The Boring Company Loop and Hyperloop systems introduction
Why another post about The Boring Company?
I've heard a number of people criticising The Boring Company (TBC) Loop project and/or Hyperloop and it strikes me that most people don't seem to understand the concept properly and are therefore rushing to judgement. Part of the problem is that TBC keep changing details about their planned system, and this is also leading to confusion.
Therefore I wanted to write a piece that introduces the concepts and explains where the benefits are, and also try to offer a rebuttal to some of the objections to the system.
Introducing the concept
- Safety
- Land use
- Environmental impacts
- Convenience
In addition there is only so much land available, especially in cities and towns. Therefore higher density (and higher speed) transport solutions are preferred as they make better use of the available roads/land.
Trains
The land usage of trains is however, not zero and depending on the terrain, can be quite large and expensive. Train lines need fairly level tracks so all terrain features need to be smoothed out. E.g. Hills need to be cut through and valleys need building up. The maximum slope is I believe about 45° meaning for every meter above or below the required takes 2 meters of land on either side in addition to the land needed for the track. So if the track needs to be 5 meters above or below the surrounding land, and needs 2 meters for its own width, you need to buy 12 meters of land.
Subway/Metro/Underground
Subways solve the land problems associated with trains by moving them underground, however the large costs of building the tunnels has limited the extent to which subways have been built to be mostly only around extremely densely populated areas, e.g. Big cities.
Convenience/Speed
Loop as an answer
A loop concept solves a number of the problems with existing train systems, however before going into that just imagine if we could remove all the roads from our land and move them underground. Even if we did nothing else but this our earth would be significantly more pleasant and safe to live on.
- No more mixing of heavy high speed objects with fragile squishy humans.
- No more artificial barriers through communities.
- Lots more land available for other uses like parks and agriculture.
In order to get to a place where roads are not being used and public outcry doesn't erupt at the mere thought of ripping up the roads, driving needs to not be the best option. In fact it needs to be the worst option. When people have alternatives to driving that are better than driving they will use them and not cry a tear for their roads being removed.
Therefore to start to move towards the happy place of no surface roads, we need solutions, and chief amongst these is cheaper tunnels, much much cheaper.
In addition we need something that is better than just more subways, because we already have them and people still choose to drive their cars. Therefore the solution needs to be
- More convenient than a subway or train, e.g. it needs to be On-demand,
- It needs to be faster than a car
- Ideally it should integrate seamlessly with other modes of transport or enable door to door transportation (so that other modes are not required).
- It should also be cheap and affordable.
Primary Loop Concepts
- Make tunnels cheaper
- Make the service On-Demand
- Fully electric
- Autonomous
- Stopping only at the destination required by the passengers, no stops to let passengers on/off mid-journey - less wasted time
- Faster than a car
- Linking directly to other transportation modes
- Faster than a plane
The Boring Company Loop
The concept as originally outlined by TBC included secondary concept 1, e.g. it linked directly to driving your existing car. This would have some great benefits in terms of convenience, but adds massive complexity and a few other downsides. In the current iteration of the design this is not included.
Therefore the current TBC concept looks a lot like a traditional subway but designed from the beginning to meet the primary concepts.
Point 5 is one of the key concepts of loop and in order to achieve it efficiently it necessarily needs smaller carriages than a traditional train/subway. Its kind of like a cross between an Uber and a subway.
(Just in case it isn't clear, point 5 is achieved by having slip ways into and out of stations, in the same way that a freeway/motorway has slip roads onto and off at every junction. This means vehicles in the loop are not slowed or stopped by vehicles at stations).
If a few people both want to go to the same destination at the same time they can share a carriage, but otherwise the carriage will not pick up additional passengers until it is at the destination. This in theory means that a loop will have less passenger density than a traditional subway/train as there could be more empty seats than one that did stop at every stop. In practice, I doubt this will ever be an issue and in any case vastly outweighed by the benefits gained from concepts 2 through 6. Why?
- When the system is busy likely there will be sufficient passengers at the station to fill or nearly fill every carriage.
- When the system is quiet it wont matter if the carriages are mostly empty.
- The reduced journey time means carriages are available for use again quicker.
- Not needing a driver means many more carriages can be run than subway trains could ever affordably be.
So in summary the current TBC concept is:
Like a subway, but was much cheaper to build, uses small electric carriages that are available on demand that go directly to your destination without stopping and do so faster than a car could and much cheaper than a taxi (and probably cheaper than a subway or train).
The current proposal does not include allowing you to use your own vehicle, nor does it feature faster than air travel speeds.
Possible future possibilities.
Objections
As previously stated, I've seen quite a few people raise objections to loop and/or hyperloop concepts.
I don't have time to go over them all and most of them are similar however if I miss something from this list please leave a comment below and I will try to address your issue.
Firstly, I want to make a statement about most of these types of objections. They mostly come from internet keyboard warriors partially understanding the loop concepts and then using their amazing intellect to find a problem that all of the highly talented engineers (in some cases literally rocket scientists) currently working on loop solutions never thought of.
Whilst I believe it is possible that there could be issues some rando thinks of that all these super clever engineers haven't (clever people often do dumb things), I think in cases like this its good to have a healthy dose of scepticism of the internet keyboard warriors objections, i.e, don't blindly believe that they have outsmarted the professionals unless they have convincing evidence that you cannot find a counter to. Even then its more likely that the talented engineers are aware of the issue, or they understand something you do not. In any case, as I said, sometimes smart people believe dumb things so its worth investigating and thinking about these issues at least as a mental exercise.
Hyperloop/Thunderf00t
I read the hyperloop whitepaper when it came out, and then watched Thunderf00t's first video claiming it was 'busted'. Honestly it was immediately obvious to me that he hadn't actually read the white paper.
Rather than me waste my time debunking his terrible arguments I'd recommend you watch this YouTube playlist instead which will be much more interesting: Shane Killian busting Thunderf00t, but also, read the whitepaper yourself.
If you really want to, there are a bunch of other people that have torn his arguments to pieces so you can google those too if you want.
Also Thunderf00t seems to just be a nasty person, nothing to do with loop, but check out HBomberGuy exposing what a shite Thunderf00t really is.
DoNotEat01
I had a bunch of people mention a video by DoNotEat01, and apart from being a bit patronising / condescending I think he is probably not a total shite. I watched his 40 something minute video where he believes he proves the loop is a bad idea and jotted down what I thought were his key arguments.
Before going into the arguments where he is wrong, I wanted to point out where we agree, and I think its probably his best argument.
He believes that public transport is best done by the public purse and private enterprises tend to be crap. I live in the UK and I can testify that the rail network when privatised has proven DoNotEat01's point very well. The private rail companies have underinvested in their operations and underperformed on their targets.
Having said that most of our buses are also privately ran, and some of those are not too bad. The key point is that they have to meet service targets set by the local councils, otherwise they either lose their licences, or they don't get the subsidies. Yes, they are subsidised, so in effect, they are funded partially by the public purse. So you could say they are a government/private hybrid. This is because as DoNotEat01 states, a private company will only run services where it is profitable to do so. That means out of town areas with little traffic would get no service at all. Subsidies tied to targets ensure that even low traffic no profit areas get service.
Agreeing with DoNotEat01 on this matter I have to disagree with his conclusion remembering that it was private individuals/companies that invented the train and the bus. Generally speaking private enterprise is better at innovating new things. This is because the public purse is always underfunded, or funded just enough to provide a basic service, with not enough extra, (and no motivation/driving imperative) to innovate new ways of doing things.
Therefore if TBC are finding ways to drastically reduce the cost of tunnelling, and are innovating new ways to use tunnels effectively I think we should applaud them, and then pay them public money to run transport for the masses, just like we do with train/rail/bus/road manufacturers.
Now onto his other arguments:
DoNotEat01 spends a large amount of the video talking about how to get the vehicles into and out of the loop system. In fairness to him his video was released when TBC were still planning on doing this. As they are not (currently) planning to do this, a significant amount of his video is now moot, however assuming one day they do plan to do it again its worth at least considering some of his arguments such as:
Entry/exit congestion.
This was the first of the arguments I wrote down that he seems to be making, he states you could not get the stated number of vehicles into and out of the loop quick enough.
His numbers seem to indicate a single stretch of tunnel with only a single entry and exit point. If it were, his numbers would make sense however this was never anyone's plan. The entire system would have many, possibly thousands, of entry and exit points making his numbers ridiculous and his argument void.
No difference between loop and freeway due to ramps
This was again about ingress/egress, now apparently recognising that there would be multiple entry/exit points but only concentrating on ramps.
I found this part of the video difficult to follow, its a bit rambly and not really offering any concrete evidence to back up any claims. In any case, even if the loop system just reproduced the freeway system it would be a double win. a) because now the freeway is not taking up surface land and b) we can go 3D and make it capable of much more capacity than an existing 2D freeway.
Moving away from the entry/exit point arguments that are pretty much moot now anyway (for now), his other arguments were:
Large turning radius/land rights
Turning radius:
Tyre degradation
I think this is related to the previous argument. The current TBC solution involves vehicles running on regular tyres vs rail like tracks.
I have a number of comments about this.
Firstly, this is about cost and reliability. These are decisions engineers are always making when building something, having to trade pros and cons of various solutions, cost to set up, cost to maintain, reliability of the system etc etc. Rail vs tyre is undoubtedly something they will have considered in depth. I cannot second guess all their discussions and decisions, suffice to say if they went with tyres that was the best choice for now. It doesn't mean that they wont switch to rails in the future.
Secondly DoNotEat01 thinks that the tyre use will be very high due to the high cornering speed. I've already mentioned that there is no reason why the carriages have to corner that fast. In addition I mentioned the tracks can be banked which not only allows faster cornering but also reduces tyre wear.
Land rights
This can suck pretty bad if your house has special significance to you because you are only going to get the value of the house in compensation. The government already has the authority to do this. If the government decide that TBC are allowed to dig a tunnel under your property then guess what, their going to, and you cant do shit about it. They will of course give you some compensation for it, but considering that you're likely not going to be inconvenienced at all by the tunnel, don't expect a big pay cheque.
Foundations/existing infrastructure
I don't want to say negative things about the man so instead I'll say nice things about the engineers working on loop concepts and the officials that are regulating them: They are not stupid and they also will have to meet stringent building/environmental codes. No-one is going to allow a bunch of amateurs to go digging tunnels in ways that make buildings unsafe. The tunnels will be built sufficiently below existing infrastructure to not disturb them.
This is related to his next argument:
Maximum depth.
He states this as an issue that there is a maximum depth you can dig before the ground gets too rocky to dig any further.
He doesn't mention what this depth is however and I suspect that its because he knows that it would vary from location to location.
This isn't really a problem at all, at most its an engineering constraint. For most locations I suspect the maximum depth would be enough to replicate the existing road capacity a thousand times over, however I don't have the numbers either. If anyone does have good geologic surveys with maximum depths that can be realistically bored for any major cities, please leave a comment below.
This leads me to the last of his arguments I'm going to comment on as I think I mentioned the rest already:
Cannot stop quick enough in event of accident
I'm sorry DoNotEat01, but this argument makes you sound pretty dumb. How is the vehicle in front of the one you are considering going to instantly stop such that the following vehicle needs to decelerate at the speeds you mention? Maybe through 'Effing Magic'?
That's not how the laws of physics or conservation of momentum works. In the scenario you mention with multiple cars moving at maximum speed all at minimum distance from each other, the 'worse case' scenario would lead to one of the leading vehicles having a really bad time and tumbling down the track, decelerating through its tyres and brakes or by friction with other parts of the vehicle against the tunnel.
In either case, following vehicles would have sufficient time to slow down to avoid hitting it because they also have tyres and brakes and their not having such a bad time. The friction from their tyres and brakes would definitely equal but almost certainly exceed that of the suffering vehicle because friction between metal and concrete is much less than tyre and concrete or brake disc and brake pad, in addition tyres work better when they are not skidding (hence anti-lock brakes) and a vehicle moving incoherently down the tunnel will likely have a lot of skid from the tyres.
It would be almost impossible to imagine a scenario where a leading vehicle decelerates faster than a following vehicle would be capable of, the only example I can imagine is a total tunnel collapse. In this highly unlikely case it would be a disaster and probably cause a huge pile up, but we've been running vehicles in tunnels for a long time and catastrophic tunnel collapse is an extremely rare if ever occurrence.
In any case, all of the carriages are autonomous, capable of reaction times much faster than a human and the minimum safe distance programmed for the vehicles to follow each other will be calibrated on the speed such that no vehicle will ever follow another closer than it could stop given any plausible scenario.
Welcome to the world of tomorrow
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