Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value. — urbanize.la
Alon Levy pokes holes in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles. Musk's plan involves tunneling under Sunset Boulevard between the Dodger Stadium and one of three Red Line stops: Vermont/Sunset, Vermont/Santa Monica, or Vermont/Beverly. Levy cites major issues with construction, capacity, alignment with the city's existing transit, and overall regional impact.
3 Comments
This article is informative but not really exciting to read. And I guess that is a lot of the problem we face as responsible designers: It’s much easier to propose a *zooty wowee cool* idea them to deal with the nitty-gritty of actually getting something beneficial built.
Musk is not a genius, he is an aggressive entrepreneur. He got lucky in software, and then got lucky again when he bought the company that had started PayPal.
Of all his current ventures SpaceX is the only viable one and that is because he hired the right people - professionals in the field - to run it and because he is competing against a vastly bloated bureaucratic and uncompetitive procurement system.
Tesla is a disaster, partly from being run by some guy from SnapChat (and other people who don't have the foggiest notion of what they are doing) and partly from taking on a global car industry that is working to crush him (which they will sooner rather than later). You'd think a "smart" guy would have studied history and come up with a better plan (see the list of defunct automobile manufacturers of the United States).
The "green" revolution of electric cars is almost pure greenwashing as the electricity used is generated in some distant power plant. About two-thirds of this electricity is lost in the generation and transmission process. That means that real-world efficiency is on par with gas engines, the difference being that the fuel is now a mix of coal, oil, gas, nuclear, and some hydro.
The Hyperloop and various automated tunnels are considearbly less than half-baked and doggedly pursued only because of the weapons development model - come up with something "new and revolutionary" and money will flow (read Imaginary Weapons by Sharon Weinberger) - despite numerous obvious fatal problems with the systems.
As for the Mars program, Musk should be on the first flight.
Interesting debate overall: the creativity but also inexperience of visionary entrepreneurs versus the pragmatism but also planetary inertia of government institutions. Some joint effort (not necessarily here, though) seems important and necessary to try. Governments hire consultants all the time, of course, but often the result is little more than lots of paper and even more hot air. Moving to actual implementation is the true test, and fiendishly difficult.
Add to this the realities of local and state politics, and it's a wonder any of us can leave the house in the morning.
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