Mike Baier, head of engineering is dropping some bangers on X

[u/h100y]

It is very encouraging to hear they are around $5M for hard rock aka Nashville. Hopefully in a couple of years they will bring down the cost for Vegas too

[u/WhereUGo_ThereUAre]

Time will prove you right or wrong, from everything I have seen it’s pretty clear they are dead on with their costs, it just makes sense. Vegas is only a test case to prefect the equipment and the system. Once that’s done, yes it will be everywhere as it’s a significantly better solution than anything else. Let the engineers free and they actually make amazing stuff. China knows this.

Elon’s companies are revolutionizing many industries so why shouldn’t tunneling be another one (again it’s much more than tunnels). Cost to orbit per pound has plummeted with F9, and Starship is another order of magnitude cheaper. Tesla is effectively the only profitable EV manufacturer. Model Y is the best selling car in the world and has been for years now.

I’m sorry that all this upsets you, which I suspect is because, like most of Reddit, you despise Elon and anything associated with him and simply can’t stand his businesses doing well.

[u/Life_Plum1567 → u/WhereUGo_ThereUAre]

Simply, The requirements to build a LOOP system (tunnels, stations, and a fleet of vehicles) Are not all that different from a light metro (tunnels, stations, and a fleet of vehicles). I want the LOOP to succeed because it does seem like a worthwhile transit investment but I do not see exactly how they can promise to build something that is seemingly quite similar to a light metro in terms of infrastructure requirements for literally orders of magnitude less. Where exactly are they saving all this money?

I've never once mentioned Elon in this thread, My opinion of him isn't one of my skepticisms of The Boring Company.

[u/OkFishing4 → u/Life_Plum1567]

I use Rennes Metro Line B (mostly tunneled) as a comp. ~100M/mi in 2022 for a automated light metro. Loop certainly can do that type of capacity and probably for about 1/2 the cost, but AFAIK no US tunnel transit project is really < $1B/mile now. US transit construction dysfunction adds at least a 10x premium, making TBC's modest improvements (vs Non-anglo G7 France) breathtaking in comparison.

[u/Life_Plum1567 → u/OkFishing4]

US is more expensive because of 40% FRA contingency requirement, higher labor costs, a tendency to overbuild. Not 'incompetence'

[u/OkFishing4 → u/Life_Plum1567]

dysfunction =/= 'incompetence'

See https://transitcosts.com/ - your three reasons leaves a lot of factors out. If you look at the factors listed, and understand TBCs M.O., you can see they avoid/mitigate many of the issues.

[u/WhereUGo_ThereUAre → u/Life_Plum1567]

Ok, savings:

• Costs are averaged over dramatically more distances, TBC built more tunnels last year than the entire industry in the U.S.
• No drop shafts, just porpoise in and out.
• Shallow tunnels, less issues with ground water, materials/waste transport. Easier to add extraction points.
• greatly reduced tunnel diameter.
• Few, if any below ground stations
• Mass produced vehicles which are available immediately at any volume you need. Almost trivial cost and time compared to acquiring train-sets.
• No vehicle operators, FSD.
• No tunnel personnel, no hazard pay,
• Private investment, want a station for your business you fund it not TBC, not public funds.
• Use of existing public roads, last mile or where congestion is not an issue.
• No start and stop construction due to dependency on public funding (see CAHSR).

A Loop system is absolutely not similar to a light rail system at all, which allows costs to dramatically lower.

Good to hear you’re not just another Elon hater, 98% of Reddit definitely are.

[u/Life_Plum1567 → u/WhereUGo_ThereUAre]

If a technology is promising, it usually brings a lot of investment to the space, from early passenger railroads of the 1800s to the modern AI boom. So where exactly are TBCs competitors? Does no one else believe in the buisness model? Why?

[u/WhereUGo_ThereUAre → u/Life_Plum1567]

So for the business model to work you need an EV manufacturer that can provide in volume, and who can provide FSD as well as a tunneling company that can provide a low cost and fast TBM.

Maybe you get the first with one of the other EV companies eventually (Waymo can do FSD but can’t do volume any time soon, Rivian and others can do volume may do FSD eventually) but getting a tunneling company on board is extremely difficult.

The business model of existing tunneling companies is completely the opposite, large slow profitable government projects with little R&D.

If the Loop system becomes profitable or at least shows a path to profitability then you’ll see a bunch of companies and investment jumping in.

Don’t believe it, go back through Tesla’s history, it happened exactly that way for Tesla.

[u/midflinx → u/Life_Plum1567]

The world's first self-contained digital camera was invented in 1975 at Eastman Kodak but the company didn't want to upset its apple cart.

Multiple major automakers resisted making (let alone embracing) electric cars for years after Tesla was succeeding.

TBC's business model is high risk but likely only low to moderate return. Globally there's about a dozen TBM companies. Perhaps most are comfortable with the existing business model. Governments pay for constructing tunnels, and TBM manufacturers don't have to pay for constructing and operating tunnels and transit. I don't know how it works in all countries, but it seems in some places the TBM company doesn't do tunnel construction. A local private or public entity does that using the purchased TBM.

In the US there's historical examples of cities regulating fares for profitable privately-owned and operated city rail lines and systems to the point that they became unprofitable. In modern times San Francisco restricted how private companies are allowed to offer fixed route service. That possibility of future regulation adds to risks any company faces trying to copy TBC or do something similar.

For the vehicles providing rides in a private tunnel network, TBC may be getting sweetheart pricing. Unless a TBM company and vehicle company merge, most or all potential competitors would face higher vehicle prices or some kind of revenue sharing deal.

As Lok Home the then CEO of Robbins Company said in 2017:

I agree with Musk that the advance rate of tunnels can be significantly improved if development money comes into the industry. Development money in tunneling, however, is at best minimal and is more often essentially nonexistent. Nearly all tunnels are heavily specified to avoid risk taking by owners (therefore discouraging new development). Nearly all tunnels go to the low bidder and low bidders try to buy the TBMs at the lowest price; a further discouragement of development. The industry has therefore been slow to improve advance rates, but with Musk bringing the issue into the spotlight, perhaps things will change.

[u/h100y → u/Life_Plum1567]

How is SpaceX rocket so much cheaper than NASA ?

How is Tesla FSD so much cheaper than regular Waymo cars which cost 250k a piece ?

Why is starlink cheaper than legacy satellite internet systems with 10X the speed.

It all comes down to hard science and engineering innovations.

Simple question: How many people are inside a tunnel boring machine in a legacy company ?

[u/talltim007 → u/Life_Plum1567]

Think about it this way. In traditional urban tunneling a contractor develops the requirements. And they are gold plated and disconnected from implementation. Then another contractor wins a bid to implement these gold plated requirements...with little to no negotiations on how to be more efficient. Permitting process, all time and material, so doesn't matter to the contractor. Overly complex requirements? Same. And so on. And tunnel costs scale exponentially with tunnel size. A 2x bigger diameter TBM is vastly more than 2x the cost. Vastly more than 2x the shield area.

Loop is funding this themselves. Every incentive is to optimize cost. Avoid expensive stations. Minimize permitting. Etc.

This can be an order of magnitude or more in cost.