Initial thoughts on 'The Boring Company'

I really like the idea and if you don't know what I'm talking about check out their webpage and this cool video.

Electric Sled

This is a fantastic idea and I've been wondering since I was a child why we didn't have things like this on our motorways (freeways). I always thought of them more as as drive on-off train, but the sled idea makes this more flexible and eliminates some of the problems of vehicle carrying trains. (I also thought the trains should be in tunnels, yay for Hyperloop).

However I think that if it can be made economical to run a metal power supply line down the middle of a tunnel that you dug for your sleds to run on, it would be more so economical to put them on a motorway first. The great thing about this is that you can just add 'lines' piecemeal to motorways as you get the capital, and drivers can start using them immediately. I imagine the routes would get longer and longer and eventually might leave the motorways and go onto major A (trunk) roads too.

In addition to the above I see the following benefits of using electric sleds on motorways:

Non-obvious benefits:

Increased EV adoption

This type of transport makes the transition to electric vehicles much more palatable to the masses. Who needs hundreds of miles of range when you only need enough juice to get you to the nearest sled station? In addition the sleds could recharge your EV en-route so you could get even more range.

Reduced pollution

The sleds themselves are EVs so are zero emission (especially if powered from renewable sources), but can also run in a much more efficient configuration than cars on a motorway. As the sleds are essentially dynamic rail-cars, they can join together (or just travel super close) to reduce drag.

Increased capacity

Due to the vehicles travelling faster and much closer together the total capacity of the lane is dramatically increased. *

Considerations:

Safety

Power lines are pretty dangerous if you touch them, kinda how you really don't want to be walking around on a subway (Metro) track, even if there were no trains. It might make more sense for the rail to be recessed, or use some other method to provide safety in the event that people and rails need to be close together.

Safety/litigation

People are stupid and someone will decide to get out of their car when its on the sled. Sure people could do this anyway but as a car manufacturer you probably wouldn't get sued if someone got out their moving car, but as a sled running company you just might. (Like the twats trying to sue Tesla because the car 'let them' drive it purposefully into a wall).

Investment return

The service will have a big outlay which will need to be recouped, in addition it will have ongoing maintenance (of the lines and the sleds), all in addition to the actual power costs of powering the sleds. Sure (in England), EV costs (to run) are way lower than fossil fueled vehicles but that's not true everywhere. People won't be using the service for cost reasons alone, so it needs to differentiate or provide value some other way. The reduced journey times will help (from much increased speed), especially as traffic might* be less of an issue. For people still driving FF vehicles the cost may be comparative to the costs of the petrol and for EV users the much increased range should also be a pull.

Backwards propagating congestion*

Just how you get on and off the sled will be a big issue. The video example might work for tunnels(at the cost of buying up large amounts of existing road space) but it wouldn't work for surface roads. Probably the entry and exit to the sled-ways would look a bit like a motorway toll-booth area. If there is congestion at the other end, how does the system deal with this? Even with the tunnel idea if there is a lot of congestion at the destination it could find its way propagating into the sled system.

Tunnels

Its been true since the invention of the mass-market automobile that more roads doesn't necessarily lead to less congestion. In fact often the amount of traffic on a road increases to fill capacity almost as soon as its been built/widened. There are quite a few articles on this on Wikipedia etc but I think the main issue is that where roads are almost always busy the supply is significantly below demand. Where roads are mostly empty would be the opposite. It would seem that for large cities there probably isn't enough land mass to build enough roads to supply the demand entirely, so going '3D' makes sense. 

Reclamation of land

Initially the existing roads would probably remain but it sure would be wonderful if eventually surface roads gradually declined and more land could be returned to green areas, either for food production, or for wildlife/recreation.

Considerations

Money

I think the business case for more tunnels will only exist where there is additional demand. Once the demand is satiated additional tunnels would not provide additional revenue, which means the upper limit of profitable tunnel building will be below that required to remove congestion. Combined with public money however this has a chance of for the first time in living history solving the traffic crisis.

Safety for others

The video shown on the website is a highly simplified version of how things will work, if it was exactly as the video shows it would be a public safety nightmare. There appears to be nothing preventing people from falling into the holes as the sleds take the vehicle down into the tunnel. 

Safety for stupid passengers

Consideration needs to be made for idiots opening doors as the sled is about to descend, or other unexpected events. 

Related: the sleds themselves appear to have no way to prevent idiots from getting out of the vehicle whilst its in motion.

Safety for vandals, homeless, and super villains.

I play too much Fallout but these tunnels look like a great place to go if your homeless or in a gang or maybe if your Lex Luther and want to build your bunker somewhere private. Train/metro/subway companies have been dealing with this for a long time so its not a deal breaker, but it needs to be considered.

Other vehicle types

The sleds as pictured wont work for motorbikes or trucks or any vehicle longer than a car.

Final thoughts

I've been thinking for some time that personal cars/roads should be a last-mile device and the emergence of technologies like this and Hyperloop fill me with hope. I think a drive on-off Hyperloop will make more sense for long journeys, and electric sleds, in tunnels or not, to cover the distances between Hyperloop stations and the last mile, which you would just do as normal in your vehicle.