Elon's Tunnel Under Los Angeles May Get Fast Tracked

DooKey

DooKey

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Los Angeles is looking at putting the 2.7-mile tunnel Elon Musk is going to bore onto the fast track. The plan is to exempt the construction from the California Environmental Quality Act and shave a few years off of the project. Also, early in March Musk tweeted the priority of the project would be on providing for pedestrians and cyclists before working on auto transportation. Boondoggle or legitimate use of tax dollars?

"Will still transport cars, but only after all personalized mass transit needs are met. It’s a matter of courtesy & fairness. If someone can’t afford a car, they should go first," Musk tweeted in early March. "Boring Co urban loop system would have 1000’s of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway."
 
Tax dollars? Where in the world is the article that shows tax dollars going to fund any of this project? If anything fast tracking the tunnel would save tax dollars by circumventing the bureaucracy.
 
cjcox said:
The large 5 mile tunnel under San Francisco has been scrapped.

"Who's fault was that?"

"San Andreas."
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*slaps knee*

FYI, there is a subway tunnel, multiple light rail tunnels, and lets not forget all the sewer tunnels that do exist under San Francisco already :D

Ditto with LA I believe, although "LA" is much more spread out than SF.
 
I hope they don't trigger the San Andreas Fault Line and cause CA to fall off into the ocean. Wait...
 
atp1916 said:
I would rather see my cash in the hands of a guy like Elon, than in the hands of bureaucrats beholden to special interests and pork barrel projects...
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A tunnel for rich people only possible due to the good graces of government bureaucrats is different when Elon does it?
 
i don't want to be stuck under there during a quake. I know those fuckers won't find me.
 
atp1916 said:
I would rather see my cash in the hands of a guy like Elon, than in the hands of bureaucrats beholden to special interests and pork barrel projects...
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How the hell is Elon's wallet not a special interest OR a pork barrel project!? It really is kinda both!
 
Yeah, great, let's dig a long, straight tunnel underground in a heavily urbanized and earthquake prone area. Sounds great.
 
At the end of the day

All that matters to me is the following


At least this Billionare is trying to do things, not sure it should matter because he thinks it's cool

What has Bezos done for the US or anyone else besides making himself richer?

Remember that battery park in Australia where Elon said it's on time or for free? And "experts" said it's impossible.
When was the last time you saw someone from fortune 500 do anything that would benefit YOU or your neighbors (Starlink for instance)


I live in Germany and have great internet and lots of competition

When SpaceX offers satellite internet globally I might jump ship just on principal alone
 
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Montu said:
Also, early in March Musk tweeted the priority of the project would be on providing for pedestrians and cyclists before working on auto transportation. Boondoggle or legitimate use of tax dollars?"
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Isn't Elon doing this all on his own dime? Or is he getting local government support beyond just assistance with permitting and such?
 
As much as I like this idea I just ask why? It's all going to shit any day now. I am going to miss cali when it crumbles.
 
LodeRunner said:
Isn't Elon doing this all on his own dime? Or is he getting local government support beyond just assistance with permitting and such?
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I've probably read to many internet rumors, but I'm not 100% sure he doing it on his dime. There is a fair amount of "donor" money involved. And I like Elon, but he does strike me as the type that might slide into the "I know I'm so right, that I'll push to have anyone who disagrees with me shutdown" type. But until then I say more power to him and his projects.
 
What could possibly go wrong? Catastrophic air breach, earthquake, flooding, terrorism, etc.

I'll take a wait and see, over a year or so, position.
 
Peter2k said:
At the end of the day

All that matters to me is the following


At least this Billionare is trying to do things, not sure it should matter because he thinks it's cool

What has Bezos done for the US or anyone else besides making himself richer?
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To be fair, Bezos is using his money to fund his own rocket company, Blue Origin; though of course they are well behind SpaceX in the actually launching stuff department. I do agree that it is just sad that more billionaires don't use their money to fund memorable projects like this. Look at Steve Balmer; retired from Microsoft with tons of money, and what does he do? Spends $2 billion on a basketball team. A hundred years from now, history books will mention how Elon Musk gave space exploration a kick in the pants; absolutely no one will care about Balmer. Given the ego most billionaires have, you would think more of them would be willing to fund these sort of large scale projects so that history will remember them.

And in case anyone hasn't put it together yet, the reason Ol'Musky started the Boring Company is because of his dreams of Martian colonization - being able to easily dig large underground tunnels will make setting up shop on Mars much easier.
 
dreadcthulhu said:
To be fair, Bezos is using his money to fund his own rocket company, Blue Origin; though of course they are well behind SpaceX in the actually launching stuff department. I do agree that it is just sad that more billionaires don't use their money to fund memorable projects like this. Look at Steve Balmer; retired from Microsoft with tons of money, and what does he do? Spends $2 billion on a basketball team. A hundred years from now, history books will mention how Elon Musk gave space exploration a kick in the pants; absolutely no one will care about Balmer. Given the ego most billionaires have, you would think more of them would be willing to fund these sort of large scale projects so that history will remember them.

And in case anyone hasn't put it together yet, the reason Ol'Musky started the Boring Company is because of his dreams of Martian colonization - being able to easily dig large underground tunnels will make setting up shop on Mars much easier.
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Someone said Bezos reminds them of Dr. Evil, one look at the rocket his company is making and well....
 
Um, he has employed 10's of thousands of people and provided a service that has dropped prices on millions of items and brought an increased standard of living to millions of Americans because of it

Yea, I think he's a dick but you can't really say he's not done anything for people. He has, that's how he got to be rich in the first place.
 
Vaulter98c said:
Um, he has employed 10's of thousands of people and provided a service that has dropped prices on millions of items and brought an increased standard of living to millions of Americans because of it
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I think you could make several parallels with the Waltons too, they've employed tons of people, provided a service that has dropped the prices on many items, increase standard of living? I guess? Yeah no one is calling them great as a result.
 
Never said they are great either, but you can't deny that Walmart and Sam's Club employs 2.3 million people and provides services and affordable goods to hundreds of millions. People like to point at these folks like they are the devil and they just somehow have all this monry and are doing nothing but shitting on the little guy. That's not true, that's all I'm saying, not promoting anyone to the next pope here
 
For Amazon it's temporary though. As soon as Amazon automate what they are trying to automate they'll employ 400k+ less people. Ironically them going into whole foods is what will keep employing people. Robot steveadores, loading contianers onto robot trucks, which robots unload into robot warehouses, where goods will be robotically stacked, picked and dispatched, picked up by robotic amazon delivery trucks and dropped at people's houses. There's a reason Amazon's share price is high, who is going to beat them to that.

There's no such thing as a charity job so the jobs going are inevitable, but what we'll all do in the future Lord only knows. Make each other coffee or something I guess.
 
We a such a long way from that though, the logistical scale of that alone is unthinkable at the moment. Sure someday we might get there but I seriously doubt it will be in our lifetime.

Also I wouldn't say that Amazon is going to be the one to rule the world with robots, there was a time not long ago when people though the EV1 was going to put GM on top of the world and everyone would drive a GM electric car, that NASA would always be the dominant space launch agency, that Kmart was going to be the largest retail shop in the world, that Craftsman tools were the greatest and would be around forever. Giants topple everyday from one or two bad decisions, I think eventually everything could be robots, some day way down the line, and Amazon may play a part in that but there's a whole lifetime for someone to come along and do it better. Time will tell I guess. Usually the apparent leader in anything new is not the one that ends up being the king of that sector in the end.
 
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