Potential for what? Any throughput that a minibus vehicle can achieve is no better than the equivalent by a longer vehicle at less frequency? What benefit does reducing the vehicle size to vastly smaller pods have in increasing throughput? The only reason he is using smaller "vehicles" is because it directly ties with being able to sell individual vehicles to the general population. He has no desire to build public transportation systems, as his desire is to sell you a car. It's not like he's genuinely interested in improving signalling technology for trains or for reducing subway tunneling costs either...
The Loop design from Boring company isn't designed to replace subway lines - it's designed to be a more intermediate capacity solution with great last mile potential as vehicles theoretically wouldn't be limited to the tunnel itself, or at least it's low station costs would allow for much larger amounts of them.
A 16 passenger mini bus, running at theoretical 10 second frequencies (fairly realistic I think, notably Boring Company claims they are aiming for 5 second frequencies), can run about 6,000 pphd. That's nothing compared to a subway, which can typically handle about 30,000.
The innovation isn't there though - it's the cost. A 6,000 pphd service using loop can be constructed for almost nothing. The Las Vegas loop was built for $52 million for 2.7km of service - that's $19 million per km. And Boring Company is trying to push costs far lower than that as well.
So lets say Boring Co manages to achieve 10 second frequencies, half the target they are aiming for. The service is provided as a mix of mini-bus vehicles and private vehicles which pay a (likely quite high and profitable) toll to use the facility. Let's say 50-50 split. Assume private vehicles have an average occupancy of 1.3 people... that's 234 high toll customers an hour, and the mini-buses provide an additional throughput of 2,880 people per hour. So about 3,000 pphd overall.
Even if costs remain the same as today (unlikely), with signaling systems and other additional requirements offsetting any savings coming from their efforts to lower tunneling costs. We are looking at about $20 million / km, or $6,666 per pphd/km.
A subway provides about 10x the capacity for $500m/km, or $16,666 per pphd/km. The Boring co provides a much higher quality, faster, more direct service, for about 1/3 the cost. And this is presuming relatively conservative assumptions - a lower frequency than they are aiming for, a 50/50 mix of buses and private vehicles, etc.
It's never going to replace dense inner city transportation as it still just requires too much space, but that's not what it's trying to do.
But it's got great potential for intermediate capacity routes, in medium density environments, where demand can easily be served by 3,000-5,000 pphd services. Especially if you can build a more effective network to spread that out, or create double tunnels in busier stretches.
Lets test this in a theoretical situation and see how it plays out financially.
Lets say That Boring Co makes good progress and in 2030 is looking to enter the GTA market with it's first major project - an express tunnel from Toronto to Mississauga City Centre. This is a busy travel corridor that has no real plans for a proper mass transit connection, and has likely demand that is high, but can be accommodated with the capacity of the loop system.
Boring Co proposes a tunnel starting somewhere downtown. It follows the right of way of an existing street, well below grade, and travels under the lake over to Hurontario Street, before travelling under Hurontario to MCC. An intermediate stop is proposed at Port Credit.
That works out to about 28km of tunnels. Assuming $20m/km USD - achieved in Vegas without any additional advancements in tunneling or other construction costs since then, the project would cost about $450 million CAD.
Lets assume peak travel is at capacity of 3,000 people in the peak direction, and that total daily ridership is about 10x that, as is typical for urban transportation systems, so a total of 30,000 daily trips. Lets assume it's an all mini-bus service, and no teslas are allowed. and for the heck of it, lets say it had major cost overruns and actually cost $800 million to build.
financing costs will be about $3.5m/yr assuming 3.5% financing and 30 year period, and lets double it for operating & maintenance expenses. So profitability is anything above $7 million annual revenues. Assume 20% margins, we have an aim of about $8.5 million a year in revenue.
Then lets say that it gets half the ridership it expects, at 15,000 passengers a day on average. At an average fare of $3, is about $16 million a year. double the profitability margin.
The service has the potential to be transformational if they can keep costs contained and develop significant frequencies. We just have to see what happens.
And I haven't even discussed time savings. Boring co is already getting vehicles up to about 200km/h in their test tunnels, even without hyperloop. If they can reliably do that safely, the trip from Mississauga CC to Downtown toronto could be done about 10 minutes.
Even if they achieve a system that is half the capacity, double the cost, and half as fast as they are aiming for, it has a lot of potential to be a transformational urban transport system.
venturebeat.com
stevemunro.ca
