The Problems with the Boring Company
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2025
- Elon Musk's Boring Company aims to "solve traffic" by building networks of underground road tunnels. But after years of false starts and underwhelming results, their ability to deliver on their promises is in question. More importantly, the Company seems to be disinterested in building infrastructure that will benefit a society as a whole, but rather a select few. So is the Boring Company, in fact, revolutionizing transportation?
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The kind of sober-minded takedown of Musk's anti-public "infrastructure" that we need more of! Subscribed!
I think saying the technology of the Boring company is interesting is a bit over generous ... 🙂
As you point out, the city tunnels are just a less effective version of subways, a technology which have been around since 1860 and has moved many, many millions of people annually since at least year 1900.
And the Hyperloop is basically a massively upsized pneumatic tube, a technology which also has been around for a long time. It is very good for moving small items where you do not particularly care if they get banged up quite a bit along the way. One of the most common uses of that technolgy today is probably trash disposal. Which might say something about Musks views on those of us travelling with public transport ... 🙂
Overall, the two biggest practical problems with any underground transportation system are:
1) Geology - the ground down there is not uniform in any way.
2) Safety - providing evacuation routes, fire safety, first responder access and so on.
So making a underground system where, you have to ride with, and I quote "...a bunch of random strangers" is always going to be expensive and time consuming.
(and I would love to change the ending of that quote to be "... strangers, one of might be Elon Musk" - the horror! 🙂 )
As you point out, the Boring company is not and never was about making transportation more efficient. It might have been a dream about some form of VIP lanes for rich people. But probably it was mostly just a part of Musks presistent and long time fight against any form of public transportation - like CHSR which he seem to hate and has spent so much money and time to fight and delay.
Ellen Muskrat is quite a weasel! All the disadvantages of a car, without the benefits of a train. Genius!
Extremely Common Elon Musk L