- The Loop concept seems flawed. The network packet switching analogy doesn’t to me seem to fit with physical movement. Small example - what if one “packet” breaks down? It’s a tube - all the other packets behind it stack up. And how to you get to that packet to rescue it? Shut down the tube and all on/off branches ahead of it to back down a tugger / repair packet? I have many others, but that illustrates my point
I watched the talk. I was a little disappointed. It was pretty light on anything concrete (hah!).
Musk probably ruffled many feathers in the tunnel boring community. Feel very dismissive of very real issues - kinda like his reaction to questions about radiation during Mars transits or on Mars itself.
- Not much talk on the tech - but some lofty allusions.
I feel like there is a big inefficiency bringing the pod to the surface for each stop. This was fine when each pod was only carrying one car, but now that there are potentially 16 people going to different stops some of the riders are going to have to go up and down possibly over 10 times just to get to their stop. It seems like it would make more sense to have elevators take riders down to meet the pod at the tube level, otherwise people will spend 90% of the their time in the system going up and down instead of horizontally.
Where did you get that idea? Every presentation made by The Boring Company clearly states it is an express service directly to the one and only stop you are going to.
Quote from: ccross20 on 05/18/2018 08:15 pmI feel like there is a big inefficiency bringing the pod to the surface for each stop. This was fine when each pod was only carrying one car, but now that there are potentially 16 people going to different stops some of the riders are going to have to go up and down possibly over 10 times just to get to their stop. It seems like it would make more sense to have elevators take riders down to meet the pod at the tube level, otherwise people will spend 90% of the their time in the system going up and down instead of horizontally.Where did you get that idea? Every presentation made by The Boring Company clearly states it is an express service directly to the one and only stop you are going to.
One key to making the system work will be real-time routing. On their cell phone, they put in their desired destination, current location read from GPS or put in desired start point and time, and the app will show a few options for start and stop location and times, and the rider picks one and proceeds to the start point. The rider arriving late at the start point will be an issue, but after a while, riders will be accustomed to arrive on time so they don't miss the pod.
Agree that real time routing is a key ingredient. Notice how many buses drive by with almost zero passengers at non-peak times? This is always an issue with blind routing... buses have to run just in case someone wants a ride. Pods can go or no as demand dictates, not schedule. An intelligent system can learn where and when pods are needed... commuters, for example are fairly predictable, while demand variability can also be characterized.
Quote from: AncientU on 05/19/2018 08:46 pmAgree that real time routing is a key ingredient. Notice how many buses drive by with almost zero passengers at non-peak times? This is always an issue with blind routing... buses have to run just in case someone wants a ride. Pods can go or no as demand dictates, not schedule. An intelligent system can learn where and when pods are needed... commuters, for example are fairly predictable, while demand variability can also be characterized.Don't think you'll be able to always have full vehicles. Humans flow to different areas according to patterns, but those patterns don't mean that it will be easy to accommodate.For instance, if you have people living in suburbs but working in a central city, then in the morning you'll need lots of capacity out in the suburbs to transport workers to the central city. But then the demand for transport out of the city at that time in the morning is very low, so you end up with vehicles waiting around with no demand.However in the afternoon and evening the workers then reverse direction and leave the central city to flow back out to the suburbs where maybe some are going in the opposite direction, but likely not.It's a demand and distribution problem that does not magically go away with tunnels and autonomous cars...
The system could gradually encourage more travel to shift to low demand periods. The marginal cost of giving rides in off hours for a system with electric vehicles just sitting around is pretty low and might be subsidized to zero, especially for people who could most use it. Free or cheap travel might create a feedback effect with businesses shifting hours to take advantage of the fact.
...In general I think it would make more sense to make priority lanes on highways for autonomous high capacity vehicles (such as buses). A completely separate infrastructure is always difficult to pull off economically.