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Comment by ETH_start | Hacker News Reader

I think the big picture here is much more important. If tunneling technology is radically improved, we're going to see massive improvements in urban living, including:

• Cleaner air at street level because vehicle exhaust stays underground and can be filtered, which would have massive health and environmental benefits

• Quieter cities with most traffic noise eliminated

• Cooler temperatures since asphalt and vehicle heat are removed from the surface (urban heat island effect)

• More space for trees, parks, and gardens, improving urban greenery.

• Lower stress levels thanks to quieter, greener surroundings.

• Better physical health from more walkable, pedestrian-friendly spaces.

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There is simply no way to make enough tunnels for personal vehicles. That is basic city planning. Building more roads increases congestion.

The only _real_ way to achieve the above goals are building bicycle friendly cities with diverse public transport options and less parking spaces. There are European cities that function more like this.

This is anathemic to the US of course.

Any reason you can't make tunnels? I've spent a while in San Pedro, Spain and it's been transformed by a cut and cover tunnel that the cars now go through. Seems to work fine.

https://www.sanpedromarbella.eu/san-pedros-tunnel-a-new-life...

https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/does-widening-highways-ease...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096585642...

What evidence is there that "tunneling technology", or lack thereof, is holding anything back?

> • Cleaner air at street level because vehicle exhaust stays underground and can be filtered, which would have massive health and environmental benefits

What exhaust? These are all electric cars running in the tunnels.

> Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns.

I think we can do a little better while still reaping the improvements garnered by tunneling.

Name me any massive infrastructure development projects that didn't include some environmental damage and worker injuries. Every major infrastructure project has come at the cost of human life. Activity is inherently risky, but inactivity is also risky. We can't live without action.

You think, in america, that someone would pay for putting all of our roads underground? No. They simply want to put a very tiny number of roads underground because even a catastrophically expensive tunneling project is cheaper than negotiating with all the people who own the actual land you would rather pave a road or rail through.

It really depends on the legal framework governing land use, e.g. do cities have the right to use the land beneath properties. And of course how affordable tunneling becomes.

Have you seen those tunnels in the video above? In what world are those tunnels anyway improved from any other tunnel ever?

I can see several things I find _concerning_ about them...

< If tunneling technology is radically improved

Then we should stop with amatuer hour and outsource to China, where they've lapped us in tunneling technology. It will take more than one ketamine-fueled billionaire breaking laws in Vegas to catch up.

Look at Paris or London, we don't need to improve tunnel boring. We just need to get rid of cars and build subways. The technology has been there for more than a century at this point. The Vegas Loop is a laughable solution to a problem that does not exist.

You can achieve the same by taking a bus, though.

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