BART Trolls Elon Musk on Twitter, A Nerd Fight Ensues
Elon Musk tweeted about his vision for a subterranean superhighway, currently being worked on by his ‘Boring Company’ in Los Angeles. Musk’s tweet soon came under a hail of Twitter fire (shocker), from people who clearly didn’t read his FAQ. One of which was our beloved Bay Area Rapid Transit train system BART. Here’s how it developed on Twitter:
Boring Company guide to why tunnels are awesome & safest place to be in an earthquake https://t.co/ZZIPQlscw1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2019
Thus *reducing* existing road traffic
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2019
Then a random person on Twitter, responded to Musk, pointing out how most mortals believe that tunnels are good for trains, not cars.
Tunnels are great things to run trains through. Not cars.
— Kieran Jones (@quayran) May 24, 2019
Musk
Musk’s link to the ‘Boring Company FAQ’. Explains how a massive subterranean tunnel system relying on hundreds of tunnels and elevators, which deliver cars on sleds to various destinations at 150 mph. Has tremendous advantages over the current trains in tunnels, and cars on land model we currently have.
Loop system testing
Opposite is true: you can have 100’s of layers of tunnels, but only one layer on surface (to first approximation), therefore trains should be on surface, cars below
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2019
And in Musk’s futuristic, subterranean. hampster tubed superhighway, there are multiple levels of tunnels to accommodate all the cars, in a weatherproof, earthquake safe, network of connections. With no pedestrians, traffic lights, car accidents, or congestion to slow things down.
But that didn’t stop the Bay Area Rapid Transit system from trolling Musk on twitter (lol) with some hardcore nerd facts of their own:
We carry 28,000 people per hour through our Transbay Tube under the bay because of the capacity of a train. That’s nearly twice as much as cars over the bay. Why wouldn’t you prioritize something that carries far more (and safely with automatic train control) over cars? https://t.co/2Hu3uzu2ND
— SFBART (@SFBART) May 25, 2019
OH Snap!
Here it is. We also run on ? electricity. pic.twitter.com/leK1mLzcrc
— SFBART (@SFBART) May 25, 2019
Public transportation agencies often pick fights with Musk on Twitter, mostly because it helps their public visibility & ridership, but also because they have to live in the real world. And the daily, grinding, slug of moving millions (of mostly ungrateful riders), every day. Dealing with non-stop problems, around the clock. You know, reality.
Public?transit?is?not?for?profit?.
BTW our system relies on fares for 2/3rd of our operating budget.
Why isn’t there greater public investment?
— SFBART (@SFBART) May 25, 2019
The kind of underground superhighway Musk envisions is unfathomable to public transportation agencies, who have lived through the insane costs of building tunnels in California. In fact, the USA is by far the most expensive place to build train tunnels in the world. Right here in San Francisco, the new ‘central subway line, is costing us, the tax payers, more than $1 Billion dollars per mile of tunnel. It cost less than half of that to build a mile of a subway line in the next most expensive European city (Paris). In other words, public rail construction projects in the USA are hella corrupt, and currently, cost way too much money for Musk’s network of underground highways to be built.
Musk’s ‘The Boring Company’ wants to reduce the cost of building transportation tunnels by a factor of 10. A feat that would be more impressive, and 10 times more valuable than putting men on Mars. I, for one, hope he succeeds because traffic as it is in the Bay Area, is at a standstill, and our current methods of building public infrastructure are completely broken.
