The Boring Company is a startup exploring a transformative sweet spot around very-inexpensive small simple autonomous-EV single-lane road tunnels, when constructed very rapidly at extremely large scale. If BC were to attempt a conventionally sized and outfitted subway tunnel, bid against established contractors, for one of the very few contracts available, presumably with a machine in direct competition with established TBM manufacturers... well, that would be quite a pivot.
That's pretty bullshit if you consider their USP is cheap tunneling. Then they should be just building cheap tunneling then trying to build custom public transit that allow only for electric cars with compatible self driving systems.
> Then they should be just building cheap tunneling then trying to build custom public transit
Cheap depends on context. Here, on R&D, creating excellent machines, mass produced, and reused with high duty cycle, embedded in a big high-productivity surrounding process, all amortized and enabled by scale. And also on tunnel characteristics, especially small diameter (many costs scale roughly with face area). These are not well matched to existing markets. The sweet spot really is in system design, not merely in fancy small TBM design. The scale permits the cost that permits the scale.
> custom public transit that allow only for electric cars with compatible self driving systems
Access could indeed be an interesting issue at some point. But at present, company focus is on dedicated mass transit shuttle bus/vans. More analogous to rail transit, than to highways.
It's not transformative. It does absolutely nothing to fix traffic/congestion. Because the real limitation is above ground where streets where people are being dropped off/parking/living/etc which have limited capacity and cascade into backups from local streets and onto highways. This just means there'll be back ups underground as well.
Unless people are going to start living underground. Then you start to remove the above ground choke points ;)
