Can you imagine if Clark County and the City of Las Vegas had the creativity to build what the rest of the world calls a Subway? Imagine that, a system that could move 10's of thousands of people efficiently.....
By all accounts it is essentially a subway with smaller cars that is more point to point, which would seem to be more efficient. There were proposals, bids, and open reviews. They decided to buy more after seeing the first ones.
How's that new subway line going in NYC? Has it finished yet? When I lived there in '08 they were just starting it and last I heard it was not nearing completion, but I ha ent heard in a few years
A Tesla owner cannot drive their car into it afaict, so the headline is designed to be click bait
> By all accounts it is essentially a subway with smaller cars that is more point to point, which would seem to be more efficient.
… Why would that be more efficient? Generally, when you’re trying to eke the last drops of efficiency out of a train system, what you do is use _longer and longer_ trains (this can get slightly silly at the extremes; some train services will actually require passengers to move to a specific set of carriages to get off at certain stations, because the stations can’t accommodate the whole train).
Based on their own claims, the system has a peak capacity of 4500/hour. Not per direction (the capacities of train systems are usually quoted per direction); _in total_. 40,000 people per hour is a reasonable capacity for a modern single line fully segregated metro system. 4500/hour would be pretty anemic for a modern _tram_ system. 4500 per hour is a busy single bus route (one 80 person bus a little over every two minutes, two directions); it’s just not really in the conversation as far as metro train lines go.
Now, there’s a place for low-capacity transport systems, though I’m not sure why this particular one couldn’t be implemented by just using a bus lane. But something like this simply isn’t competitive with a metro rail line.
It can be unit wise less efficient while overall more efficient. It's on demand, meaning the system only moves a car when it is needed. It doesn't have to move larger cars on a schedule to ensure availability.
Another thing to consider is the context. Does Vegas need to invest in a large scale subway system? Do they have the demand for that? One of the big benefits they saw in Boring is that they could do it piecemeal and I don't think they are paying anything for the system, so the risk for them is quite low. Is there a company that would build and operate a subway system for a city at their own expense?
Why? More cars per passenger would seem to mean a higher operating cost per passenger as each car needs a full drive train, batteries, sensors, etc.
Wouldn't using small cars increase the chance of service interruption? If a vehicle breaks down, then it blocks the tunnel. If there are 5x smaller vehicles and the breakdown rate the same then the tunnel blockage rate is 5x higher with smaller vehicles.
Cars needs a minimum separation to prevent crashes in case of problems. With more cars, more of the tunnel length is reserved for separation purposes instead of carrying passengers.
Regular subway cars allows people to stand, which increases passenger density. (They also let people roll on suitcases, enter using a wheelchair, push a stroller, etc., which small vehicles do not.) With the lower passenger density inherit in smaller cars mean that station platforms need to be longer and more expensive to build?
How many different tunnels do you need for point-to-point service? If you want to go from A to C, do you still go through B and if so, do you need to stop while cars load/unload at B or are there bypass tunnels for each station?
I looked at the channel but did not want to watch video upon video to figure out which showed small cars are more efficient.
I’m not convinced it will be more efficient for handling thousands of passengers [1], but from what I understand, this system (when operating as designed) will not stop cars inside the main tunnel, but move them to out of it into slide channels.
That means a car driving from station #3 to station #33 can overtake cars at intermediate stations, passing them at full speed. One question would be whether it’s possible to write scheduling software that manages to do that well in crowded tunnels.
Doing that with trains is possible, too, but would be more expensive (railroad switches are fairly high maintenance, and cause extra wear on train wheels), and scheduling train rides so that most passengers in a car stopping at a station want to go there is harder the more passengers there are in a railroad car.
As to cars breaking down: they’re a lot lighter than railroad cars, so I would think that the tunnels can be designed in such a way that often, getting a broken car out of the tunnel to the nearest stop will be fairly fast, and can be done without disrupting service for long.
[1] it almost certainly more efficient for handling low numbers of passengers, as moving an almost empty railway carriage takes more energy than moving a few cars. Scaling up, that advantage goes away fast, though, especially if, as is now the case, each car needs a paid driver.
> railroad switches are fairly high maintenance, and cause extra wear on train wheels
Sure, but that's a tradeoff. You now have many more cars, each with its own steering system, and the components in the steering system need to be light to reduce the weight being transported.
You are asking questions that are based on your assumptions. These assumptions are not accurate. One example:
> If you want to go from A to C, do you still go through B and if so, do you need to stop while cars load/unload at B or are there bypass tunnels for each station?
You are mapping the subway architecture onto a different system. The main lines do not connect directly to the stops, rather each stop has it's own ramps. It's much more like the highway system, where there are on/off ramps at each point, it's just underground to take advantage of space in 3d rather than being limited to the 2d surface constraints.
Of course I am. But it doesn't seem worthwhile to watch unknown hours of videos to answer my question.
As to the topology, sure, that's one approach. It requires many more tunnels, which is more expensive, and acceleration/deceleration lines.
I've seen off-ramps fully back up to the highway lane. Why wouldn't that happen here?
I've also seen people stopped in the acceleration lane waiting for a gap in traffic. If there are fewer, bigger vehicles each with more passengers then there are more gaps.
So you can see why it's not clearly obvious to me that many small cars with point-to-point service is more economical.
Does it? What are you basing this on? Even if more tunnels, is the total volume less, are they simpler and cheaper to create because they are smaller?
> I've seen off-ramps fully back up to the highway lane.
Backups happen in subways, like all traffic systems. It's something you manage, not eliminate
You of course skip the questions about context and the right solution for a city. They had open proposals and review periods and ended up going with the Boring tunnel system. They evaluated in detail and made the choice. If you want to understand their choice, they made it all public
The big thing Boring company did was develop their own tunneling machine that is much better than the others out there. This is how they can tunnel faster and cheaper than anyone else, currently.
Maybe Vegas made a mistake betting on a new way, but maybe they made a really good call. We'll have to wait and see. When you invest in large scale transportation systems, you plan for many, many decades. These point in time numbers while the system is still being built aren't evidence for success or failure.
My "which is more expensive" is based on having more point-to-point tunnels, rather than running single lines approximating a minimal spanning tree.
The more point-to-point direct transit you have, the more tunnels you must have, which makes it more expensive.
My comparison was not directly about small cars in small tunnels vs. large ones in large tunnels.
> is the total volume less, are they simpler and cheaper to create because they are smaller?
I don't know. You claimed it would seem to be more efficient, but in that case, why not compare a small tunnel subway like Glasgow has? 2 lines, 15 stations, 8 million ridership running on a 4 foot gauge and 11 ft width tunnels, built in the 1890s.
It looks like the Vegas Loop uses 12 foot tunnels, so that should be the better head-to-head comparison, yes?
> It's something you manage, not eliminate
Of course, but you manage it with space, which affects the costs. Given the same number of passengers, smaller cars require more space because of the required safety distances between cars.
You get the space with more tunnels and parallel tracks.
> If you want to understand their choice, they made it all public
If it's not easy to summarize in a few paragraphs and requires pouring over documents or watching hours of videos, then how does it seem more efficient simply by saying "a subway with smaller cars that is more point to point"?
I've been to Vegas. They have lousy mass transit, the US is famously anti-public transit in part because the people who make the decisions rarely use it, and there is a long history of trying out hyped technology that doesn't work well.
You'll also note that Chicago, San Jose, and LA have dropped their plans to have similar infrastructure.
> We'll have to wait and see.
Sure, but that's a far cry from making it seem like it's obvious given the design. And given that it's been years and the Vegas Loop has nowhere near as many passengers as the Glasgow Subway is a strong suggestion that car-based systems don't work well.
you should probably look at the plans and existing lines for the Vegas loop before commenting more. It would clear things up or reduce ambiguity for you
The comment about MSP vs point-to-point is off and not accurate to how the system is built. Myself and other commenters are pointing out that point-to-point is the user experience, no stops between start and destination, not the layout of the tunnels, which looks just like a subway system
Sure. Could you point me to a source better than watching hours of video?
What's the cost per length of tunnel? How many people can be carried per hour? What level of service interruption is allowed? How accessible is it for wheelchairs, strollers, and such?
That RJ article also comments that the decision to extend the line was strongly influenced by political pressure: "Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman isn’t sure the project will ever come to fruition, but voted in favor of the extension anyway, due to the urging of the various resorts and other entities in downtown." "“I am one who just does not believe will come to be, certainly not in my lifetime,” Goodman said during Wednesday’s meeting. “Hopefully in the lifetime forthcoming. Moving three and four people at a time does not get this on … I want more accessibility, I want to move people more easily and I’d like it to happen immediately, because we need that movement of people now.”
That makes it hard to accept your view that the decision in Las Vegas was based on technical merit.
> Myself and other commenters are pointing out that point-to-point is the user experience, no stops between start and destination, not the layout of the tunnels, which looks just like a subway system
But getting that experience requires NOT designing like a subway system but rather like a highway system because you need more space/lanes to handle passing, and more space dedicated to inter-car separation. That's why I've been saying that it isn't obvious that it should be cheaper.
>How's that new subway line going in NYC? Has it finished yet? When I lived there in '08 they were just starting it and last I heard it was not nearing completion, but I ha ent heard in a few years
