A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

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Tim
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A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by Tim »

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2438 ... um-traffic
Elon Musk's tunnel construction and infrastructure firm, The Boring Company, in cooperation with the city of Los Angeles, announced Wednesday it would build a privately funded tunnel from a subway station in East Hollywood to Dodger Stadium that would reduce time in traffic from more than an hour in the car to fewer than four minutes by electric vehicle.

The Boring Company is projecting that, when ready, 1,500 fans per game can take the company's underground high-speed vehicles through the tunnel called "The Dugout Loop," instead of sitting in their cars in traffic. That number can eventually rise to 2,800 fans, or 5 percent of Dodger Stadium's capacity.

Games at Dodger Stadium have been legendary for their late-arriving crowds because of traffic jams that prolong rush hour past the first pitch.

"The Dugout Loop will be good for fans and neighbors, providing another fast and affordable way for people to get to home games, while helping to reduce traffic in the neighborhoods surrounding Dodger stadium," said Tucker Kain, the Los Angeles Dodgers' chief financial officer.

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ghostrunner
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by ghostrunner »

Doesn’t strike me as a good idea and nowhere near as good as just putting some money into improving transit generally.

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lukethedrifter
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by lukethedrifter »

ghostrunner wrote:Doesn’t strike me as a good idea and nowhere near as good as just putting some money into improving transit generally.

Exactly. Ego. Huge money for little relief.

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Joe Shlabotnik
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

lukethedrifter wrote:
ghostrunner wrote:Doesn’t strike me as a good idea and nowhere near as good as just putting some money into improving transit generally.

Exactly. Ego. Huge money for little relief.
Like him inserting himself into that Thai rescue operation last month. Embarrassing.

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sighyoung
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by sighyoung »

He wants to be the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of the 21st century--the engineering genius of his age. But a lot of this is just attention-seeking.

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pioneer98
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by pioneer98 »

sighyoung wrote:He wants to be the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of the 21st century--the engineering genius of his age. But a lot of this is just attention-seeking.
This is all it is. He gets his headline - A tunnel! To Dodger Stadium!

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ghostrunner
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

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"Gentlemen. Imagine if you built the Holland Tunnel, but it was for one car, going one way at a time. And what if I told you it was like a videogame, complete with loading times?"

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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by TheoSqua »

I feel that this tunnel is getting unfair criticism for the stage of development that it's in. Musk tends to treat his companies like tech startups and iterates his progress similar to software development. Sometimes that's really good because they can quickly adjust, sometimes it's problematic because very expensive robust processes like car manufacturing does not lend itsself to this style of improvement.

As a software developer this kind of thing looks very familiar to me. When building a software POC the initial demo is almost always built with smoke and mirrors and requires using your imagination to see the potential. This project started with figuring out how to quickly build a tunnel that was cost effective, how to transport, how to move those transports, etc. The fact that it's a tesla just tell you they're not in that phase of their iterative development, not that they expect to change the world by duct taping some attachments onto a tesla and calling it a day.

All this demo is showing us is that The Boring Company can build a tunnel with their existing technology that can transport people through it. Just like Space X and their continuous improvements to their rocket technology, this solution is going to evolve and be polished over and over and over and over again until it accomplishes their end goal.

I'm not saying it's going to revolutionize anything, and i'm not convinced it's going to be anything but a failure - but the fact that they aren't fully polished means very little to the potential they can bring to the market.

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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by Hoot45 »

You know what else would reduce gameday traffic? Less cars. As often is the case, Elon has clever solutions to the wrong problem.

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lukethedrifter
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Re: A non political Elon Musk story and the LAD

Post by lukethedrifter »

Hoot45 wrote:You know what else would reduce gameday traffic? Less cars. As often is the case, Elon has clever solutions to the wrong problem.
Say whaaaaat?



No doubt this is going to be an express lane for the 1% to get in and out of their own parking.

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