Toronto can't build a subway stop for under 1 billion. I would imagine someone like Elon could could dig a complete line with a dozen stops for 1 billion.
It's amazing how he creates companies and solutions on a whim that revolutionize complete industries.
What's amazing to me is that we built the Golden Gate bridge for $35 million in 1933 (would be $688 million in today's dollars) and it only took 4 years. The Empire State building was built in one year (1930). What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly? Is it amazing that Musk can do things so quickly or is it just that we got so fucking slow on everything that it seems amazing?
If you want a serious answer: try and build a house. I did. It will expose you to the bananas state of local government.
Planning/zoning will kill you, it's simply illegal to build most types of houses in most of the US. There was a recent blog post about this I can't find, but it outlined all the houses that exist that are now practically illegal. For example, mixed use where there's a business on the ground floor. Or building 3 stories in a 2-story zone. Or having an ADU. The list is endless. In fact my current town just made it illegal to build single family units next to multi-family (with a buffer), and we only have two places in the town where you're allowed to build office space. Retail is slightly better, there are three places that's okay.
If you get through planning, then permits will kill you. The permits to demolish our place (different town!) were more than buying a new house. I'm not kidding.
If you get through permits then good luck with inspections.
What musk is doing with tunnels is what the entire tech industry is doing: working in a zone with a lot less rules. It's illegal to make a building but you can make any website you want. Though that is going away too, it'll get regulated to death eventually and you can already see it starting to happen with data and privacy laws.
The main escape from all this, as far as I've been able to find, is Texas. It's apparently still legal to build things there.
Going threw this in Zürich Switzerland, it seems to me that the local government is basically like interacting with a fascist. They are obsessed with 'image' of the city and everything from colors, to shapes of windows, size of outside area, parking spots and so on is regulated.
It seems to me like building a house is more like a doing a complex tree fitting problem then actual design.
Honestly, this is a quite frightening comment. It's never been obvious to me that regulation for the sake of destroying competition is coming to tech. But now that you mention it, it's inevitable. And it will kill innovation.
Just the whole GDPR compliance and showing the cookie alert is a PITA if you're going to run any small online business. And it will get much worse.
> What happened to our ability to build massive structures quickly?
It takes longer to complete an environmental impact review to do a major project than it did to build the Golden Gate. And that's just one of several major red tape & time hurdles that didn't exist in 1933.
> According to CEQ, the average length of a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement is currently 600 pages and takes 4.5 years to conclude. US federal agencies prepare approximately 170 such assessments per year.
We can build a building like the empire state today in a year if we are willing to waste a half dozen lives in the process as well. In fact in some countries that's pretty much what's done.
You look at the old photos of the construction and these guys were walking around on steel beams 80 stories high with no hard hats, no rails, no protection from falls...it's no surprise they lost 5 workers. I wouldn't argue that safety should be sacrificed, but as others said, a lot of the hold up in construction is environmental review, inspections, permitting process, etc. It's nuts, but the architect conceived of the design in two weeks. Construction began the next year after concept drawings and it took 13 months to build. They were putting down nearly one floor a day. Amazing. And it's an iconic building that remains a landmark today.
I can't speak for Toronto, but NYC builds a subway at $2.2 billion/km while Berlin spends $250million/km[1]. We don't need to revolutionize. We need to copy.
It's amazing how he creates companies and solutions on a whim that revolutionize complete industries.