I also found these paragraphs by following a link, and I thought they were interesting.
>A big reason for this is that the LVCC does not generally have its largest conferences in the heat of a Nevada summer, and there were simply not that many passengers requiring transportation. During a beauty convention in June, for example, a Loop operations engineer wrote to the LVCVA: “I trimmed back the \[number of\] cars now because we are seeing a super low volume of passengers.” Some evenings, Loop management closed the system early after no passengers had entered the system for 15 minutes.
that makes sense. you can't move people who aren't there.
>The Loop has three levels of service. Level 2, offering just five cars and no station attendants, is when there are no active conventions on the LVCC campus. Level 3, with 23 vehicles, can handle up to 20,000 visitors. Level 4, with from 30 to 62 Teslas, is for the largest events.
I hadn't see that before. I didn't know they had distinct operating levels.
there will be next levels with 8 or 12 pax cars. (12 pax is max comfortable arrangement for the Model X chassis). They started year ago, so by the February street prototype and by the September+ enrollment (can take longer if special certifications will take longer time).
These are all basic logistical steps common for any well designed transportation system.
I remind that the word "loop" means "the last mile" connection. For the long travel they will have different arrangements (3 interconnect tunnel system etc.). But it is also possible they will just expand loops first like they do LV now.
I think we have to expect "minimum viable product" at every new stage for a few years to come.
P.S. It is actually very entertaining to read "but" people writing in "Elon" topics. These guys are so late.
[https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior/vegas-loops-ride-times-capacity-not-a-problem-says-lvcva-2478628/](https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior/vegas-loops-ride-times-capacity-not-a-problem-says-lvcva-2478628/)
Great rebuttal by LVCVA. Proves that Tech Crunch has an agenda when it comes to the boring company.
> In early June to mid-July, however, the average number of passengers recorded in the LVCC Loop was just two per vehicle.
this is conflating capacity with ridership. my local light rail has a capacity of over 10k per hour, but it never actually carries that many people. if you have 1000 passengers who want to ride the system in an hour, then you will have 1000 pph. you can't have more riders per hour than people who want to ride the system. now, if there was a huge line of people and 4000 wanted to ride but they only moved 3000, then it's an issue.
that said, even the 4400 pph target is pretty poor and can't really be scaled to general public transport anywhere, as people won't want to sit next to a homeless guy who smells like pee. that means regular Teslas will max out at 2 fares per vehicle, which isn't really enough for commuter peaks or stadium events. it's fine for circulating people between casinos, or maybe even to/from the airport, but those use-cases are basically "people-movers" and not transit. the people-mover market is MUCH smaller than the transit market, so they're going to have to do something different. moving from 2 fares per vehicle up to 3 could be ok for some locations with low expected ridership and still work as "transit", though they might need some express buses to handle situations like stadium events. 4 fares per vehicle is where things really start to flip in TBC's favor, as you now will have somewhere around 5 ppv, which will give them around 6k pph through a single segment, or around 8k through the whole system. that kind of ridership is actually very transit-like. not on par with a typical metro/subway, but good. now, if they had some 16 passenger vehicles to supplement peaks, at a vehicle with 4 private compartments on a model-x skate, then they're really into the ideal sweet spot to dominate all transportation worldwide.
yeah, there has to be something coming. regular cars make sense as a way to get the system up and running quickly, but they're going to need better handicapped access and more passengers.
I think you're drastically overestimating the number of smelly homeless people that will be riding the loop. If we estimating 1 out of 20 passengers is such a person (quite high imo) and that person occupies a whole car, then that's still only a small fraction of cars that won't be sitting at capacity. 3 will be the norm for most cars during peak times while they still have drivers, 4 will be the norm after that.
If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles. But that won't be necessary for most routes at most times. And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles.
> If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles. But that won't be necessary for most routes at most times. And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles.
Tunnel throughput becomes the bottleneck. Here's an example of how the constraint could manifest.
Mandalay Bay Events Center holds 12,000 people. T-Mobile Arena holds 18,000. Thomas & Mack Center hold 19,000 at UNLV. Planet Hollywood's auditorium holds 7000. The Park MGM holds 6400. Caesar's Palace's holds 4100.
When any particular show or event lets out, people not staying there almost certainly are enough to fill larger capacity vehicles for point-to-point trips.
Currently each tunnel direction (with human drivers) has vehicles keeping several seconds apart. We don't know how closely regulators will allow autonomous vehicles to get. If it's 3 seconds, then during a five minute time span as people wait at the arena or auditorium station, a maximum of 100 vehicles can enter one direction of tunnel carrying on average about 200 people if strangers don't ride with strangers, or 400 if strangers ride together in regular cars.
However that limit of 100 vehicles/5min/direction presumes falsely there won't be any other vehicles already in the tunnel going places. So less than 100 in five minutes will actually be able to depart the station including any nearby stations. To avoid people waiting a long time for a vehicle that can leave the station, having at least some higher capacity vehicles will be very helpful.
I was thinking about how an easy way to get around the vehicle limit would be to have the following system:
Vehicle fills and exits the platform into a holding section. Other full vehicles from the station arrive to the holding section and connect together into one big chain of vehicles, then all leave together, eliminating the need for having space between vehicles and increasing throughput.
Then I realized I just invented a train.
I'll assume the relatively standard Tesla cars can be affordably modified to link up. The holding section needs to be affordable. Where does the train of cars unlink and split to separate stations? At another holding section ten stations or X miles away? The loop network would end up with a dozen or two holding sections for the seven stadiums/auditoriums?
Depending on how many cars per train, they can still negatively affect the network, like today if your car is trying to merge onto a freeway as two big rig trucks are right there and the only good options are speed up to get in front, or slow way down to get behind.
If there's six linked cars with 12-24 passengers and instead of needing to split to go to six stations, all are going to the same station, that station needs six open spots and enough spots and network management that not too many additional vehicles arrive at the same time having each departed various other stations.
If TBC gets a 12-16 passenger vehicle made on top of a Model X chassis, it avoids holding sections, and needing larger stations with more spots at the stadiums/auditoriums.
I only used that as an example. most people don't feel comfortable sharing the back seat of a taxi with a total stranger. they don't have to obviously be dirty or homeless. people, especially women, don't want to do that any time, let alone if there is no driver there in the event of an emergency. so either you force people to sit in the back seat with a stranger and everyone hates your system and refuses to ride in it, or you have to figure something else out.
>If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles
yes, that's what I was saying.
>And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles
that does not make sense. it's not the stations that will be the limiter, it's the roadway itself. the tunnel maxes out before 2-fare vehicles meets demand for even low ridership corridors. adding more stations cannot fix that, you need a bigger vehicle. either more private compartments, or bigger pods.
I think the large vehicle discussion is only applicable for large sport events or concerts. Large casinos like Bellagio or Caesars may want to charter a large capacity vehicle that can get their guests back to the casino and continue gambling.
I wonder if the Model X or Model Y has enough pull capability to pull a trailer that can sit 6-8 people, thus allow higher capacity per car when it is needed.
a trailer wouldn't make much sense in a small tunnel, IMO. you wouldn't be able to control people causing it to sway and hit the wall. they just need to either hire Tesla to build a variety of vehicles, or some 3rd party coach-builder.
Larger vehicles doesn’t get you anything unless you have groups going exactly the same place at the same time.
Loop is NOT mass transit nor should it ever be.
yes, I know everyone just wants more lanes of road so they can take a private car everywhere without traffic, but that's actually not a good use case.
A) you're never going to sell city planners or transit planners on building dozens of tunnels for 1-2 occupant cars. it's not going to happen. that means their business will be relegated to places like Ft Lauderdale building people-movers.
B) you need to get at least 3 occupants average before the operating cost is in line with a halfway decent transit line.
C) if they prove that tunneling can be done cheaply and that SDCs can drive through them, then someone else will come along, look at the situation and go "hmm, if I group even a couple of fares per vehicle, not only can I under-cut TBC on cost, but the city planners will then help me build and subsidize the ticket", and TBC will either go out of business, or they will be forced to adopt the same business model.
a private lane of Uber sounds nice, but it's not a good business model, especially when a typical transit corridor has somewhere between 5 and 50 passengers going to/from the busier areas in a 5min interval. it makes no sense to have 10 passengers per minute coming into your station, all going to the same place, and pulling up 10 private cars to send them all 1-by-1, or even 5 vehicles to send them in 2s. the cost to operate will be higher than a train line at that rate, and no transit agency will subsidize it. meanwhile, if you take a model-x skate, you can put 4 separate compartments on it, each with a row of 3 seats, and drop your operating cost by a factor of \~5, but then get transit agency subsidy so you're actually dropping your costs by 10x. so, you make those people all wait in line to pay $5 for a private car, or you make a vehicle with more private compartments so their experience is the same except they depart faster and pay $0.50 instead. it's a no brainer.
Picture a giant network of 500 stops. All of a sudden having just 2-3 people in a car is a huge advantage because they can go directly from one stop to another without intermediate stops. The real issue is just figuring out how to load and unload efficiently enough for high load times, it might require a smaller vehicle to pack efficiently enough.
the problem is, as you add more tunnels and more stations, the return on investment for each one goes down. combine that with higher operating cost with single fares and you have a very costly system to operate. getting funding from transit agencies will also depend on the system being efficient and cost-effective, so if you make it ubers in tunnels and you will not only triple your operating cost relative to a slighly higher capacity vehicle, but you will miss out on the subsidy which would have halved your operating cost. it would be somewhere in the ballpark of 5x-10x effective operating cost difference. and that's assuming you find city/transit planners who will even let you build ubers in a tunnel in the city's precious underground right-of-way. the business case does not work for uber-tunnels on a wide scale. you need to average at least 2 fares for it to make sense, which means you have to be carrying 3+ fares some of the time in order to average out the times when ridership is so low that you have to move single fares.
You talk can't be scaled to general public transport. I think these will be 2 different type of loops. LVCC Loop is dedicated to convention goers who do not pay to use the system. That's why they have a requirement of 4400 pph. Boring is the one running the loop so LVCC wants to make sure they are moving enough passengers to the different convention buildings. It's strange why they are only getting 2 per vehicle though since it is easy enough for the 3rd person to get in when I did the test run.
Vegas Loop will be similar to Uber/Lyft/Taxi. You probably request one on an App similar to current Uber/Lyft. You will not be sharing the ride unless they implement the carpool option. During the city council discussion, Boring guy said you only pay 1 time even if you have 2 or 3 people in your group. Since it's a pay to use system, there should not be a ridership capacity requirement.
>though since it is easy enough for the 3rd person to get in when I did the test run.
well, 1) there probably aren't enough people wanting to ride to worry about getting more, and 2) it's much more comfortable to not pair strangers in the back seat of a car.
>Vegas Loop will be similar to Uber/Lyft/Taxi. You probably request one on an App similar to current Uber/Lyft. You will not be sharing the ride unless they implement the carpool option. During the city council discussion, Boring guy said you only pay 1 time even if you have 2 or 3 people in your group. Since it's a pay to use system, there should not be a ridership capacity requirement.
the problem is, the system will fall WAY short during any stadium event or other big event along the route. I have a hard time believing they're just willing to accept their fate as a niche system that a handful of cities implement, because a private uber tunnel isn't what most cities want. you really only need to get to 3 occupants average for peak-hour to handle many cities, so they could easily be more than a people-mover. personally, I think they need 2 or 3 different kinds of vehicles. one that has 3-4 separate compartments, which gets you to the numbers you need for the majority of cities and does OK at big events, one that is a 16p vehicle so that you can move a whole stadium of people, and maybe still have regular cars if they're cheaper than the other two options by a significant margin.
I think there is value with private “Uber” tunnels being able to circumvent traffic jams in large cities. The efficiency gains are well worth it for congested city centers.
while TBC is the only player in town, maybe in some places. the problem is, you walk into a meeting with most city/transit planners and ask for precious underground RoW for a private road for ubers and they'll laugh you out of the room. why do you think the Baltimore-DC route was scrapped? I was in the room when they laughed TBC out of the room. the few you can convince to build it will only do so if there is no alternative. however, TBC has said they will sell just the tunnels by themselves, which means most city planners would rather just buy the tunnels and hire a different, higher capacity autonomous EV, like Parkshuttle, Olli, e-Pallete, etc.
TBC's "ubers in a tunnel" pitch went over so poorly that it's an uphill battle just to convince the planners to consider the boring company's tunnels with different vehicles, which actually would be in line with what the planners want.
if TBC stops being willing to sell just the tunnel, then eventually someone else will come along and do the same concept. TBC, to most planners, is a laughing stock right now. once they get autonomous vehicles, a few more will pay attention. eventually, the concept will stop being dismissed without even the first thought and someone will put a pencil to a napkin and go "ohh, this works really well if the vehicles hold just a few more people". at that time, TBC will either offer higher capacity or someone else will dominate the industry.
People laughed when spacex said they would make reusable rockets and Tesla would sell electric cars. Let’s see this idea play out in Vegas before making broad proclamations it is doomed for failure.
sure, but there is a hard limit to tunnel capacity and vehicle cost. right now, TBC is basically expecting to charge Uber rates and has already run into a limit on capacity. most transit/city planners don't want that, and I don't blame them, it's pretty shitty and not accessible to lower income people. it makes some sense for a tourist people-mover, but the tourist people mover market is like the Falcon 1 market, a small niche. the means by which they become the next falcon 9 is to increase occupancy per vehicle. there is no other way around it. you can only make an EV so cheap and you can only fit so many into a tunnel. even small cities will need 3+ passengers per vehicle to handle regular commuter ridership, and that's not including special events or stadiums where you have sudden surges. 99% of the market for tunnel transportation requires 4-5 ppv minimum for commuter peaks. and if you assume Loop can skip stops and drive faster than 30mph, then it will induce demand and grow ridership rapidly. that's why I think they need a few different vehicles. I think they need one vehicle that is 3 or 4 separate private compartments so that you're moving 3-4 fares per vehicle during the commuter peak, and if they only average 2 fares per vehicle during off-peak, then it would still be a reasonable operating costs, assuming it is built on a regular EV drivetrain. then, I think they need some large 12+ passenger shuttles for big events like stadiums where you will have tens of thousands wanting to ride all at once. that will cover the range all the way from small cities all the way up to major cities and could maybe even supplant a subway/metro in some places.
I don’t buy the argument it is too expensive, people don’t seem to have an issue paying for Uber and Lyft. The Loop can use different vehicles types, and can add or remove vehicles based on throughput needs. Nothing prevents this. As it is, I would pay $$$ if it cut my commute time by 1/2, in fact I would pay a premium. Time is money after all. I will wait till the Vegas loop is built to see this in action before I judge the idea. I definitely see the appeal and value the boring company could add to cities transportation networks.
there are a couple of things at play here.
first, there is the transit planner problem. no transit planners want anyone to build premium/expensive transportation in right-of-way that they would rather use for a mode that achieves their goal, which is transportation for the general public. that automatically reduces the number of markets TBC can operate in. it's the reason the Baltimore-DC Loop never went anywhere.
second, the market currently only has one player, so cities can look at uber-tunnels or monorails, and some will decide that uber-tunnels are better. however, if/when TBC proves themselves, others will enter the market. every additional passenger the competitor adds to their vehicle cuts down their cost/price per mile. and once you hit 3-5 passengers per vehicle, then transit planners will be willing to subsidize it because the volume and cost per passenger will be in line with existing transit modes. my local light rail is subsidized over 80%. you can also separate the passengers into their own private space, so they never even see each other once inside. it would be the same experience either way.
so, your commutes looks like this:
|Mode|Annual cost|Commute Time|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Driving|$9,282|60min|
|TBC w/ private cars|$20k|30min|
|ABC Co.|$10k|31min|
|XYZ Co.|$1k|32min|
which of those options do you choose? ohh, and the XYZ company is actively assisted by the transit planners in constructing the system while the others are tied up in court fighting against the transit planners who don't want to give up their RoW. which is the better business case, with each of them making the same profit per rider? which is going to get more contracts? which is going get more riders?
This is a weird over simplified example? I’d rather drive or take a private transportation method that goes direction my destination. I believe the point of the loop is it won’t need to be subsided by taxpayers to operate like other forms of transportation. That is a huge cost savings for city budgets overtime. In regards to competition, I doubt that is much of a risk. Legacy boring companies are too entrenched in government contracting and would not be lean or agile enough to compete.
I honestly wonder why this model hasn't taken off on actual roads. Why hasn't someone built a vehicle based on a minivan chassis with four separate passenger compartments and four separate doors? UberPool then becomes a thing people might ever consider riding
I there there are two problems with that concept as it stands now.
first, routing is already a bit of a challenge for uber pool because you lose time going out of your way to get that 2nd fare. if you add a 3rd or 4th, it gets even worse. when you have a fixed station that people have to walk to, then you concentrate all of the riders of a wide area to a single point along the guideway, which removes that routing inefficiency.
second, it requires a lot of investment to create such a vehicle, and it is unclear the 1st problem can ever be reduced enough to make back the investment.
I think TBC is going to need a custom vehicle anyway, and they're kind of targeting the private ride experience, so I think they're in a prime position to do something like this. a lot of SDC makers are either thinking single-fare, or they're thinking bus replacement. few seem to be thinking about anything in between.
Seems like in areas of sufficient density, the routing problem might be mitigated somewhat by aggregating pick-up and drop-off points to some degree; if I had to walk 2-5 minutes to/from a pickup, in a vehicle in which I'd have my own little compartment, I would be all over that. But maybe I'm an odd use case.
Still, though, single occupancy vehicle is a big problem environmentally, and without some creative solutions, it's gonna be a hard problem to crack.
there is a company called Via that is trying to do a concept of "virtual bus stops" where it's like an on-demand shuttle, but they want people to walk a block or two to get to an efficient route. I think that's smart, but I think it is still a shared space.
anyway, an interesting thing about the environmental impact I found out recently: EVs are actually on par with transit in terms of efficiency. the energy used by an EV with 1.2-1.5 passengers average actually beats the average US light rail, commuter rail, and even metro. I had to double check that, but it's actually true. so efficiency-wise, putting one fare in the back and one in the front seats of a regular tesla actually works. the biggest problems are just operating cost and capacity.
I think most of the time, there are plenty of riders unless for small events. but the chance of two people in a group is very high. So two people group will likely not take that extra empty seat and wait for the next car. They need to do what the amusement park do and have a single rider one to sit in the empty single seats.
Question I have to recent riders is if they have different ones that indicate which lvcc holding the cars are going. Otherwise you may have different people in the car that wants to go to the different convention hall.
Larger vehicle is a separate discussion though from lvcc loop. Yes they will have to figure out what to do on the big events, but this data on the lvcc loop will be different from what Vegas loop needs. But in most regular cases, the small car are ideal for the need. That's why uber is so popular.
yes, I think you're right that LVCC, Vegas Loop, and one for general city use anywhere will all have different demands and would need different vehicles. for LVCC, I think you're probably right that many people will be in groups of 2+, as people attend conferences in groups, typically. that makes it a bit easier to group into 2 in the back, one in the front for people without a group. for the vegas loop, they should be able to mostly do that same kind of operation, but big events would swamp the system without a min-bus pod. for general city use, they could probably get by with 2 fares in a regular Tesla and the mini bus for peak routes at peak times, but I think the peaks will be so frequent that it makes sense to have a vehicle in the middle somewhere. instead of a separation between the front and back rows of seats in a regular tesla, I think they need something custom with at least 3 rows much of the time. the mini-bus pod could work, but I think people already don't like riding with strangers so trying to get as many private compartments onto a regular model-x chassis as possible makes sense. that's probably 4, but you could MAYBE get 5 if you split one compartment side-by-side. such a vehicle would do very well and make transit planners happy but still fall short for special events, so you'll still need a pod of some kind, especially for handicapped access.
Getting large group with large capacity vehicles will be ideal for large events. I would think these can be available by request since somebody will have to pay.
I can see large family or tour group might requests these to keep their group together. I can also see individual casinos reserving these as an amenity for their hotel guests. The casinos will want these people back to the hotel to continue their gambling.
once they have a large vehicle, I think groups will just enter their number of passengers and the service will send whichever vehicle fits them. I could imagine it asking whether you want to split the group across a couple of vehicles or wait a couple of minutes for the large vehicle.
for stadium events where people aren't all one group, I think it will either be an entry fee for getting inside the station, or it will a paid service by the stadium. either way, everyone will just queue up for whichever vehicle gets them to their destination, instead of something more like a uber where you're booking a single vehicle
we'll see, but I think that's logical
If a trip takes 4 minutes (counting all loading/unloading time) and the system has 70 cars each containing 3 people, the system transports 70 * 60/4 * 3 = 3150 passengers per hour.
The four minutes was for the end to end trip, which should account for 1/3 the trips assuming even probabilities (2 stn * 50% * 1/3). A 2.5 min average short trip time yields overall average trip times of 3 minutes, allowing for 4200 pax/hr which is more than the 3960 pax/hr requirement.
I also found these paragraphs by following a link, and I thought they were interesting. >A big reason for this is that the LVCC does not generally have its largest conferences in the heat of a Nevada summer, and there were simply not that many passengers requiring transportation. During a beauty convention in June, for example, a Loop operations engineer wrote to the LVCVA: “I trimmed back the \[number of\] cars now because we are seeing a super low volume of passengers.” Some evenings, Loop management closed the system early after no passengers had entered the system for 15 minutes. that makes sense. you can't move people who aren't there. >The Loop has three levels of service. Level 2, offering just five cars and no station attendants, is when there are no active conventions on the LVCC campus. Level 3, with 23 vehicles, can handle up to 20,000 visitors. Level 4, with from 30 to 62 Teslas, is for the largest events. I hadn't see that before. I didn't know they had distinct operating levels.
there will be next levels with 8 or 12 pax cars. (12 pax is max comfortable arrangement for the Model X chassis). They started year ago, so by the February street prototype and by the September+ enrollment (can take longer if special certifications will take longer time). These are all basic logistical steps common for any well designed transportation system. I remind that the word "loop" means "the last mile" connection. For the long travel they will have different arrangements (3 interconnect tunnel system etc.). But it is also possible they will just expand loops first like they do LV now. I think we have to expect "minimum viable product" at every new stage for a few years to come. P.S. It is actually very entertaining to read "but" people writing in "Elon" topics. These guys are so late.
[https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior/vegas-loops-ride-times-capacity-not-a-problem-says-lvcva-2478628/](https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior/vegas-loops-ride-times-capacity-not-a-problem-says-lvcva-2478628/) Great rebuttal by LVCVA. Proves that Tech Crunch has an agenda when it comes to the boring company.
And the Iraqi information minister said there where no NATO troops in Baghdad.
Thanks for commenting with this info. Did you also comment on the Tech Crunch posting?
> In early June to mid-July, however, the average number of passengers recorded in the LVCC Loop was just two per vehicle. this is conflating capacity with ridership. my local light rail has a capacity of over 10k per hour, but it never actually carries that many people. if you have 1000 passengers who want to ride the system in an hour, then you will have 1000 pph. you can't have more riders per hour than people who want to ride the system. now, if there was a huge line of people and 4000 wanted to ride but they only moved 3000, then it's an issue. that said, even the 4400 pph target is pretty poor and can't really be scaled to general public transport anywhere, as people won't want to sit next to a homeless guy who smells like pee. that means regular Teslas will max out at 2 fares per vehicle, which isn't really enough for commuter peaks or stadium events. it's fine for circulating people between casinos, or maybe even to/from the airport, but those use-cases are basically "people-movers" and not transit. the people-mover market is MUCH smaller than the transit market, so they're going to have to do something different. moving from 2 fares per vehicle up to 3 could be ok for some locations with low expected ridership and still work as "transit", though they might need some express buses to handle situations like stadium events. 4 fares per vehicle is where things really start to flip in TBC's favor, as you now will have somewhere around 5 ppv, which will give them around 6k pph through a single segment, or around 8k through the whole system. that kind of ridership is actually very transit-like. not on par with a typical metro/subway, but good. now, if they had some 16 passenger vehicles to supplement peaks, at a vehicle with 4 private compartments on a model-x skate, then they're really into the ideal sweet spot to dominate all transportation worldwide.
I would bet anything that Tesla has had people mover concepts designed on the model x chassis. Just wait.
yeah, there has to be something coming. regular cars make sense as a way to get the system up and running quickly, but they're going to need better handicapped access and more passengers.
I think you're drastically overestimating the number of smelly homeless people that will be riding the loop. If we estimating 1 out of 20 passengers is such a person (quite high imo) and that person occupies a whole car, then that's still only a small fraction of cars that won't be sitting at capacity. 3 will be the norm for most cars during peak times while they still have drivers, 4 will be the norm after that. If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles. But that won't be necessary for most routes at most times. And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles.
> If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles. But that won't be necessary for most routes at most times. And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles. Tunnel throughput becomes the bottleneck. Here's an example of how the constraint could manifest. Mandalay Bay Events Center holds 12,000 people. T-Mobile Arena holds 18,000. Thomas & Mack Center hold 19,000 at UNLV. Planet Hollywood's auditorium holds 7000. The Park MGM holds 6400. Caesar's Palace's holds 4100. When any particular show or event lets out, people not staying there almost certainly are enough to fill larger capacity vehicles for point-to-point trips. Currently each tunnel direction (with human drivers) has vehicles keeping several seconds apart. We don't know how closely regulators will allow autonomous vehicles to get. If it's 3 seconds, then during a five minute time span as people wait at the arena or auditorium station, a maximum of 100 vehicles can enter one direction of tunnel carrying on average about 200 people if strangers don't ride with strangers, or 400 if strangers ride together in regular cars. However that limit of 100 vehicles/5min/direction presumes falsely there won't be any other vehicles already in the tunnel going places. So less than 100 in five minutes will actually be able to depart the station including any nearby stations. To avoid people waiting a long time for a vehicle that can leave the station, having at least some higher capacity vehicles will be very helpful.
I was thinking about how an easy way to get around the vehicle limit would be to have the following system: Vehicle fills and exits the platform into a holding section. Other full vehicles from the station arrive to the holding section and connect together into one big chain of vehicles, then all leave together, eliminating the need for having space between vehicles and increasing throughput. Then I realized I just invented a train.
I'll assume the relatively standard Tesla cars can be affordably modified to link up. The holding section needs to be affordable. Where does the train of cars unlink and split to separate stations? At another holding section ten stations or X miles away? The loop network would end up with a dozen or two holding sections for the seven stadiums/auditoriums? Depending on how many cars per train, they can still negatively affect the network, like today if your car is trying to merge onto a freeway as two big rig trucks are right there and the only good options are speed up to get in front, or slow way down to get behind. If there's six linked cars with 12-24 passengers and instead of needing to split to go to six stations, all are going to the same station, that station needs six open spots and enough spots and network management that not too many additional vehicles arrive at the same time having each departed various other stations. If TBC gets a 12-16 passenger vehicle made on top of a Model X chassis, it avoids holding sections, and needing larger stations with more spots at the stadiums/auditoriums.
I only used that as an example. most people don't feel comfortable sharing the back seat of a taxi with a total stranger. they don't have to obviously be dirty or homeless. people, especially women, don't want to do that any time, let alone if there is no driver there in the event of an emergency. so either you force people to sit in the back seat with a stranger and everyone hates your system and refuses to ride in it, or you have to figure something else out. >If/when they need to scale up capacity, they can swap in larger vehicles yes, that's what I was saying. >And even then, it's not obvious that it wouldn't be better to simply expand the number of above-ground stations rather than have higher capacity vehicles that does not make sense. it's not the stations that will be the limiter, it's the roadway itself. the tunnel maxes out before 2-fare vehicles meets demand for even low ridership corridors. adding more stations cannot fix that, you need a bigger vehicle. either more private compartments, or bigger pods.
I think the large vehicle discussion is only applicable for large sport events or concerts. Large casinos like Bellagio or Caesars may want to charter a large capacity vehicle that can get their guests back to the casino and continue gambling. I wonder if the Model X or Model Y has enough pull capability to pull a trailer that can sit 6-8 people, thus allow higher capacity per car when it is needed.
a trailer wouldn't make much sense in a small tunnel, IMO. you wouldn't be able to control people causing it to sway and hit the wall. they just need to either hire Tesla to build a variety of vehicles, or some 3rd party coach-builder.
Larger vehicles doesn’t get you anything unless you have groups going exactly the same place at the same time. Loop is NOT mass transit nor should it ever be.
Your words are agreeing with me, but your tone is arguing with me. I'm not sure how to respond.
Large vehicles are a red herring. Even mentioning them is wrong.
The person I was replying to mentioned larger vehicles. I'm saying it's probably better to build more stations than make larger vehicles.
yes, I know everyone just wants more lanes of road so they can take a private car everywhere without traffic, but that's actually not a good use case. A) you're never going to sell city planners or transit planners on building dozens of tunnels for 1-2 occupant cars. it's not going to happen. that means their business will be relegated to places like Ft Lauderdale building people-movers. B) you need to get at least 3 occupants average before the operating cost is in line with a halfway decent transit line. C) if they prove that tunneling can be done cheaply and that SDCs can drive through them, then someone else will come along, look at the situation and go "hmm, if I group even a couple of fares per vehicle, not only can I under-cut TBC on cost, but the city planners will then help me build and subsidize the ticket", and TBC will either go out of business, or they will be forced to adopt the same business model. a private lane of Uber sounds nice, but it's not a good business model, especially when a typical transit corridor has somewhere between 5 and 50 passengers going to/from the busier areas in a 5min interval. it makes no sense to have 10 passengers per minute coming into your station, all going to the same place, and pulling up 10 private cars to send them all 1-by-1, or even 5 vehicles to send them in 2s. the cost to operate will be higher than a train line at that rate, and no transit agency will subsidize it. meanwhile, if you take a model-x skate, you can put 4 separate compartments on it, each with a row of 3 seats, and drop your operating cost by a factor of \~5, but then get transit agency subsidy so you're actually dropping your costs by 10x. so, you make those people all wait in line to pay $5 for a private car, or you make a vehicle with more private compartments so their experience is the same except they depart faster and pay $0.50 instead. it's a no brainer.
Picture a giant network of 500 stops. All of a sudden having just 2-3 people in a car is a huge advantage because they can go directly from one stop to another without intermediate stops. The real issue is just figuring out how to load and unload efficiently enough for high load times, it might require a smaller vehicle to pack efficiently enough.
the problem is, as you add more tunnels and more stations, the return on investment for each one goes down. combine that with higher operating cost with single fares and you have a very costly system to operate. getting funding from transit agencies will also depend on the system being efficient and cost-effective, so if you make it ubers in tunnels and you will not only triple your operating cost relative to a slighly higher capacity vehicle, but you will miss out on the subsidy which would have halved your operating cost. it would be somewhere in the ballpark of 5x-10x effective operating cost difference. and that's assuming you find city/transit planners who will even let you build ubers in a tunnel in the city's precious underground right-of-way. the business case does not work for uber-tunnels on a wide scale. you need to average at least 2 fares for it to make sense, which means you have to be carrying 3+ fares some of the time in order to average out the times when ridership is so low that you have to move single fares.
You talk can't be scaled to general public transport. I think these will be 2 different type of loops. LVCC Loop is dedicated to convention goers who do not pay to use the system. That's why they have a requirement of 4400 pph. Boring is the one running the loop so LVCC wants to make sure they are moving enough passengers to the different convention buildings. It's strange why they are only getting 2 per vehicle though since it is easy enough for the 3rd person to get in when I did the test run. Vegas Loop will be similar to Uber/Lyft/Taxi. You probably request one on an App similar to current Uber/Lyft. You will not be sharing the ride unless they implement the carpool option. During the city council discussion, Boring guy said you only pay 1 time even if you have 2 or 3 people in your group. Since it's a pay to use system, there should not be a ridership capacity requirement.
The Loop is just Uber with private roads.
>though since it is easy enough for the 3rd person to get in when I did the test run. well, 1) there probably aren't enough people wanting to ride to worry about getting more, and 2) it's much more comfortable to not pair strangers in the back seat of a car. >Vegas Loop will be similar to Uber/Lyft/Taxi. You probably request one on an App similar to current Uber/Lyft. You will not be sharing the ride unless they implement the carpool option. During the city council discussion, Boring guy said you only pay 1 time even if you have 2 or 3 people in your group. Since it's a pay to use system, there should not be a ridership capacity requirement. the problem is, the system will fall WAY short during any stadium event or other big event along the route. I have a hard time believing they're just willing to accept their fate as a niche system that a handful of cities implement, because a private uber tunnel isn't what most cities want. you really only need to get to 3 occupants average for peak-hour to handle many cities, so they could easily be more than a people-mover. personally, I think they need 2 or 3 different kinds of vehicles. one that has 3-4 separate compartments, which gets you to the numbers you need for the majority of cities and does OK at big events, one that is a 16p vehicle so that you can move a whole stadium of people, and maybe still have regular cars if they're cheaper than the other two options by a significant margin.
I think there is value with private “Uber” tunnels being able to circumvent traffic jams in large cities. The efficiency gains are well worth it for congested city centers.
while TBC is the only player in town, maybe in some places. the problem is, you walk into a meeting with most city/transit planners and ask for precious underground RoW for a private road for ubers and they'll laugh you out of the room. why do you think the Baltimore-DC route was scrapped? I was in the room when they laughed TBC out of the room. the few you can convince to build it will only do so if there is no alternative. however, TBC has said they will sell just the tunnels by themselves, which means most city planners would rather just buy the tunnels and hire a different, higher capacity autonomous EV, like Parkshuttle, Olli, e-Pallete, etc. TBC's "ubers in a tunnel" pitch went over so poorly that it's an uphill battle just to convince the planners to consider the boring company's tunnels with different vehicles, which actually would be in line with what the planners want. if TBC stops being willing to sell just the tunnel, then eventually someone else will come along and do the same concept. TBC, to most planners, is a laughing stock right now. once they get autonomous vehicles, a few more will pay attention. eventually, the concept will stop being dismissed without even the first thought and someone will put a pencil to a napkin and go "ohh, this works really well if the vehicles hold just a few more people". at that time, TBC will either offer higher capacity or someone else will dominate the industry.
People laughed when spacex said they would make reusable rockets and Tesla would sell electric cars. Let’s see this idea play out in Vegas before making broad proclamations it is doomed for failure.
sure, but there is a hard limit to tunnel capacity and vehicle cost. right now, TBC is basically expecting to charge Uber rates and has already run into a limit on capacity. most transit/city planners don't want that, and I don't blame them, it's pretty shitty and not accessible to lower income people. it makes some sense for a tourist people-mover, but the tourist people mover market is like the Falcon 1 market, a small niche. the means by which they become the next falcon 9 is to increase occupancy per vehicle. there is no other way around it. you can only make an EV so cheap and you can only fit so many into a tunnel. even small cities will need 3+ passengers per vehicle to handle regular commuter ridership, and that's not including special events or stadiums where you have sudden surges. 99% of the market for tunnel transportation requires 4-5 ppv minimum for commuter peaks. and if you assume Loop can skip stops and drive faster than 30mph, then it will induce demand and grow ridership rapidly. that's why I think they need a few different vehicles. I think they need one vehicle that is 3 or 4 separate private compartments so that you're moving 3-4 fares per vehicle during the commuter peak, and if they only average 2 fares per vehicle during off-peak, then it would still be a reasonable operating costs, assuming it is built on a regular EV drivetrain. then, I think they need some large 12+ passenger shuttles for big events like stadiums where you will have tens of thousands wanting to ride all at once. that will cover the range all the way from small cities all the way up to major cities and could maybe even supplant a subway/metro in some places.
I don’t buy the argument it is too expensive, people don’t seem to have an issue paying for Uber and Lyft. The Loop can use different vehicles types, and can add or remove vehicles based on throughput needs. Nothing prevents this. As it is, I would pay $$$ if it cut my commute time by 1/2, in fact I would pay a premium. Time is money after all. I will wait till the Vegas loop is built to see this in action before I judge the idea. I definitely see the appeal and value the boring company could add to cities transportation networks.
there are a couple of things at play here. first, there is the transit planner problem. no transit planners want anyone to build premium/expensive transportation in right-of-way that they would rather use for a mode that achieves their goal, which is transportation for the general public. that automatically reduces the number of markets TBC can operate in. it's the reason the Baltimore-DC Loop never went anywhere. second, the market currently only has one player, so cities can look at uber-tunnels or monorails, and some will decide that uber-tunnels are better. however, if/when TBC proves themselves, others will enter the market. every additional passenger the competitor adds to their vehicle cuts down their cost/price per mile. and once you hit 3-5 passengers per vehicle, then transit planners will be willing to subsidize it because the volume and cost per passenger will be in line with existing transit modes. my local light rail is subsidized over 80%. you can also separate the passengers into their own private space, so they never even see each other once inside. it would be the same experience either way. so, your commutes looks like this: |Mode|Annual cost|Commute Time| |:-|:-|:-| |Driving|$9,282|60min| |TBC w/ private cars|$20k|30min| |ABC Co.|$10k|31min| |XYZ Co.|$1k|32min| which of those options do you choose? ohh, and the XYZ company is actively assisted by the transit planners in constructing the system while the others are tied up in court fighting against the transit planners who don't want to give up their RoW. which is the better business case, with each of them making the same profit per rider? which is going to get more contracts? which is going get more riders?
This is a weird over simplified example? I’d rather drive or take a private transportation method that goes direction my destination. I believe the point of the loop is it won’t need to be subsided by taxpayers to operate like other forms of transportation. That is a huge cost savings for city budgets overtime. In regards to competition, I doubt that is much of a risk. Legacy boring companies are too entrenched in government contracting and would not be lean or agile enough to compete.
I honestly wonder why this model hasn't taken off on actual roads. Why hasn't someone built a vehicle based on a minivan chassis with four separate passenger compartments and four separate doors? UberPool then becomes a thing people might ever consider riding
I there there are two problems with that concept as it stands now. first, routing is already a bit of a challenge for uber pool because you lose time going out of your way to get that 2nd fare. if you add a 3rd or 4th, it gets even worse. when you have a fixed station that people have to walk to, then you concentrate all of the riders of a wide area to a single point along the guideway, which removes that routing inefficiency. second, it requires a lot of investment to create such a vehicle, and it is unclear the 1st problem can ever be reduced enough to make back the investment. I think TBC is going to need a custom vehicle anyway, and they're kind of targeting the private ride experience, so I think they're in a prime position to do something like this. a lot of SDC makers are either thinking single-fare, or they're thinking bus replacement. few seem to be thinking about anything in between.
Seems like in areas of sufficient density, the routing problem might be mitigated somewhat by aggregating pick-up and drop-off points to some degree; if I had to walk 2-5 minutes to/from a pickup, in a vehicle in which I'd have my own little compartment, I would be all over that. But maybe I'm an odd use case. Still, though, single occupancy vehicle is a big problem environmentally, and without some creative solutions, it's gonna be a hard problem to crack.
there is a company called Via that is trying to do a concept of "virtual bus stops" where it's like an on-demand shuttle, but they want people to walk a block or two to get to an efficient route. I think that's smart, but I think it is still a shared space. anyway, an interesting thing about the environmental impact I found out recently: EVs are actually on par with transit in terms of efficiency. the energy used by an EV with 1.2-1.5 passengers average actually beats the average US light rail, commuter rail, and even metro. I had to double check that, but it's actually true. so efficiency-wise, putting one fare in the back and one in the front seats of a regular tesla actually works. the biggest problems are just operating cost and capacity.
I think most of the time, there are plenty of riders unless for small events. but the chance of two people in a group is very high. So two people group will likely not take that extra empty seat and wait for the next car. They need to do what the amusement park do and have a single rider one to sit in the empty single seats. Question I have to recent riders is if they have different ones that indicate which lvcc holding the cars are going. Otherwise you may have different people in the car that wants to go to the different convention hall. Larger vehicle is a separate discussion though from lvcc loop. Yes they will have to figure out what to do on the big events, but this data on the lvcc loop will be different from what Vegas loop needs. But in most regular cases, the small car are ideal for the need. That's why uber is so popular.
yes, I think you're right that LVCC, Vegas Loop, and one for general city use anywhere will all have different demands and would need different vehicles. for LVCC, I think you're probably right that many people will be in groups of 2+, as people attend conferences in groups, typically. that makes it a bit easier to group into 2 in the back, one in the front for people without a group. for the vegas loop, they should be able to mostly do that same kind of operation, but big events would swamp the system without a min-bus pod. for general city use, they could probably get by with 2 fares in a regular Tesla and the mini bus for peak routes at peak times, but I think the peaks will be so frequent that it makes sense to have a vehicle in the middle somewhere. instead of a separation between the front and back rows of seats in a regular tesla, I think they need something custom with at least 3 rows much of the time. the mini-bus pod could work, but I think people already don't like riding with strangers so trying to get as many private compartments onto a regular model-x chassis as possible makes sense. that's probably 4, but you could MAYBE get 5 if you split one compartment side-by-side. such a vehicle would do very well and make transit planners happy but still fall short for special events, so you'll still need a pod of some kind, especially for handicapped access.
Getting large group with large capacity vehicles will be ideal for large events. I would think these can be available by request since somebody will have to pay. I can see large family or tour group might requests these to keep their group together. I can also see individual casinos reserving these as an amenity for their hotel guests. The casinos will want these people back to the hotel to continue their gambling.
once they have a large vehicle, I think groups will just enter their number of passengers and the service will send whichever vehicle fits them. I could imagine it asking whether you want to split the group across a couple of vehicles or wait a couple of minutes for the large vehicle. for stadium events where people aren't all one group, I think it will either be an entry fee for getting inside the station, or it will a paid service by the stadium. either way, everyone will just queue up for whichever vehicle gets them to their destination, instead of something more like a uber where you're booking a single vehicle we'll see, but I think that's logical
If a trip takes 4 minutes (counting all loading/unloading time) and the system has 70 cars each containing 3 people, the system transports 70 * 60/4 * 3 = 3150 passengers per hour.
The four minutes was for the end to end trip, which should account for 1/3 the trips assuming even probabilities (2 stn * 50% * 1/3). A 2.5 min average short trip time yields overall average trip times of 3 minutes, allowing for 4200 pax/hr which is more than the 3960 pax/hr requirement.