Elon Musk Reads Nextbigfuture

Elon Musk tweeted out a link to my website nextbigfuture.com. This was a deep cut to a 2018 nextbigfuture article about Subways and light rail costing two to seven times more to build in the USA than Europe or Japan while Boring Company can cost a hundred times less per mile.

In 2023, the Second Avenue Subway in New York City phase 2 is now projected cost is now close to $4 billion per mile, which is more than 11 times the global average. In my old 2018, the NY Times was talking about $2.6 billion per mile.

My observations about Elon's referral to my article.

1. Elon Musk must read nextbigfuture.com a little bit and must have done some Google searches on my website, nextbigfuture.com. I do not think this appear in a search if this was not the case.

2. One current Boring Company tunneling machine at one mile of tunneling per week can beat the US subway tunneling at 20 miles over all of the last twenty years.

3. US Subway and tunneling costs continue to spiral even higher. Boring company only needs about forty next-generation Prufrock-3 machines to dig 10,000 miles per year. If Boring Company makes $10-20 million per mile this would be $100-200 billion per year in revenue.

Warren Redlich talked about Boring Company having an IPO by 2028 and reaching $1 trillion of market value by 2030. Ten thousand miles of tunnel by 2030.

The current iteration of Prufrock, called Prufrock-2, is designed to mine at up to 1 mile/week, meaning a tunnel the length of the Las Vegas strip (approximately 4 miles) can be completed in a month.

Prufrock-3 is designed to be even faster, with the medium-term goal of 1/10 human walking speed, or 7 miles/day.

In the short term, if each Prufrock-2 mines at 1 mile/week, and TBC produces 1 new Prufrock machine per month, then TBC will be introducing 600 miles/year of capacity.

As a point of reference, less than 20 miles of underground subway tunnel has been constructed in the United States in the last 20 years.

Boring Company making one Prufrock-3 machine per month, then TBC will be introducing 4200 miles/year of capacity. Forty Prufrock-3 machines build by 2028 would enable 10,000 miles of tunnel per year even with some machine downtime.

In 2018, Brian M. Rosenthal of the New York Times listed the causes of the $2.6 billion per mile New York Second Avenue subway construction. Excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York. In 2023, New York’s Second Avenue Subway next phase will cost over $4 billion per mile. The NY Times article documented poor contracting practices, bad management, and union featherbedding.

There are many other high-cost subway, tunnel and rail projects:

The Central Subway in San Francisco cost $920 million per mile

The Purple Line in Los Angeles cost $800 million per mile

The U-Link in Seattle cost $600 million per mile

The London Crossrail cost ￡1.3 billion per mile

Alon Levy at Citylab showed underground rail construction costs in continental Europe and Japan between $100 million per mile and $1 billion. Most subway lines cluster in the range of $200 million to $500 million per mile.The US has a range of subway construction costs of $600 million to $2.6 billion per mile. The US median price cluster is $800 million to $1 billion per mile.

Union contracts and costs are a problem, which also can have criminal involvement. This was dramatized and explained in the Sopranos. Those who control the project get to make a markup on every worker, they get to select subcontracting companies, they get to charge a profit on materials. The Sopranos could bill a lot of extra unworked hours as well. They would get bribed by subcontractors to be on the approved vendor lists.

The Crazy Thing is Mob or No Mob - All of the Projects Are Run the Same Way to a Greater or Lesser Extent

A company can submit a low bid to win a contract. However, actual project costs can be double or triple the original bid. This can be corruption or incompetence.

The fictional show, The Sapranos, had a storyline about inflating the costs of a highway construction project (The Esplanade).

Boring Company has new hexagonal wall sections which will enable building the concrete tunnel support as fast the tunneling. The Boring Company (TBC) has been building tunnels at about 40 meters per day. This is for the digging and for the concrete reinforcement of the tunnel. Will at the Boring Revolution Youtube channel has spotted hundreds of hexagonal concrete segments at the Boring Company. This means that Boring Company has changed its tunnel walls to hexagonal pieces. This will enable one type of wall segment and tunnel construction with tunneling and wall construction of over 100 meters per day.

This could nearly triple the construction speed. Will had been calculating that TBC Prufrock III machines would be able to build tunnels at 40 meters per day or 280 meters per week. Six machines would build 1680 meters per week. It would take 1.5 years to complete the 104,000 meters (64 miles) of the Vegas Strip construction project. Six machines each building 100 meters per day, 600 meters per week would enable 4200 meters per week. This would enable the completion of the Vegas tunnel and tunnel construction in about 6 months.

Boring Company will make over $600 million to build the Las Vegas system. There are about $1-2 billion of other projects under consideration for Boring Company. If Projects are costed at $10 million per kilometer then Boring Company would need to complete 100 kilometers per year (60 miles per year) to earn $1 Billion per year. This would mean one and half Vegas Strip projects per year or higher fees per mile.

Scaling for Industry Transformation or Domination

The analysis that I look at for whether the Boring Company or a nuclear fusion company or any other science or technology can transform an industry is to look at all aspects of scaling.

My analysis is:

1. Can the science scale? Are there questions or major issues around science.
2. Can the engineering be executed from the science? This is the major issue for Boring Company. They are developing better TBM (Tunnel Boring Machines) and they are developing the hexagonal wall sections.
3. Can the products be created? The products are the tunnels made faster and at lower cost for customers.
4. Can the products scale into an industry or a transformed industry? This would mean replacing the 42 TBM used for line 6 of the Chengdu subway. This was 42 miles of continuous tunnel. This is also enabling tunnels for traffic that replace widening highways or other alternatives.
5. Can the supply chain and supporting parts of the industry be created. A transformed industry would be for Boring Company to change how infrastructure projects of all kinds are changed around the world. This would aspects that are upstream and downstream of Boring Company.