The Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition invites young TRB participants to present their research within three minutes in a way that workshop attendees from wide areas in Transportation can absorb key objectives and findings of the research. The presentations are followed by a discussion forum with a panel of judges who provide tips on communication skills, comment on presentations, and answer questions in an interactive environment. The competition is open to young members/professionals attending the TRB annual meeting.
Please visit the link for details of the event and this link for the rules for participation.
Fueled by a multitude of factors: technological advancements and rapid urbanization, e-commerce sales ratios have nearly tripled globally between 2014 and 2019. There has never been a time of greater change for the “last mile”. Consumers order more things online, expecting more control and faster deliveries. This desire is currently satisfied by an increasing number of delivery vehicles, with an estimated 36% increase in these vehicles among the top 100 global cities by 2030. Consequently, emissions from delivery traffic will increase by 32% and congestion will rise by over 21%, equaling an additional 11 minutes of commute time for each passenger every day.
After venturing into space exploration, electric cars, solar cities, and Hyperloop, Elon Musk decided to transform the transportation industry with his next venture “The Boring Company”. It all started with the worsening traffic conditions in Los Angeles, which he describes as, “moving from 7th level of hell to the 8th level of hell”. With high risers scrapping the clouds, a stratified transportation system below ground is his solution to the never-ending traffic congestion. Starting from a conventional tweet from being stuck in traffic, The Boring Company has come a long way in conducting its first test run in Hawthorne, California. The Boring Company intends to develop tunneling machinery, which could be faster and efficient in reducing the tunneling cost. Using this machinery the company aims to create a 3D transportation network below ground to relieve the traffic burden above ground. Given Elon Musk’s past reputation some welcomed his initiative, which could revolutionize the tunnel construction industry. While others considered this was one more of Musk’s amusements and doubted the prospects of the idea.
Multistoried Tunnel Transportation System (Source: Boring Company)
Among the various solutions for congested traffic flow, Musk chooses to bet his money on the underground system. He believes that underground tunnels pose a safer transport system as opposed to flying cars which are guillotine waiting to fall over people’s heads. He backs up his idea with some critical points. The space below the surface is limitless, can be built to any number of layers and equipped with vehicles. It is completely weatherproof and free from street closures and construction hinderance. Hence, he is strongly rooting for his company to develop machinery which can bore holes faster and build tunnels that can help transport people across places at high speeds.
The first video depicting this vision of the boring company is truly fascinating. Taken right out of a sci-fi movie, it presented a picture of a techie world below ground. Cars moving down elevators to skate through at high-speed in tunnels which evolve into a network just like one above ground and the autonomous high-speed pods that pedestrians can hop into at street ends for hassle-free travel. Such a vision set-forth high expectations for the company. When the news broke out that Musk was drilling a test trench in his Space X office at Hawthorne, the tweets weren’t boring anymore.
One year and six months, the test trench has expanded into a 1.14-mile tunnel running 20-40 feet beneath the streets of California. It runs through the neighborhood between 105 freeway and Hawthorne Municipal Airport. It incurred a cost of $10 million excluding the cost of equipment, research, and development. On 20 December 2018, the audience was in for quite a surprise at the opening event of the first test run by the Boring Company. The reviews suggest that the tunnel ride was not as “epic” as its visionary Elon Musk terms it to be. The car elevators were also unveiled which are the size of two standard parking spaces, transporting the car to the mouth of the tunnel where the ride is set to start. The ride was completed by a Tesla Model X equipped with special guide wheels as opposed to the expected “autonomous electric skates”. The guide wheels can be attached to any autonomous electric vehicle and will be hidden (fold inwards) when not in use and will incur a separate cost estimated about 200-300$. The ride itself was neither smooth gliding nor fast as promised. The rough edges of the tunnel resulted in quite the rattle and the car skated across the tunnel touching only 35-55 mph speeds nowhere near the promised 150 mph.
The test run has left the company facing some not-so-boring questions on whether this underground loop transportation system is really the way ahead. Although Musk doesn’t agree the entry and exit points of this system are perceived to encounter severe congestion. The vehicles will queue up at the entry points waiting for their turn to enter the tunnel system. The queue can spillback and aggravate the traffic congestion on roads. A possible solution could be the garage car elevator prototype, another idea from the boring company. This can help cars from their origin point to directly enter the tunnel traffic system and travel straight to their destination. The huge amount of dirt production from all the tunneling needs to be handled. This dirt has been reused into making the boring bricks, which are showcased by the watch tower construction at Space X Hawthorne facility. In the long run, there are other factors such as ground structure and environmental reviews which could pose problems to this project. In a city like Los Angeles, there are many geographic features such as oil wells and earthquake faults, which need to be considered as the company plans to dig deeper for more layers. Environmental reviews are time-consuming and hard processes, which can push the timeline of the project by three to four years. The company could run into legal battles if they do not abide by these reviews like the one in Westside LA which caused them to abandon their project entirely [3].
Watchtower by Boring Bricks (Source: TESLARATI)
There is one fundamental question the Boring Company fails to answer convincingly – conceptually, in what respects the underground system of tunnel transport for passenger cars is radically different from the underground mass rail transit? In terms of passenger capacity, how pale the Boring Company looks in comparison to the underground mass transit? No doubt that the transportation planning community would embrace a transformative idea to avoid urban congestion. However, the planning community is very skeptical about this concept altogether. The idea is appreciated but the prototype is severely criticized for not meeting the expectations set forth. The poor performance of the prototype raises several questions on the plausibility of such an underground 3D transportation network that can ease the burden of traffic above ground. Having said that, the boring company still has four projects up its sleeves to prove its point.
References
A First Look At Elon Musk’s Plan To Beat Traffic By Digging High-Speed Underground Tunnels. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/blakemontgomery/elon-musk-just-posted-a-concept-video-for-his-new-tunnel.
The Boring Company’s ‘Monty Python’ Watchtower Is Real, and It Looks Great _ Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/article/51827-the-boring-company-s-monty-python-watchtower-is-real-and-it-looks-great.
Lawsuit prompts Musk’s Boring Co. to abandon plans for tunnel. https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/11/28/sepulveda-tunnel-1st-ld/
I Took a Ride through Elon Musk’s New Tunnel in California – The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148061/boring-tunnel-test-drive-hawthorne-tesla-elon-musk.
Traditionally within the United States, transportation choices have featured personal vehicles and to a lesser extent alternative modes, like transit, bicycles, and taxis. Bureau of Transportation Studies (BTS) indicated that more than 75% of the trips are “Drive alone” and the remaining 25% trips include all the alternative transport modes. A study conducted by researchers in California suggests that the United States transportation activity by itself accounts for nearly 70% of all petroleum consumption and about 30% of all the Greenhouse gas emissions. It roughly consumes 96% of all energy in the form of gasoline or diesel (Martin, E. W., & Shaheen, S. A. (2011)).
Source: EPA’s Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2016
Revisiting the impacts of vehicular pollution, the EPA states that the majority of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are due to the combustion of fossil fuels resulting in Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions. Majority of the Carbon Monoxide (CO) is produced when the vehicle is moving slow or when it is stuck in a poor traffic condition. Traffic congestions which are a product of the higher volume of vehicular flow lead to higher production of greenhouse gases.
Thanks to the emerging technologies as travelers are currently able to hail a private driver and vehicle (e.g., Lyft and Uber); rent an automotive or a bicycle for a brief trip (e.g., Zipcar and Bay area Bike Share); ride a shuttle on-demand (e.g., Bridj, Chariot, Via); and have groceries or takeaway delivered in someone’s personal vehicle (e.g., Postmates and Sidecar Deliveries)—all with the support of the web and smartphones. These innovative transportation services are increasing at a time when agencies, like State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and regional Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), are more and more targeted on rising system potency and alleviating the negative environmental impacts of transportation.
Researchers around the world have studied and quantified the impacts of these shared mobility platforms and have suggested that there is a considerable impact on the environment and the traffic behavior with the improving usage statistics of these modes.
Although the percentage impact of Bike-share has not been widely quantified, early documented impacts include increased mobility, reduced GHG emissions, reduced automobile use, economic development, and health advantages. Past research by Shaheen, S. A. et al (2014) indicates that 50% of the respondents in their survey reported a reduction in personal vehicle usage. 5.5% of the respondents have reported having sold or postponed a vehicle purchase, 58% increased cycling.
Car-pooling / Ride-sharing reduces about 109,000 to 155,000 tons of GHG/year by observed impact (evaluation based on emissions that physically occur) and between 158,000 to 224,000 tons of GHG/year for full impact (based on emissions that would have happened anyway but were avoided or delayed due to carsharing). A study in SF estimated a total reduction of 450,000 to 900,000 gallons of gasoline per year is observed in the San Francisco Bay Area, which accounts up to 50-100 gallons per participant. Minett, P., & Pearce, J. (2011) estimated a total reduction of 450,000 to 900,000 gallons of gasoline per year is observed in San Francisco Bay Area, which accounts up to 50-100 gallons per participant.
All these aside, Ride-hailing is observed to have a negative impact on reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by cannibalizing the public transit ridership by 33% and by 8% due to induced travel effect on the carless community. A study conducted by Henao, A. (2017) in Denver, indicated that the ride-hailing takes more vehicular trips to move fewer people (approximately, 100 vehicle miles to transport a passenger 60.8 miles (or nearly 40% out of service miles).
The more the number of vehicles on the road, the higher is the volume, the lower is the flow and hence the higher will be the emissions due to CO. Policy briefings are always important in order to facilitate the free movement of the HOVs. Also, licensure laws have to be adaptive in design, based on the city and its capacity to accommodate these shared vehicular fleet, which will stay on the roads most of the time. The below figure by Minett, P., & Pearce, J. describe the relationship between the energy consumption, vehicular flow rate, and speed.
The relationship between the speed/flow, vehicular congestions & Fuel consumption [Minett, P., & Pearce, J. (2011)]
Shared mobility collectively has a great potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, however, there are certain limitations in terms of the policies and the accommodations that have to be addressed succinctly in order to facilitate a smooth transition between the modes. Policy advocacy plays an important role in controlling the food chain for these shared modes to fit into the bigger picture of the transport business model, otherwise might lead to cannibalization of existing low emission alternatives by smaller capacity cars that make multiple trips to facilitate the utilitarian needs of the users.
References:
Martin, E. W., & Shaheen, S. A. (2011). Greenhouse gas emission impacts of carsharing in North America. IEEE Transactions on intelligent transportation systems, 12(4), 1074-1086.
Shaheen, S. A., Martin, E. W., Cohen, A. P., Chan, N. D., & Pogodzinski, M. (2014). Public Bikesharing in North America During a Period of Rapid Expansion: Understanding Business Models, Industry Trends & User Impacts, MTI Report 12-29.
Minett, P., & Pearce, J. (2011). Estimating the energy consumption impact of casual carpooling. Energies, 4(1), 126-139.
Kaviti, S., M.M. Venigalla, S. Zhu, K. Lucas, and S. Brodie. (2018). Impact of Pricing and Transit Disruptions on Bikeshare Ridership and Revenue. Transportation. Springer Publications. (http://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-018-9904-5).
