Peter
Fugleberg

Initial thoughts on boring tunnels

August 9, 2024

An infrastructure project, or any project for that matter, is a question of tradeoffs. Are road tunnels worth it, or is the money better spent elsewhere?

A relevant metric is the reduction of traffic, or more simply, reduced wait times from point A to point B. The addition of lanes on a highway seeks to do this. (However, as is well known, "added road miles saw a proportional increase in driving.")

Another metric is economic growth, as such projects may promote housing developments, expand accessibility, grow the regions population, etc.

Still another metric is the reduction of traffic accidents. Humans are always at risk of causing or experiencing a traffic accident, no matter how good a driver one is.

Often, road tunnels, such as the ones in Norway, which I am most familiar with, have multiple lanes. Those created by The Boring Company are single laned. Intuitively, this reduces the risk of collision with another vehicle or object.

A professor of economics at London Business School, Andrew J. Scott, in his book, The Longevity Imperative, references VSL, or Value of Statistical Life. Coincidentally, the following example he uses is related to automobiles. “If you are prepared to pay $10,000 for a safety feature in your car that reduces your mortality rate by 1%, then your VSL is $1,000,000.”

He continues, “In 2022, the United States government pegged the VSL at $11.4 million per life.”

It might follow that if any one transit program can cut deaths by, say, 75% (eliminating ~32,000 deaths a year per USDT), then it is worth up to $370 billion a year, strictly from a VSL perspective.

When doing a value assessment of the mass implementation of Boring tunnels, it seems to me the following equation is apt.

(VSL + value of time saved + GDP boost via accessibility increase) - (initial cost + maintenance cost)

Open general questions include:

  1. To what extent can tunnel implementations reduce accidents?
  2. How far can costs be reduced by engineering improvements and scaling?
  3. How much time would it save and boost overall GDP?

Based on little other than preconceptions, it seems to me the prevailing view is construction costs and timelines in general, in this context, are significantly greater than they could be, and local jurisdictions may be slow to implement new improvements. Such an inefficiency creates an opportunity to at least marginally solve it, of course.

A CNBC article from 2021 quotes the reporter Cyrus Farivar, “Many construction professionals will tell you that it’s not the speed of the tunnel that you need to worry about. It’s the environmental review. It’s the bureaucratic procedure. It’s the permits.”

Whether there are things to be done here to speed up the process is unclear to me. In 2023, TechCrunch reported on a startup called Greenlite that, “claims its platform accelerates permit approval for city planning by 75%.” Of course, smaller scale projects are significantly different than the proposed tunnels, as environmental concerns, for example, are greater. I would guess this is particularly the case in a state like Florida, with its groundwater aquifers.

Politics and communication are important. Vice Mayor Warren Storm of Fort Lauderdale says, “his constituents believe this will only create more of a headache.” (ABC, 2023).

Certainly, a small loop will have little impact on growth, VSL savings, etc., though serves the role of proof of concept.

The significant stage is when, say, a given county implements dozens or hundreds of miles of tunnels. Such a project would benefit from economies of scale on the engineering+construction side, and the bureaucratic/permitting side, presumably.