Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
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boronia
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Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by boronia »

Public servants run the numbers over Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/pub ... 50rzp.html
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moa999
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by moa999 »

Described on the news tonight as Musk's plan for cutting Sydney's transport congestion..

Erm.. no.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by boronia »

Put everyone into a tunnel to Lithgow? Seems like a good idea.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by boronia »

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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by tonyp »

The most critical need for any rail tunnel is where most of the population growth is and this is to Wollongong and the Central Coast.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by gld59 »

tonyp wrote:rail tunnel
This is an Elon Musk tunnel, not a rail tunnel.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by tonyp »

gld59 wrote:
tonyp wrote:rail tunnel
This is an Elon Musk tunnel, not a rail tunnel.
That's why I said rail tunnel not snake oil tunnel ;)

I hope South Australians are enjoying the shade from those battery banks to escape the heat.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by 1whoknows »

In deriving his costings, one might safely assume that Mr Musk has not previously encountered the CFMEU.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by mandonov »

Or reality.
matthewg
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by matthewg »

mandonov wrote:Or reality.
His 'boring company' have built one short small profile tunnel and demonstrated it by running some of his electric cars in it for the media. Presumably, this makes him an expert on tunnels of all sorts now.
Elon Musk is a showman and the media lap it up.

Some of his ideas work, but I'm beginning to think it's more luck than anything else - try enough things and somethings bound to work sooner or later. His real talent is the show, not the doing.

Which is the same for a lot of successful entrepreneurs in history, particularly - one Isambard Kingdom Brunel - while undoubtedly a good engineer (something I suspect Elon Musk isn't), it was his ability to get people to believe in his 'vision' (and thus part with their money) that made him famous. And a lot of Brunel's ideas were pretty crap. We just remember the really good ones.

They hyperloop thing really ticks me off - I keep seeing how Elon Musk has invented this amazing new transportation system - even in transport museums who should know better. He's invented nothing, He's hyped up an idea that science fiction invented probably 100 years ago. He doesn't have a prototype or anything to actually demonstrate - just an idea pinched from science fiction, yet the media are fawning all over 'his' game-changing 'invention'.
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by STMPainter2018 »

I think you'll find Matthew that many (mostly on the internet) are starting to catch on to his con and are abandoning him in droves, especially since his little stunt during the Thailand cave rescue where he acted like a complete thingy (pardon the French). As an outsider who can't give two *** ** * about Tesla or Musk, I just find the whole situation hilarious. I mean a tunnel under the Blue Mountains section of the Great Dividing Range? Really? Makes your average sitcom look like an ultra-serious drama.
Last edited by STMPainter2018 on Mon Jan 21, 2019 7:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tonyp
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by tonyp »

In any case, tunneling under the Blue Mountains should be funded as a national freight project and shouldn't be of interest to the NSW government in terms of its own internal public transport policies, so I don't know why Constance would be even talking about it. Such a tunnel would bypass 75,000 people living in the Blue Mountains, leaving it to serve about 100,000 people living west of the mountains out to Orange. Thus, a commuter railway over the mountains would still be needed. By contrast, a tunnel to get past the terrain either between Sydney and Central Coast or Sydney and Illawarra would service over 300,000 people in the immediate commuting catchment either way (and that's not even counting Greater Newcastle or Shoalhaven beyond).
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by matthewg »

tonyp wrote:In any case, tunneling under the Blue Mountains should be funded as a national freight project and shouldn't be of interest to the NSW government in terms of its own internal public transport policies, so I don't know why Constance would be even talking about it.
Constance is a sucker for technology hype. He's probably got an Elon Musk poster in his office. :-)
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Re: Musk's 'bargain' Blue Mountains tunnel

Post by Merc1107 »

Persons like Musk who talk up pie-in-the-sky projects or concepts are damaging to legitimate discussion, in my books, as the affordable and/or practical solutions to problems are then swept under the rug because they're subsequently seen as second-rate infrastructure choices.

It's not quite related, but how many times has high-speed rail been promised, and not delivered in NSW? What about the hyperbole about hyper-loops? The former has been discussed a fair bit - if I'm not mistaken the general consensus was that something slower (was that medium-speed rail?) should ultimately be built once some of the existing infrastructure is optimised.
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