This week Elon Musk’s Boring Company ran a Tesla through its 1.14 mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California. This was accomplished by using a set of tracking wheels that Elon said, “turns a car into a rail-guided train & back again.” Apparently it is safe up to 150 miles per hour. Here is a video from yesterday’s unveiling (click here if you can’t see it below):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQn-D-i5lyM&w=560&h=315]

Some, or perhaps many, are skeptical of how this could work at scale in a dense urban environment. The company is imagining a world where every house or office building has one of these lifts (shown in the video) in their garage or basement. But there’s no question it is very cool and apparently this test tunnel only cost about $10 million per mile to dig. That’s progress in and of itself.

I had dinner tonight on King Street and I was reminded that this week marks the one year anniversary of the King Street Transit Pilot here in Toronto.

The pilot has certainly had its share of controversy, but the improvements to both transit reliability and ridership are clear. Average travel times (in each direction) have increased by as much as 7 minutes on the route.

Here’s the latest data from July and August of this year. Steve Munro can also tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the King streetcar.

As our city continues to grow, many are naturally concerned about the ability of our infrastructure to handle the additional demands. Where will all the cars go?

But the reality is that we will never be able to accommodate everybody driving around in their own car. Which is why we have to rely on transit and solutions like the King Street Transit Pilot.

What’s your opinion of the pilot now that it has been in place for a year? I almost forget what it was like before we had it.

Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the Partnership for New York City launched a new vertical accelerator dedicated to public transit. The mission is to make the city a global leader in this space.

Applications are open until November 30, 2018 and they are looking for early and growth stage companies that address one or both of the following challenges:

1. How can we better predict subway incident impacts and serve customers?
   

2. How can we make buses faster and more efficient?
   

Selected companies will go through an 8-week accelerator and, at the end of it, the most promising companies will partner with the MTA on a 12-month pilot. So it is an opportunity to potentially test your product(s) on the largest transit authority in the US.

If you’d like to apply, you can do that here.

Photo by Tim Gouw on

This week Elon Musk’s Boring Company ran a Tesla through its 1.14 mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California. This was accomplished by using a set of tracking wheels that Elon said, “turns a car into a rail-guided train & back again.” Apparently it is safe up to 150 miles per hour. Here is a video from yesterday’s unveiling (click here if you can’t see it below):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQn-D-i5lyM&w=560&h=315]

Some, or perhaps many, are skeptical of how this could work at scale in a dense urban environment. The company is imagining a world where every house or office building has one of these lifts (shown in the video) in their garage or basement. But there’s no question it is very cool and apparently this test tunnel only cost about $10 million per mile to dig. That’s progress in and of itself.

I had dinner tonight on King Street and I was reminded that this week marks the one year anniversary of the King Street Transit Pilot here in Toronto.

The pilot has certainly had its share of controversy, but the improvements to both transit reliability and ridership are clear. Average travel times (in each direction) have increased by as much as 7 minutes on the route.

Here’s the latest data from July and August of this year. Steve Munro can also tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the King streetcar.

As our city continues to grow, many are naturally concerned about the ability of our infrastructure to handle the additional demands. Where will all the cars go?

But the reality is that we will never be able to accommodate everybody driving around in their own car. Which is why we have to rely on transit and solutions like the King Street Transit Pilot.

What’s your opinion of the pilot now that it has been in place for a year? I almost forget what it was like before we had it.

Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the Partnership for New York City launched a new vertical accelerator dedicated to public transit. The mission is to make the city a global leader in this space.

Applications are open until November 30, 2018 and they are looking for early and growth stage companies that address one or both of the following challenges:

1. How can we better predict subway incident impacts and serve customers?
   

2. How can we make buses faster and more efficient?
   

Selected companies will go through an 8-week accelerator and, at the end of it, the most promising companies will partner with the MTA on a 12-month pilot. So it is an opportunity to potentially test your product(s) on the largest transit authority in the US.

If you’d like to apply, you can do that here.

Photo by Tim Gouw on