The boring tunnel

To me, the Boring Company’s test drive in their tunnel is like: They implemented a single Santa Claus, the next work item is to scale it to deliver gifts for every kids in the world. In reality, the world implemented “Santa Claus solution” like a distributed system(I guess I am not the only one think this way). How would the boring tunnel solve their “Santa Claus Problem”?

I don’t think it’s the right way to solve the problem given this very first test drive: they only move a car from here to there, it’s basically reinvented subway in a much more inefficient way: much less people can be moved at any given time; they have to use elevator to lift up/down the cars, again much less efficient than a subway station’s elevators. What if a car got stuck in the middle of the tunnel? What if elevator stops working? How to deal with different types of soil in different cities? What if the tunnel lost power? What if an earthquake strikes it? What if the tunnel needs maintenance…This toy of rich boy is simply too far from production.

But can Boring Company solve the traffic problem they want to solve in the first place? Maybe. The key is they have to figure out what’s the problem they want to solve. LA’s traffic is terrible, because there’s no good options except driving. New York also has traffic problem but is quite different, and in my opinion its situation is much better: more population, less land area, commute generally OK(except some bad days), because people have choices.

Another thing is not to always reinvent the wheels. In the world there are actually lots of tunnels carrying millions of people every day. Boring Company should learn from them, make improvements based on them, listen to people who have feedbacks. It’s not wise to just impulsively reject critical advices.