker but it still looks like a pretty fringe solution. What we really need is a cheaper way of building transit capacity for high density cities that are growing by several millions in population each decade. This looks like a scheme that allows a select few to buy their way to downtown quicker than the masses (and without having to share space with them!).

All the same, it is Mr Musk’s money. If he thinks he can get a return and that it serves a useful purpose (as he kept emphasising in the announcement), then good luck to him.

Watch the recent Boring talk video. For the urban system, the priority is for walking/ bicyclist commuters and cost is expect to be less than a coffee.

 

[RDoc]

I'm very surprised at the low capacity of the system. As others have pointed out, with a 30 second headway, that's only 120 cars per hour, so a maximum of 1920 passengers per hour, which I believe is about a third of the existing line. At 120 mph they'll be a mile apart, which also means there will only be about 40 cars in the tunnels at one time.

I don't see why they can't run coupled together while underway, or at least very close together. Perhaps that will be an upgrade if capacity warrants it.

 

[RubberToe]

The cost per mile for a sound and safe tunnel should not be any different than a standard subway for the reasons you state...

Not clear that this is the case. The test tunnels being built are much smaller in diameter than a standard subway tunnel, because a Model X sled and the proposed vehicles running in the Loop tunnel are smaller in size. Lowering the cost of tunneling is all about building the smallest diameter tunnel possible, that and getting the tunneling speed as fast as possible.

Going to be interesting to see what the proposed required safety and redundancy features will be in the final design. For example, cross passages between tunnels? Ventilation? Passing or working around stuck vehicles?

And yes, this will only really "work" as part of a larger system. But picture this scenario...

The system as currently proposed is a point to point system, with only a single "starting point" station to get from that station to the airport. Once that is up and running, and should the tunneling prove cost effective, you can then start adding additional feeder tunnels to hook into that one.

Say a big fancy hotel is 1 mile away from the current sole station. You just run another tunnel from said hotel basement to the current station, now you have two stations that can provide direct service to the airport, and direct service back, with no intermediate stops required. If you are the owner of said fancy hotel, how much extra could you charge for your rooms if you offered direct service from the airport to your hotel basement that could get passengers there in 15 minutes? (BTW, this is a rhetorical question...)

Once the first feeder tunnel is in place and working, other entities will be falling over each other, and offering to pay for the feeder tunnels in order to be the next feeder branch into the system. If the tunnel costs are reasonable, this could totally happen.

RT

 

[electracity]

I'm very surprised at the low capacity of the system.

I agree, that is why I brought up highway throughput per lane of 2000 cars/hour.

The numbers Musk gives for this project must 1) Provide a reasonable ROI, and 2) Actually represent a reasonable estimation of demand for the service. A business traveler returning to the near north side will probably still take an Uber from the airport. They can't claim that most people traveling to/from a 3 miles radius of the loop node will use the service. Musk has to represent a real world demand..

I keep seeing this project referred to as "rail". This is a small bus on tires, right?

 

[WannabeOwner]

63 skaters per minute

I'm liking that unit-of-measure

Overall journey time might be a bit quicker but it still looks like a pretty fringe solution.

Fair point. But its disruptive technology; folk are currently only used to "trains". Once Loop becomes common place maybe folk will prefer Pods?

Roadster was very expensive. Model-S/X less so, but unaffordable for most. M3 much more affordable. once Boring Company has done many miles of tunnels and recouped capital cost, the ticket price can come down, and perhaps folk will just plain prefer direct-to-destination Pods to Trains?

 

[RDoc]

Does anyone have any idea how the switching system would work? With the lateral side wheel "curbs" and deep central cutout the "points" used for rail won't work.

 

[mongo]

Does anyone have any idea how the switching system would work? With the lateral side wheel "curbs" and deep central cutout the "points" used for rail won't work.

I think the video with the X was just a hack to allow faster driving with a vehicle that is not set up for the tunnel.

Inductive and magnetic line following sensors are mm accurate and can provide lateral position data to the skates. They can also do splits and joins, so the skate would self guide on the correct route.

 

[TexasEV]

I'm very surprised at the low capacity of the system. As others have pointed out, with a 30 second headway, that's only 120 cars per hour, so a maximum of 1920 passengers per hour, which I believe is about a third of the existing line.

In 2017 the average daily boarding at O’Hare was 11,419 on weekdays, slightly less on weekends.
https://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/6/2017_CTA_Annual_Ridership_Report.pdf
So 1920 passengers per hour is plenty of excess capacity to take passengers now using taxi, etc., especially as many of the current Blue Line passengers were going to suburban stops, not the Loop.

 

[Krugerrand]

Basically this is just an underground electric bus system. Not sure whats wrong with a plain old train with LYFT auto driving Tesla cars or buses at each station to take people to their destinations. Trains can move a lot more people than individual skates or buses. Arteries of of trains with auto driving cars or buses serving as the capillaries of the system to get people to their destinations would make more sense to me. Maybe if I saw the route map the skate concept might be more clear.. I would suggest trying out the skate concept in one small city before implementing in a big city as a trial.and error. A single train track can move 10,000 people per hour. A large bus station can only move a small fraction of that and takes up alot more room. Disney relies on the monorail to move millions of people.View attachment 309899

Because trains hold too many people, so you don’t avoid annoying crowding and the delays (line ups) associated with them.

Pods of 16 people max sounds exactly perfect to keep flow and not have people delayed by a crowd.

 

[RDoc]

I think the video with the X was just a hack to allow faster driving with a vehicle that is not set up for the tunnel.

Inductive and magnetic line following sensors are mm accurate and can provide lateral position data to the skates. They can also do splits and joins, so the skate would self guide on the correct route.

The slot car design has been replaced by this design:

This is my design for a switch. Obviously it would be a much more gradual bend. There are two areas that rise and lower hydraulically depending on the setting of the switch, horizontal or vertical in this diagram.

 

[mongo]

The slot car design has been replaced by this design:

This is my design for a switch. Obviously it would be a much more gradual bend. There are two areas that rise and lower hydraulically depending on the setting of the switch, horizontal or vertical in this diagram.

View attachment 310090

If you compare that image with the one of the lobby in post #9, it looks like the driving surface rests in the squared off notch which leaves the space underneath for cables/ pipes/ drainage.

Basically, the X is driving in the utility trench.

 

[RDoc]

Somethings gone wrong with uploading images it seems. This is my idea for the switch design. There are two areas that go up and down hydraulically depending on which way the switch is set.

Take a look at the linked FAQ. The upper surface is the road wheels, the outside wall of the shelf just below is for the horizontal guide wheels.

My next question is if the driving surface will be banked for curves? I think it kind of has to be.

 

[mongo]

Somethings gone wrong with uploading images it seems. This is my idea for the switch design. There are two areas that go up and down hydraulically depending on which way the switch is set.

Take a look at the linked FAQ. The upper surface is the road wheels, the outside wall of the shelf just below is for the horizontal guide wheels.

Ah. right you are. I missed that on their site. Is that section recent?

Ultimately for high speed/ close gap switching, the departure angle will need to be shallow. I wonder if the skate could just favor the exit side to depart, with only a guide for through traffic. Design could also be a cylinder with a flat such that the flat is the side of the through, or the floor of the exit. (Possibly paired with a through floor/ side exit one) that trades up/down for rotation.

 

[RDoc]

Actually, thinking about it some more, maybe there won't be any switches.

Based on that lobby picture mongo pointed out, perhaps the sleds also have guide wire steering capability. If that were the case, the junction itself could be completely paved over, all at driving surface height, with culverts below and switchable guide wires instead of the guide wheel shelves.

When the sled approached a junction, it would switch to guide wire control, lift the guide wheels above driving surface height, and navigate the junction using the guide wire signal, either straight or diverting to one of the intersecting tunnels.

That would keep the tunnel completely free of moving parts with everything complex in the sled. I'm not sure that would be acceptable from a safety standpoint though. They seem to be big on not relying on any kind of self driving.

 

[RDoc]

Ah. right you are. I missed that on their site. Is that section recent?

Ultimately for high speed/ close gap switching, the departure angle will need to be shallow. I wonder if the skate could just favor the exit side to depart, with only a guide for through traffic. Design could also be a cylinder with a flat such that the flat is the side of the through, or the floor of the exit. (Possibly paired with a through floor/ side exit one) that trades up/down for rotation.

Somehow the road wheels have to avoid dropping into the central trench!