I second this, except I wouldn't put so many eggs in one basket.
To the critics: The viability of Musk's underground highway concept is irrelevant. The basic premise of Musk's original concept was to cut down the cost of tunneling by orders of magnitude. The first optimization is focusing on boring 14-foot diameter tunnels. 14 feet is larger than many subway tunnels in London and Budapest, and about 1 foot shy of some Moscow subway tunnels.
A tunnel is a tunnel--nothing prevents building them as a closed rail network with proper trains. If a Boring Company tunnel couldn't support electrical equipment, then run the trains on batteries. Yes, the basic math of moving people indisputably favors trains, but that doesn't mean you can't apply many of the other engineering and financial concepts from Musk's underground highway concept.
I understand that tunneling, per se, isn't the primary cost of building subways; it's the stations. But if the Boring Company can deliver on just one order of magnitude decrease in tunneling costs, then any public official or engineer who balks at 14-foot tunnels should be booted out of their position.[1] Optimize for the ridiculously cheap 14-foot tunnels and everything else will fall into place. I would expect the engineering and budgeting processes for the more efficient tunnel construction to have a moderating effecting on station design, making it less likely we'd blow so much money on extravagant stations. If tunneling were just 10% cheaper then probably the money would just be shifted elsewhere, but faced with 10x cheaper tunnel construction irresponsible and bloated requirements would stand out.[2]
[1] For example, with an order of magnitude reduction in capital costs then arguments regarding incompatibility with existing equipment (cars, tracks, etc) wouldn't even be reasonable on their face. At those costs just deal with the additional system or, better yet, change everything else! If a Geary Blvd subway in San Francisco could be built so cheaply, then it might make sense to replace and build out the existing MUNI light-rail lines with the Geary technology.
[2] Not an example of bloat, but, for example, with enough cost savings then it may be cheaper to skip elevators and escalators in many stations and simply operate a large fleet (much larger than what exists already) of door-to-door shuttles for the incapacitated.
To the critics: The viability of Musk's underground highway concept is irrelevant. The basic premise of Musk's original concept was to cut down the cost of tunneling by orders of magnitude. The first optimization is focusing on boring 14-foot diameter tunnels. 14 feet is larger than many subway tunnels in London and Budapest, and about 1 foot shy of some Moscow subway tunnels.
A tunnel is a tunnel--nothing prevents building them as a closed rail network with proper trains. If a Boring Company tunnel couldn't support electrical equipment, then run the trains on batteries. Yes, the basic math of moving people indisputably favors trains, but that doesn't mean you can't apply many of the other engineering and financial concepts from Musk's underground highway concept.
I understand that tunneling, per se, isn't the primary cost of building subways; it's the stations. But if the Boring Company can deliver on just one order of magnitude decrease in tunneling costs, then any public official or engineer who balks at 14-foot tunnels should be booted out of their position.[1] Optimize for the ridiculously cheap 14-foot tunnels and everything else will fall into place. I would expect the engineering and budgeting processes for the more efficient tunnel construction to have a moderating effecting on station design, making it less likely we'd blow so much money on extravagant stations. If tunneling were just 10% cheaper then probably the money would just be shifted elsewhere, but faced with 10x cheaper tunnel construction irresponsible and bloated requirements would stand out.[2]
[1] For example, with an order of magnitude reduction in capital costs then arguments regarding incompatibility with existing equipment (cars, tracks, etc) wouldn't even be reasonable on their face. At those costs just deal with the additional system or, better yet, change everything else! If a Geary Blvd subway in San Francisco could be built so cheaply, then it might make sense to replace and build out the existing MUNI light-rail lines with the Geary technology.
[2] Not an example of bloat, but, for example, with enough cost savings then it may be cheaper to skip elevators and escalators in many stations and simply operate a large fleet (much larger than what exists already) of door-to-door shuttles for the incapacitated.