[142 / 17 / ?]
This is easily beats monorails as the most backwards psychotic backwards example of transport infrastructure procurement in modern history.
The choice of using cars rather than rolling stock is easily its biggest gadgetbahn indicator. Obvious embarking/disembarking pax and luggage issues aside, requiring dozens of staff to drive dozens of vehicles is an awful inefficiency that has been solved for a century by just building large capacity vehicles that just need 1 driver. The county specifically BANNED any usage of the self driving features of the cars, so drivers are here to stay for a while yet. Given that the cars are never going to take people anywhere other than the loop system, why do they need roads? Or steering wheels? A guideway or rail would be the obvious choice for directing a vehicle that is always going to stay on a set path. Any light rail system would easily deliver better results and using integrated power would prevent any battery fires that are sure to happen in the Loop. If you still wanted to have a gimmick for a tourist town, make it an automated guideway transit and then you have zero costs associated with drivers.
Every single claim about it being 'radically cheaper' than conventional tunneling and construction is a result of TBC using the smallest possible class of TBMs and not including the costs of any vehicle procurement or infrastructure in their advertised costs. A small diameter tunnel with almost no station facilities will be in fact be cheaper than a medium or large diameter tunnel with properly outfitted stations. Shocking.
The answer to all of this obviously is 2 things. The city of Las Vegas wanting some disgusting gimmick project to put on the flyers (after their previous monorail literally just failed) and Elon Musk expressing his obvious autistic fear of sharing public transport with strangers.
The choice of using cars rather than rolling stock is easily its biggest gadgetbahn indicator. Obvious embarking/disembarking pax and luggage issues aside, requiring dozens of staff to drive dozens of vehicles is an awful inefficiency that has been solved for a century by just building large capacity vehicles that just need 1 driver. The county specifically BANNED any usage of the self driving features of the cars, so drivers are here to stay for a while yet. Given that the cars are never going to take people anywhere other than the loop system, why do they need roads? Or steering wheels? A guideway or rail would be the obvious choice for directing a vehicle that is always going to stay on a set path. Any light rail system would easily deliver better results and using integrated power would prevent any battery fires that are sure to happen in the Loop. If you still wanted to have a gimmick for a tourist town, make it an automated guideway transit and then you have zero costs associated with drivers.
Every single claim about it being 'radically cheaper' than conventional tunneling and construction is a result of TBC using the smallest possible class of TBMs and not including the costs of any vehicle procurement or infrastructure in their advertised costs. A small diameter tunnel with almost no station facilities will be in fact be cheaper than a medium or large diameter tunnel with properly outfitted stations. Shocking.
The answer to all of this obviously is 2 things. The city of Las Vegas wanting some disgusting gimmick project to put on the flyers (after their previous monorail literally just failed) and Elon Musk expressing his obvious autistic fear of sharing public transport with strangers.
