Saturday, March 10, 2018

Elon's Trolling Me

The one silver lining of the autonomous car obsession (not mine, the people who think they'll work) is that those people stopped talking about PRTs. Now Elon's got an idea for a PRT... but underground!

Elon Musk provided a clearer glimpse of what his proposed tunnel-based transportation system could look like, and it takes a populist bent.

The billionaire technology entrepreneur said his tunneling startup, Boring Co., will prioritize pedestrians and cyclists in its hyperloop plan. The system “will still transport cars but only after all personalized mass transit needs are met,” Musk wrote on Twitter. “It’s a matter of courtesy and fairness. If someone can’t afford a car, they should go first.”

A concept video distributed last year by Musk showed carriages, which the Boring Co. calls sleds, that transport a car from point to point. A new video he tweeted on Friday demonstrated vehicles resembling subway cars carrying groups of people. They would load and unload at street level before descending into underground tunnels.

The Boring Co.’s “urban loop” would have thousands of small stations, each about the size of a parking space, where people can hop on and off, Musk wrote. This way, the trains can get passengers closer to their destinations and “blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway.”

I...just...can't...