> "Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems."

sure, but what technology could be applied in this case?

for instance, projects are often underbid and then overcharged over time, whether it's fixed bid or time and materials. fixed bid incentivizes subcontractors to cut corners. time and materials billing incentivizes subcontractors to be inefficient. and subcontractors find ways to cheat.

people have tried complicated incentive systems to fix this issue (a kind of technological solution), but they seem to have mixed results (that is, not much better, for a lot more complexity in tracking and apportioning compensation).

even if you could build a machine to monitor all the workers and perfectly pay them based on quality and efficiency, such dystopian conditions would most certainly meet heavy resistance.

i mean, i love tech, but who'd want a machine controlling their lives?

> sure, but what technology could be applied in this case?

A big problem with tunnels has traditionally been land rights (less so than with highways/but still a problem). If your tunneling costs are 10-100x lower, suddenly landowners who would otherwise try to extract exorbitant prices have a lot less leverage because you have more freedom in where you build the tunnels and entry/exit points.

There's no magical new technology that will entirely subvert the political expense of this project, but they make it explicitly clear on the Boring Company website that they have vastly improved the mostly old and uninspired technology of the tunnel boring machine itself, which will save millions at least. So like, that answers your question.