Thursday, September 26, 2024

The Toronto Big Dig

 


This is a wonderful project that could be successful, but there is always something...

All these projects end up as disasters.  In the old company, I was happy building something twice as expensive and twice as long.  However, now, things are always many times more expensive and they don't work.  

This is 'influengineering' at its best.  Everybody wants a piece of it, and there are no laws of physics to keep things in line.  At the end, the pieces don't fit.  We were involved in the design of the Presto card, and it was a simple thing to have card readers.  However, powerful interests demanded that the card reader could communicate even in the darkest tunnels or standard underpasses.  That demand destroyed the project.  

With this tunnel, all the problems will be with the in and out spirals (or ramps).  It is hard to conceive of it, but the demands will be to put exit ramps at every little place, just like a subway has too many connections.  It is easy to just put a tunnel under a mountain.  

ps it has already started out poorly with the political demand of 'no tolls'.  Something like this demands a congestion charge.  You either ration a scarce resource by market forces, or you get long Soviet lines for toilet paper.

ps. you would make a hidden toll, like fewer exits.

ps and in other news, the new trumpy watch shows "Countdown to Victory" with a display showing 1...2...3....

ps. we should really put our billions into cooling coils for the Arctic.  Year-round skating!



I suppose they find their own charts...

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