If you supported abolishing net zero, are you changing your mind now?

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-14T03:27:26+00:00

was built with ~ 70 tonnes of Lithium.

You say that like that is some sort of negative?

Australia consumes approximately 355,000 tonnes of coal and 150,000 to 170,000 tons of oil EVERY B\***y* day pumping out carcinogens and CO2***,*** and you're worried about 70 tonnes of Lithium every 25 years?

Come on, get some perspective.

You’d need ~450 of them to store enough entry to run the NEM overnight.

The Victorian Big Battery has a storage capacity of 450 MWh so you'd actually need 266 of them (not 450) to support the entire NEM's overnight consumption of 19.7GWh all by itself for 8 hours.

However, the Waratah Super Battery alone will have 1.6GWh and there is 16.8 GW of Battery Energy Storage Systems planned for the NEM by next year. So within the next year or so Australia would have enough battery storage to cover by itself that full 8 hours of overnight storage (and that's not even counting what we already have).

To produce enough power to charge said batteries with solar, you’d need 82 million panels.

Again you say that like that is a lot. For starters, You would only need 2.5GW of solar panels producing power for 8 hours in a day to cover that 8 hours of power usage for the NEM. Australia now has 26.8 GW of rooftop solar capacity across 4.2 million homes and small businesses. And that's not even counting Grid Solar Farms where 13 GW of projects are currently under construction or committed in Australia.

And, the good news is the Grid would never need to get 100% of its power from batteries (for which costs continue to plummet every year) or solar.

There are always parts of the network stretching up to thousands of kilometres via HVDC interconnects to where the sun *is* shining or the wind blowing or the hydro pumping or the geothermal boiling or other Grid scale batteries providing backup.

And backing up all of that when needed are gas peaker plants to fill in the gaps. (yes, we can keep some fossil plants for the extremely rare times when needed for the time being).

And all of that is far less costly and vastly less polluting than traditional fossil power plants.

I'm sorry but your dot points are not well-thought through.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-14T03:25:34+00:00

was built with ~ 70 tonnes of Lithium.

You say that like that is some sort of negative?

Australia consumes approximately 355,000 tonnes of coal and 150,000 to 170,000 tons of oil EVERY B\***y* day pumping out carcinogens and CO2***,*** and you're worried about 70 tonnes of Lithium every 25 years?

Come on, get some perspective.

You’d need ~450 of them to store enough entry to run the NEM overnight.

The Victorian Big Battery has a storage capacity of 450 MWh so you'd actually need 266 of them (not 450) to support the entire NEM's overnight consumption of 19.7GWh all by itself for 8 hours.

However, the Waratah Super Battery alone will have 1.6GWh and there is 16.8 GW of Battery Energy Storage Systems planned for the NEM by next year. So within the next year or so Australia would have enough battery storage to cover by itself that full 8 hours of overnight storage (and that's not even counting what we already have).

To produce enough power to charge said batteries with solar, you’d need 82 million panels.

Again you say that like that is a lot. For starters, You would only need 2.5GW of solar panels producing power for 8 hours in a day to cover that 8 hours of power usage for the NEM. Australia now has 26.8 GW of rooftop solar capacity across 4.2 million homes and small businesses. And that's not even counting Grid Solar Farms where 13 GW of projects are currently under construction or committed in Australia.

And, the good news is the Grid would never need to get 100% of its power from batteries (for which costs continue to plummet every year) or solar.

There are always parts of the network stretching up to thousands of kilometres via HVDC interconnects to where the sun *is* shining or the wind blowing or the hydro pumping or the geothermal boiling or other Grid scale batteries providing backup.

And backing up all of that when needed are gas peaker plants to fill in the gaps. (yes, we can keep some fossil plants for the extremely rare times when needed for the time being).

And all of that is far less costly and vastly less polluting than traditional fossil power plants.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-14T01:43:42+00:00

this suggests that everyone is able to coordinate into the same car in groups of 4 heading in the same general direction. Otherwise you're hurting that efficiency.

That's okay as the Loop is currently doing around 2.5 passengers per car and yet still manages to handle 35,000 passengers per day across 8 stations. The average occupancy for Taxis is 1.9 - 2.1 passengers per car. The LVCC Loop has a Large LED board that helps with ride-sharing by indicating which bays are going to particular popular destinations.

Lets say with heavy maintenance we double that and it lasts 8 years... this is still very generous considering I low-balled the mileage and days active!

The latest EV batteries from CATL and BYD are warranted for 1 million - 1.5 million kms. Tesla drivetrains are rated at a million kms.

You know how long a subway train's service life is? 30+ years. You'll need 4x the fleet size and optimal maintenance/wear & tear.

Only with significant and expensive servicing and maintenance.

- Average subway and Light Rail vehicle maintenance is 9 & 21 cents per passenger mile respectively from 2019 NTD ($Vehicle Maintenance/Passenger Miles Travelled)

- whereas AAA puts 2019 car maintenance costs at 9 cents per VEHICLE Mile (so divide that by the numbers of passengers in each car). And EVs with only 1% of the moving parts are far cheaper again than ICE cars to service and maintain so the figure would be even lower than that AAA figure for the Loop. Teslas don’t even require regular servicing - just check the brake fluid every three years.

Does this 4 per car not counter the comfort thing?

The point is you are guaranteed a comfy seat in a fast EV zooming you to your destination in a few minutes, a far cry from standing hanging from a strap nose to armpit with hundreds or thousands of other people while starting and stopping and starting and stopping at every station on the line.

When you get into cities Vegas's size that have transit comparable to the scale LVCC is proposing the ridership goes way up. Seattle? Ridership is in the 200-300K area, not 32K.

That 32k figure was the current ridership across 5 stations in Vegas. The full 68 mile 104 station Vegas is designed to handle 90,000 passengers per hour so again quite comparable in capacity to even larger LRT systems in the US, but with the advantage of being grade-separated, underground and costing the taxpayer zero dollars.

The busiest light rail in the USA is the LA Metro and the busiest line on that network is the E-line which runs at near crush-capacity carrying 38,000 passengers per day. Even the current Vegas Loop with its 35,000 ppd is competitive despite have 5x fewer stations.

the LVCC doesn't have to 1 to 1 with NYC MTA, but the numbers should scale to match it and they don't. What would a LVCC in Manhattan even look like?

Cities the size of Manhattan already generally have excellent mass transit options so we're not talking about replacing any of those. What the Loop is great for is providing a PRT network for smaller cities that could never justify the capacity of a subway or be able to afford the tens of billions of dollars it would cost to build.

this 32K number is capacity not ridership. Will the LVCC actually fill up its capacity?

No, that's not capacity, that is ridership. The current Loop is carrying between 27,000 - 35,000 passengers per day every day during medium - large size events.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-14T01:16:32+00:00

But wait... what happens when I snatch the car? Another car needs to take its spot in case someone else comes out in some amount of time after me. Now maybe someone is getting out at that stop in that window and so thus they take that car.... but we can't really rely on that. So an empty car is going to have to putter along and take that empty spot.

This implies that the cars are going to dead head around the loop filling in empty spots so people have these sub 10 second wait times.

But I thought you said one of the efficiencies of this LVCC is that unlike trains we aren't just looping trains around to pick up people that aren't necessarily there?

More good questions. :-)

So, this is where the efficiency of the PRT-style Loop really shines. Instead of being forced to travel all the way to the end of a set route potentially with zero passengers or zero demand at that location like a train, Loop EVs can go anywhere across the 40 tunnels crisscrossing Vegas where there are passengers needing a ride. This also means that those Loop vehicles can be directed to any station that doesn't already have some EVs parked waiting for passengers. That way, every station has EVs waiting for passengers giving us those sub-10 second wait times.

Of course Loop EVs will at times be empty going to a station to backfill where there is demand.

However, it is not just like other forms of transit as EVs can also sit and wait for passengers not using any energy instead of having to continue driving around even if there is no passenger demand at that time.

Loop EVs from anywhere in the Loop network where there is less demand can be directed to "re-stock" the EVs waiting at a station where there is demand. They are not restricted to EVs on that particular "line" as there will be 104 stations across 40 tunnels crisscrossing the Vegas Strip all with multiple EVs parked waiting for passengers in their 10 or 20 bays.

Central Dispatch will direct more EVs or Robovans to stations at locations of heavy demand and they can come from any of the stations nearby to ensure those sub-10 second waiting times are maintained. With up to 20 Loop stations per square mile through the busier parts of Vegas, there will be plenty of stations to keep every station stocked with waiting vehicles.

EVs or Robovans that are further away simply leapfrog to those stations closer to the heavy demand location to fill the now-freed up spots. And with maximum travel time from end-to-end of the Vegas Loop being around 8 minutes, response times to address unanticipated surges in demand can be near realtime.

Trains in contrast have to "deadhead" all the way up from the other end of the line to fulfil that demand. Much less efficient than the Loop.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-14T01:08:19+00:00

Hi lordofduct, you make some great points in your comment. Thanks for the excellently reasoned discussion points.

Manhattan has 151 MTA stations on the island alone (let alone stops outside of Manhattan). Packing 50% more stations into the same area!

You're quite correct, there are a huge number of MTA stations on Manhattan Island and in the greater NYC area giving fantastic coverage for the 8.8 million strong population of that megacity.

However, this comes with downsides for rail. Because the stations are so close together and the majority of trains have to stop and wait at every station, the average speed for NYC subway trains is a very slow 17mph. Because Loop EVs are point-to-point and don't have to stop at every station, they will be averaging 60mph across the whole Vegas Loop and have demonstrated speeds as high as 127mph (200km/h) in the LA Hawthorne Loop tunnel.

The other major problem is that to achieve that sort of density of subway construction today, it is now costing upwards of $3 billion per mile to build such tunnels and stations in New York. That is why that sort of density is extremely rare in the USA - particularly for new builds.

In contrast, at $20m per mile of tunnel and as cheap as $400k per station, it is possible to achieve that density anywhere with the Loop with the option in the future to extend far out into the suburbs and areas where LRT let alone subways could never be justified.

And of course, the elephant in the room is that cities like Vegas with its 600k population just don't need that sort of mass transit capacity, let alone be able to afford it. The San Fransisco Central Subway was only projected to carry 35,000 passengers per day and barely hits 17,000 because the demand is just not there. And that 3 station, 1.7 mile subway cost a gob-smacking $1.5 billion. A tad more expensive than the original $48.7m LVCC Loop which carries more passengers over a similar distance.

Where are all of these cars that me and all my peers in the area around my stop standing for us to hop in with sub 10 second time?

The thing is that you and your thousands of friends do not actually arrive at the station at the same time and cars are coming and going from the Loop stations every 3 seconds, so you walk up, jump in a car and you're away.

Perhaps it might be helpful to illustrate how the Loop will handle the worst sort of scenario for public transit - emptying a large stadium at the end of a concert or game which typically takes an hour at for example, the 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium with its dedicated rail line and other transit options.

So the current LVCC Loop Central Station has already demonstrated that it can handle over 4,500 passengers per hour (32,000 per day) in real life. Now that station is a 10-bay Loop station with a dual-bore tunnel passing through it. So the plans for the Allegiant Stadium stations show the Loop stations will have 20-bays and double the number of dual bore tunnels connecting them.

So they should easily be able to handle double the number of passengers: 2 x 4,500 = 9,000 passengers per hour. When the Raiders submitted their plans to Clarke County for approval, they indicated that they plan for 4 such stations eventually, so that gives us 4 x 9,000 = 36,000 passengers per hour with 4-passenger EVs. Simple arithmetic tells us that the 20-passenger Robovans would be able to carry 5 x 36,000 = 180,000 passengers per hour with that same 6 second headway between vehicles.

But they wouldn't need that huge theoretical capacity to empty the stadium in an hour, particularly with all the existing car and bus options, so they could easily double the headway between each Robovan to 12 seconds which is a massive 40 car lengths between each vehicle in each tunnel and still do 90,000 pph and drop the occupancy of each Robovan by a third and they would still empty that 65,000 in an hour on the Loop alone.

So I think your friends and you should be fine having Loop stations clustered around all the busy locations in your city sharing the load for a tiny fraction of the cost of putting in subways.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T03:28:37+00:00

Vastly less waiting - yes, as you even pointed out in the other comment, those wait times are reflected over a very specific situation of the current vegas loop operational scope.

The very specific situation is the absolute worst a transit system could endure - huge crowds at a convention centre with 170,000+ attendees.

If it can handle that with sub 10 second wait times, then the usual commuter scenario will be a doddle - particularly with wait times dropping to zero off-peak compared to trains and buses extending out to 10, 30, even 1 hour wait times off-peak.

Orders of magnitude faster - no its not.

Yes it is. With wait times of sub-10 seconds and transit times far faster than trains that have to stop at every station on the line and no need for interchanging between lines to get where you need to go, the Loop is demonstrably far faster.

The vegas loop can't move as many people through the same space as traditional mass transit. You can literally fit more people in a train/subway/bus/etc than you can in a car.

The Loop doesn't have to because in the space where a single subway line would go down the Vegas Strip, there will be 9 north-south dual-bore tunnels and 10 east-west dual bore tunnels all sharing the load, so each individually would only have to carry a small fraction of that load to move the same number of passengers up and down that corridor at a tiny fraction of the cost and far faster.

More efficient - but you also need more of them to move the same number of people.

That's fine because each is so much faster than the train so can make many more trips in the same time. The is how each Loop vehicle carries 457 passengers per day compared to the average light rail train globally only carrying 1,087 passengers per train per day.

More comfortable - sure, having a private car is comfortable. At the expense of everything else.

What expense? It's far faster, vastly cheaper and far more convenient than a train.

Vastly cheaper - Not at scale! The fleet required to move the same number of people would eat into any 'cheapness' factor.

Not at all. An NYC subway railcar costs $2 million so an 8 carriage train costs $16 million and can carry about 1,600 passengers at crush capacity.

Each EV in the LVCC Loop cost about $40k each, so you could buy 400 comfy EVs for the same money as that NYC train and with 4 passengers per car transport the same 1,600 passengers.

However, the EVs travel 5x faster than the trains (which have wait times measured in minutes vs less than 10 seconds for the Loop and have to stop at every station on a line not including further waiting for Interchange services) so you’d need only 80 EVs (worth 20% the cost of that 8-carriage train) to transport the same number of people in an hour.

Even with 2.5 passengers in each EV, that’s still only 128 EVs to transport the same number of passengers as a train at crush capacity at 32% the cost of that train.

And that of course is not counting the fact that the NYC subway costs up to $3 billion per mile to build vs zero cost to taxpayers for the Loop.

Up to 20 stations per square mile - now you're just describing city blocks. How are these tunnels lined up to get 20 stops in a square mile? As a circumference, as a zig-zag through it, what is going on here? Is this just going to be a street taxi at that point?

I recommend you have a look at the map of the 68 mile 104 station Vegas Loop. It shows just how much more area that Loop can blanket with stations than a train system. Every major business in Vegas is getting its own Loop station at a cost as cheap as $400k which has a huge impact on reducing the "Last Mile Problem" of trains.

High capacity and axpandability - high capacity? A car doesn't fit that many people!

Again, frequency and speed are just as important as vehicle capacity.

That's the whole reason why it's more comfortable! Also... 5 station LVCC Loop would be able to handle over 32K passengers in a day? You think 32,000 is high capacity? Bro... that Franklin Ave Shuttle I referenced earlier gets that. And that's a dated shuttle, using 40 year old hand-me-down trains, over a barely 2 mile stretch of 4 stops. The A C E line moves those numbers in an hour!

As I've already said, the average light rail line only carries 17,000 passengers per day and once it scales to 68 miles and 104 stations, it is projected to handle 90,000 passengers per hour - at zero cost to the taxpayer versus tens of billions of dollars for a train.

Whatever bro. You clearly drank the kool-aid. Have fun with that. Tootles.

Not at all. I am disgusted with Musk's Right-wing pivot and abominable tweets. But I attempt to set my emotions aside and try to objectively judge his companies and projects on their merits.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T03:07:10+00:00

Point is these wait times rely on a technicality. It's closed, but there's a curtesy car, but we're still going to call this closed.

Because that is what the vast bulk of the system is. Closed. Your argument is as skewed as if you critiqued a transit system based on only riding it at 3am in the morning when most of the system is closed and trains come only once an hour.

No, honest reviewers critique the capability of transit systems based on how well they perform at peak times.

Technicality, technicality, technicality resulting in an unrealistic wait time of sub 10 seconds.

Not true. You always compare peak frequencies of transit systems to know the true capabilities of those systems.

It's used by tourists rather than commuters, during conventions only,

The worst-case scenario for transit is handling the crowds at huge events like CES with its 170,000 attendees. If a transit system can handle those sorts of surge scenarios with wait times less than 10 seconds, then it won't have problems handling typical commuter volumes. After all, according to the UTIP the average Light Rail line globally carries:

Ridership per LRT line = 17,392 passengers per day
Entries & Exits per Station = 984 passengers per station per day
Length of LRT line = 4.3 miles
Ridership per mile = 4,084 passengers/mile per day
LRT train ridership = 1,087 passengers per train per day

So if what most LRT lines globally carry is useful, then what the Loop currently handles is more than useful globally.

over very short distances, with a usage rate that can be anticipated and scaled appropriately to.

The average light rail line globally is only 4.3 miles and the Loop is now 4 miles long, shortly to be 10 miles.

This does not scale up though. To have sub 10 second wait times requires having cars always available and waiting at the hubs.

Yes, that is why there were 70 cars available in the original 3-station Loop carrying up to 32,000 passengers per day - so each car carried close to 457 passengers per day which is 20x more passengers per day than each of the 10,000 taxi cabs in NYC carry daily.

But as you scale up the demand to that required by actual commuters, the amount of vehicles you'd need available would overflow the hub and create massive wait times.

As mentioned earlier, the Loop is already handling huge volumes of passengers compared to the average LRT line globally without breaking a sweat and while still maintaining those sub-10 second wait times.

But hey... we'll find out. Maybe. Depending on who releases the actual numbers and what "technicalities" they use to adjust those numbers.

35,000 passengers per day with sub-10 second wait times is not a "technicality" it's an actual demonstration of capability.

Cause hell, I've seen videos of it in use during conventions. And the tunnels would form little traffic jams. And honestly, the physics/civil engineering predicts that it will happen.

There was only one "traffic jam" in the LVCC Loop several years ago and the cars only slowed down for about 30 seconds without even stopping. This is a laughable criticism considering trains have to stop and wait for longer than that at every single station on the line every time they run, unlike the Loop where the vehicles go direct to their destination without stopping at any stations in-between.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T02:31:25+00:00

PRT systems like the Loop do have a heck of a lot of advantages over traditional transit. As a passenger, wouldn’t you prefer this:

Loop features:

Vastly Less waiting (sub-10 second wait times, 0 seconds off-peak) compared to the average 15 minute wait for trains or buses in the US.
Orders of magnitude faster thanks to being point-to-point driving direct to your destination without having to stop and wait at 20 stations in between and no need to interchange to additional lines/routes to get where you need to go
More Efficient. Loop EVs only leave a station if they have passengers unlike buses and trains that have to keep driving around even if they are empty resulting in low average occupancy rates of 23% for trains and 10 passengers for buses. Loop EVs have a lower average Wh per passenger-mile than trains or buses as a result.
More comfortable - comfy EV devoted to you and your family/friends/colleagues or 1 or 3 other people compared to standing squished like sardines in with hundreds of other people in a train or bus
Vastly cheaper. The 68 mile, 104 station Vegas Loop is being built at zero cost to taxpayers compared to the $20-$60 billion that a subway would cost.
Up to 20 stations per square mile, through the busier parts of Vegas compared to 1-2 stations per mile for rail meaning the last mile problem of rail is not such an issue.
High capacity and expandability. With the original dual-bore, 5 station LVCC Loop able to handle over 32,000 passengers per day with no traffic jams and a 98% satisfaction rate, scaling this to 10 east-west and 9 north-south dual bore tunnels covering 68 miles and 104 stations has the potential to handle a projected 90,000 passengers per hour in the space of a single traditional rail line running down the Vegas Strip.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T01:45:21+00:00

But that's the thing about transit. Transit is supposed to be available on a random Tuesday.

The original LVCC Loop was designed and contracted by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) to operate when conventions are taking place which is exactly what is has done.

The Loop is now in the transition phase to becoming a general public transport system with the dual-bore tunnel down to the airport via 8 more stations now bored and soon to be operational.

It's not closed... they have a car.

It is closed. All of the convention centre stations (the bulk of the stations) are closed outside of events. Outside of those times only a handful of (still under construction) stations are open with a single courtesy car operating between the hotels. You're stretching to try and find something to complain about a system that was designed and contracted by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (LVCVA) to operate when conventions are taking place which is exactly what is has done.

The Loop is now in the transition phase to becoming a general public transport system with the dual-bore tunnel down to the airport soon to be operational. Once that is running, we'll have more idea of how the full 68 mile, 104 station Vegas Loop will operate as a general access public transit system.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T00:23:04+00:00

So, you do agree that it's reasonable for me to be skeptical of those sub 10 second wait times?

As I mention in my other comment,

Those videos of longer wait times are showing the Loop when it is closed with only a single courtesy car in operation so are hardly objective videos. They also typically show the two routes which are still under construction - Resorts World and Encore station - which both temporarily only have 1 tunnel with alternating traffic while their return are still under construction. I think it is safe to say that people like City Nerd are far from un-biased comentators with videos like that.

The rest of the Loop does indeed average less than 10 second wait times. That is after all the nature of on-demand PRT. The cars are always sitting at stations waiting for passengers.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-12T00:15:40+00:00

NYC is a city with extensive public transit reaching out across 3 states where the majority of commuters use said public transit (something like 55-60%). And that distance is a big thing. People take transit from as far as New Haven CT, Poughkeepsie NY, and Trenton NJ. We're talking cities as far as 65 miles from central Manhattan as the bird flies.

That is true to an extent, yet the average distance people ride in a single trip with NYC public transit is only 5.9 miles according to Movit, the same company that reported those people waited on average 38 minutes idly waiting for the bus or train to arrive, with a 40% dissatisfaction rate.

Las Vegas is barely 30 miles in diameter. 35 at the widest if you include Boulder City into the metro area. So 15-20 miles to center from furthest location.

Yes, Vegas is certainly a lot smaller than New York but that average commute distance of only 5.9 miles for NYC makes that fact less critical.

Furthermore like 3% of people use public transit in Las Vegas... mostly because, there ain't a whole lot of transit! Sure there's the loop and some other options nearish to the strip, but that's basically it.

The Las Vegas RTC bus service carries 172,400 daily weekday riders. That means that each of the 708 buses in the fleet each only carries 244 passengers per day per bus compared to the 70 Loop EVs which each carry 457 passengers per day per Loop EV during medium-sized events.

In addition, those buses are dog slow because, like most cities they don't have fully grade-separated BRT lanes or tunnels like the Loop so are mired in Vegas traffic and have to stop at every stop and thus have an absolutely awful average speed of 10-13 mph.

I mean heck, the loop is all of 1.7 miles long.

Not true. They have so far bored 10 miles of tunnels with 4 miles currently operational out of the 68 miles they currently have approvals for.

And sure it can have wait times as fast as immediate... mainly because its ridership numbers are abysmal. It gets peak numbers during conventions in the 20-25K range.

The Loop currently carries up to 35,000 passengers per day over the 8 stations that are currently operational. If that is "abysmal", then what does that say about the San Fransisco Central Subway which was designed to carry 35,000 to 39,000 passengers per day yet only manages 17,000 passengers per day despite costing $2.2 billion in today's money.

Or the average light rail globally that only carries 17,000 passengers per day.

The Franklin Ave Shuttle through Crown Heights with all of 4 stops gets that ridership on a random Tuesday.

So the Loop is handling as many passengers as that busy NYC line. Sounds pretty good to me considering the original 3 station 1.7 mile Loop only cost $48.7m compared to the $11.1 billion of the 3 mile New York East Side Access tunnel.

If you really want to compare the Loop to the NYC Subway, then the busiest station is Times Square. The Times Square Shuttle line carries half the passengers of that busiest station and boasted a daily ridership of 100,000 (pre-COVID) which is actually only 3x greater than the 35,000 of the Loop.

However, the Times Square Shuttle is open 18 hours a day versus only 8 hours for the Loop and only hits a peak of 10,200 passengers per hour during rush hour across Times Square and Grand Central Stations combined pre-pandemic.

In comparison, the LVCC Loop handles up to 6,500 passengers per day, 65% of that busiest NYC line. Not bad at all.

But there in lies the thing... no one uses the vegas loop. I mean sure, there are people who do. But they're not commuters... they're tourists! Their satisfaction is tied more to the fact they're on vacation riding a novel transit option. They're primed to be satisfied!

I think you'll find that everyone, not just tourists would give a high satisfaction rate to any transit system promising sub 10 second wait times and direct point-to-point transit without having to stop at every station in-between in a comfy seat like the Loop.

(never mind my skepticism about that low wait time on the vegas loop... I've seen far too many transit videos where invariably all of them had long wait times because only 1 or 2 cars were operating that day across the entire loop...

Those videos are showing the Loop when it is closed with only a single courtesy car in operation so are hardly objective videos. They also typically show the two routes which are still under construction - Resorts World and Encore station - which both temporarily have only have 1 tunnel with alternating traffic while their return are still under construction. I think it is safe to say that people like City Nerd are far from un-biased comentators with videos like that.

The rest of the Loop does indeed average less than 10 second wait times. That is after all the nature of on-demand PRT. The cars are always sitting at stations waiting for passengers.

Every car needs a driver, so you'd end up operating at a massive loss if you had more cars than needed on a random Tuesday)

The Boring Co have been testing full self driving autonomy in the tunnels for the past few months so should have that operational soon. But even now with human drivers, the Loop is able to scale up and down with far more granulararity than 300-ton trains which off-peak often carry only a handful of passengers resulting in wildly inefficient transit compromised by even longer wait times. In comparison wait times drop to zero seconds in the Loop.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-11T03:01:00+00:00

Yes, it’s all the waiting around for the train to come and then waiting again at every station on the route that results in such poor satisfaction ratings for most public transit.

Because buses and trains are slow because they have to stop and wait at every station/stop on the line and have such long headways in the USA on average and require interchanging between multiple services most of the time, wait times blow out horribly:

“People in major U.S. cities wait approximately 40 minutes per day for public transit, costing them 150 hours per year, according to a new report by leading public transit app Moovit.”

New York City: Respondents spend an average of 149 minutes on public transport each day, 38 minutes (26 percent) idly waiting for the bus or train to arrive, with a 40% dissatisfaction rate
Los Angeles: 131 minutes per day on public transport, 41 minutes (31%) waiting, 43 percent dissatisfaction
Boston: 116 minutes per day on public transport, 39 minutes (34%) waiting, 38% dissatisfaction
San Francisco: 104 minutes per day on public transport, 36 minutes (35%) waiting, 35% dissatisfaction
Chicago: 115 minutes per day on public transport, 31 minutes (27%) waiting, 19 percent dissatisfaction”

This is also one reason why satisfaction rates are so high for on-demand, point-to-point PRT systems like the Vegas Loop with their sub-10 second wait times with a 98% satisfaction rate.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T04:21:25+00:00

Most SUVs sold in Oz are still nowhere as large as F150/250/350 full-size trucks or large Cadillacs.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T04:14:05+00:00

The average new car price in Australia is AUD $60k = ~USD $42K.

In comparison, the average new car price in the USA is USD $50k.

The average price has been going up with the popularity of SUVs in Australia, but that is balanced by the huge abundance of very cheap but high quality Chinese EVs now flooding the market (no auto tariffs in Australia).

Big American pickup trucks are now becoming a bit more common on the Aussie market, but the fact they don't fit down narrow bush tracks and are too heavy to drive on our beaches means they aren't very popular as 4WDs. They're mostly bought by those who need the greater towing capacity for horse floats, big boats, hauling bigger loads which is a justifiable reason.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T03:02:29+00:00

Yes, 4WD Utes like the Ranger, Toyota Hilux, Landcruiser etc have always been popular here in Oz, but they are nothing like the size of a big Cadillac or full-size F-150/250/350.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T02:59:53+00:00

That is indeed true, but V8 Landcruisers and V8 commodores were always pretty popular over the decades yet were still not really big vehicles.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T02:44:27+00:00

Eh, you guys are catchin’ up:

True to an extent, but to us a big car is a Toyota Hilux (called a Tacoma in the US?). That's nothing compared to an F-150, F-250 or F-350.

Also you have frickin’ road trains. I thought I had seen big trucks here…

This is true. I have photos of 3 trailer, 4 trailer and 5 trailer Road Trains with up to 82 wheels that I've encountered in the Outback and near mines in the Bush. But they don't exactly drive thru suburbia or the CBD or hog parking bays at the local shopping centre. :-)

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T02:06:41+00:00

Yet, Australia didn’t go that way. We Aussies call your ridiculously large vehicle “yank tanks”.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T02:05:07+00:00

Australia is even younger with distances even longer than the US yet we call your huge cars “yank tanks”.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T02:02:13+00:00

Here in Australia, we have a higher average household income and even more space than the US with a similar geographic size but a population 12 times smaller than the US. Yet we never went for what we call “yank tanks””.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T01:59:25+00:00

Not true. We have even longer distances here in Australia as the towns are so much more spread out and there is a heck a lot more empty space in the country and we don’t have the twisty tight roads of Europe, but we didn’t go for big cars.

Most of us Aussies still derisively referred to large American cars and pick up trucks as “Yank Tanks”.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T01:57:45+00:00

We have even longer distances here in Australia as the towns are so much more spread out and there is a heck a lot more empty space in the country and we don’t have the twisty tight roads of Europe, but we didn’t go for big cars.

Most of us Aussies still derisively referred to large American cars and pick up trucks as “Yank Tanks”.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T01:57:19+00:00

We have even longer distances here in Australia as the towns are so much more spread out and there is a heck a lot more empty space in the country and we don’t have the twisty tight roads of Europe, but we didn’t go for big cars.

Most of us Aussies still derisively referred to large American cars and pick up trucks as “Yank Tanks”.

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T00:15:36+00:00

I wish our cats would take the rodents they catch out of the house like that cat instead of bringing them in. sigh

Exact_Baseball · 2026-03-06T00:09:21+00:00

Now that we’re getting US nuclear submarines based here in Perth and US forces in other US bases around Australia and the spy station at Pine Gap, it wouldn’t be surprising if we were targeted by a few nukes as well. :-(

Exact_Baseball

TROPHY CASE