>That fall, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan was standing at a fenced-off site affixed with Boring signs near Fort Meade and telling a videographer to “get ready” for a high-speed train from Baltimore to Washington. Mr. Hogan declined to comment.

>An aide to Mr. Hogan toured a parking-lot test site at the company’s then-headquarters near Los Angeles International Airport, getting a look at a tunnel-boring machine the company purchased secondhand. Boring named it Godot, the title character in Samuel Beckett’s play about a man who never shows up.

>The Republican Hogan administration sped up the bureaucratic process for Boring, granting a conditional permit in October 2017 and an environmental permit a few months later.

>All Boring had to do was bring its machine and start digging, former Maryland officials said. But months, and then years, passed. Maryland was waiting for Godot.

>Boring deleted the Maryland project from its website last year.

🤦🤦🤦 Larry and friends getting duped when it was staring them right in the face.

It is just comical to me that anyone ever believed this shit. Do people really think tunnels are the magic answer to traffic?

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine, bona fide Electrified, six-car monorail What'd I say? Monorail What's it called? Monorail That's right! Monorail

How is this legal, honestly?? Aren't there any federal regulators to prevent literal charlatans from pulling a fast one on cities across the country!?

I don't know what there is on the Federal Side, but really the answer is in what u/PleaseBmoreCharming posted:

> The Republican Hogan administration sped up the bureaucratic process for Boring, granting a conditional permit in October 2017 and an environmental permit a few months later.

Amazingly we have all become convinced that the Bureaucratic Process is the problem. The Bureaucratic Process is what prevents shit like this.

Lol that was me who posted that 😂 But you make a good point by highlighting it.

Reminder that the hyperloop was a complete fabrication that Musk came up with to try and force CA to abandon regional high speed rail plans. He never had any intention of completing it and he knew it was a lie.

Hogan wasn't even getting duped, he cared more about the photo op and the headline than any such system (like this, the maglev, or anything remotely feasible) getting built.

piece is missing a key note: Hogan also cancelled the Red line. A REAL project that would have significantly helped Baltimore.

Why did Hogan cancel it: because saying "fuck Baltimore" resonates with his voting base.

Monorail, monorail, monorail...

Hogan's dislike of Baltimore is well-known but I'm honestly curious as to whether or not it would truly improve life and transit in a city that's been constantly losing residents for decades.

He might have canceled the Red Line in bad faith but without a grander transit system besides the weird patchwork of Metro, light rail and MARC, I'm not sure how it would have made enough of an impact to justify the cost alone. Even public infrastructure projects are supposed to have a return on investment.

You are only allowed to have this opinion if you first acknowledge that spending more money on road infrastructure never faces the same ROI questions, nor any consideration of the massive externalities this type of infrastructure has

I’ve heard those things are awfully loud.

You can't have a grander system if you keep canceling every line in the system for 70 years.

Lol seriously, they are basically saying "We cant build one line because it is too expensive, what we should actually do is build like 3 at once"

They glide as softly as a cloud!

Is there a chance the track could bend?

1. I can have any opinion I like, thanks. That's how this works. I was just speaking of bad faith arguments and your "I only acknowledge opinions based on an arbitrary litmus test that I set" is a great example

2. There's a major difference between maintenance and an entirely new project.

Okay so Hogan isn't the only one to cancel these projects. What does that tell you?

Racists gonna racist

Well well well, look who's tunnel is a "boondoggle" now!

1. Your ROI concerns are just stupid if you fail to consider the alternative

2. all money is fungible.

Lazy answer.

[deleted]

Not on your life, my Hindu friend!

What about us braindead slobs?

Mono… d’oh!

You'll be given cushy jobs

It surely would improve the cities and the neighborhoods it would pass through. There was decade plus long planning process that involved master planning with the neighborhoods affected including residential and commercial development. It’s heartbreaking to look at these plans and see what could have been. There is also plenty of research out there on the positive ROI of transit on cities, and I believe the plans for the Red Line included plenty of data and justification on this matter (Hogan’s people didn’t bother to read the plan). I think the Red Line was also based on one of the lines from the mid-20th century plan to build a metro transit network in Baltimore akin to Washington DC.

Yea like we haven’t already done this lol…. I always thought this sounded like bullshit

Musk really is a bimbo. A shit poster obsessed with online ownage and who’s every word/action and pet project is geared toward either liquidating stock, or inflating the stock price to keep the investment speculation scam going.

Also reminder that he didn’t even really come up with it. He just brought up a really old idea that any engineer with a 6 pack and a little free time has thought of. There’s an entire Wikipedia page for them.

>There’s an entire Wikipedia page for them.

Which one? Outrageous proposals?

The man must have a special talent for getting kickbacks from contractors.

It worked in Boston.

Lol Vactrain but feel free to link it a page on carpetbaggers

You are just another dupe in america's blind worship of cars. I appreciate the accuracy of your username though.

Just take your time, do your diligence, and get it right the first time. But no. Hogan is a slut.

(apologies to all the actual sluts of the world)

It's a World Inferno Friendship Society reference.

And LOL I don't worship cars but it happens to be the world we live in. Wasn't my idea. I'd be down for some luxury space utopia in the future but I can't see mass transit working well in Baltimore. They can't even maintain the system they have currently. I can't imagine the boondoggle that would be if they actually built it.

I'm not a worshiper of cars, I'm just not an ideologue.

No joke, my PlayStation Network name is Lyle_Lanley.

Lazy answer begets lazy answer.

Well more heavy rail would mean less cars on the road which would mean less traffic.

I've been an Infernite for over 15 years and you are not doing this band justice unless you really took to heart the song "we will never run into one another on trains" because you don't support building the infrastructure.

Musk is the pimp in this situation. Hogan is his ho, raking in the dough.

Specifically it was “fuck Baltimore for making me spend a bunch of money on cops to beat the shit out of people who protested Freddie Gray’s murder” which REALLY resonated with his voting base

So one must agree with every single thing a band says in their lyrics to be a fan? Are you for real?

I made the mistake once of reading Jack's blog and he basically said he doesn't vote. I find that to be an abhorrent view. It's anti-democratic. But he's an "anarchist" (whatever that means) so I decided to just simply find beauty in their music.One needs not be an ideologue to do so.

The dude killed a billion dollars in federal funding for the red line. Hogan is ridiculously anti public transit

I think the thing is that the bureaucratic process for individuals to access basic, regular, necessary services (MVA, basic home improvement building permits, etc) is so overburdened, underfunded, and intentionally arduous that big business and the media uses that to reduce necessary bureaucratic regulation of large businesses.

And they never find or improve the shit most people deal with like the MVA as that would make people understand bureaucracy doesn’t have to be a bad word.

Racism. That’s why.

His choice not to vote is anti democratic? But haven’t we democratically decided that voting isn’t mandatory?

To openly eschew voting in favor of some cockamamie ideology that is both impractical and contrary to human nature... yes, that's anti-democratic. To be pro-democracy is to encourage voting. I don't see what's hard about this.

I mean, I agree that we should build at least 3 lines at once.

It’s such an easy sell, too. Built in jobs program. Helps modernize the city.

Basically the only arguments against it are racists and people who profit off of cars being on roads

No. Being anti democratic would be if he prevented you from voting. His refusal to vote is a first amendment right.

To be pro democracy is to encourage the right to vote. Not to force others to vote or judge them for not voting

Anything that might help poor Marylanders is going to get strangled in it’s infancy under Hogan. If it helps poor Black people it’s dead before that.

Hey! We don’t want Hogan. He’s a genital wart.

Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of 2022

Who said anything about forcing. He made a choice. I'm criticizing the choice.

Are you really that dense?

god i hope wes moore does something for baltimore

The ring came off my pudding can

This Elon fellow seems like a shady fellow

Take my penknife, my good man

And pissed away $300M already spent on design by MD for that same project as well

Musk got expedited permits eh? Wonder how he managed to do that.

Only anarchists are pretty. They are an amazing band.

how quickly Elon has becomes the enemy and now he is 'Donald Trump' because he does not fall in line.....please explain how he is Donald Trump 2022...

This made my morning!

To the victor goes the spoils. Baltimore city didn't elect Hogan so he has a limited incentive to help them out. Also the red line is more focused on a misguided sense of "equity" as opposed to running mass transit through as much high density as possible where it makes sense. Mass transit through low density rowhome neighborhoods like W Baltimore doesn't make nearly as much sense as through neighborhoods where you have 5-10 story buildings.

If you really want mass transit to work like I do, a Towson to Inner Harbor subway is the best shot at making that happen. It could take thousands or tens of thousands of cars off the road every week and that corridor has plenty of density. Couple that with an upzoning of all neighborhoods along the way and you have a workable proposition.

Just another gadgetbahn to keep actual infra investments from being considered

I did a 4th grade science project on Robert Goddard, a pioneering rocket scientist who also had this idea. I thought it was cool, but I was worried you’d get sucked out if it crashes

The red line has an existing grade separated right-of-way through W. Baltimore. You also have a lot of zero-car/low income households providing stronger support than an equally dense neighborhood elsewhere.

The Section west of Edmondson Village is of dubious value in terms of residents, but otherwise it does go through downtown and some of the densest neighborhoods.

The problems with the red line is that the new tunnel two blocks south of the Subway downtown is a lot of $ to not connect directly.

Likewise the walkshed in Canton is reduced a lot by running along Boston St

EDIT:

I would absolutely change the alignment if we have to start from scratch.

However, IF the bipartisan Infrastructure bill’s provision that Van Hollen put in to fast track previously approved projects like the Red Line pays off, I would really like to implore the the citizens of Baltimore NOT to look the gift horse in the mouth, because it could take years off of the time to implementation and tons of other planning related costs.

That time, money, and personnel can be used for the north-south project.

Transit lines reinforce one another to create a network greater than the sum of its parts, so a subway from Towson to Port Covington should not be seen as competitor with the Red Line in anything but their order in terms of priority.

They’re literally perpendicular, and they intersect at their midpoints to form a hub and spoke network connecting the richest and poorest neighborhoods alike with the lion’s share of the jobs, medical facilities, higher education, and recreation in the city.

EDIT 2:

Unlike the overstretched 40-mile light rail lines they are building in the postwar sprawl of LA and Seattle, these are <15 miles AND, with the exception of the Highway to Nowhere (featuring a dedicated right of away pre-built) and Woodlawn, almost entirely built through pre-war foot and streetcar-oriented development.

The vast majority of the built structures from that era still there (for better or worse)

Nonsense, the bureaucratic process strangles completely routine public works projects for asinine reasons, and we should demand better.

We’d be better off with a one bullshit boring tunnel and two subway tunnels than none of those things

Step 1 - Convince gullible politicians to buy into shiny, bullshit fantasy tech as an alternative to real mass transit.

Step 2 - Once you've strung them along for enough time to disrupt other plans, abandon the project.

Step 3 - Reap the benefits of society's continued reliance on cars by selling more Teslas.

Or in Hogan's case:

Follow all of these steps knowing it's vaporware, but that it will fool the electorate, so you can disrupt Maryland transit plans and continue using your power as governor to fund road widenings near your real estate firm's (that you did not put in a blind trust) holdings to make them more valuable.

Perhaps - but I really think he got duped. Either way is pretty bad.

<-- What this person said.

Its a shame what Hogan did to the Red Line and the MARC System upgrades that he shelved... I'm hoping that the New admin reverses that trend and gives Baltimore a proper transit expansion and breaks ground on the New Baltimore tunnels along the various long bridges that need to be replaced between Baltimore and Wilmington...