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Hypnotized by Hyperloop

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Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#211

Post by rjeli »

gutnor wrote: post #59
ardit33 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts 1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place. 2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living r…

Why commute ? Remote working is a thing and everything the topic comes up, something that a significant part of HN is already enjoying. No need to pour billions in public transport. Also companies have proven that they are more than willing to outsource everywhere, hiring people anywhere. There are reason they still hire in very expensive place like SF. You bet that it is a problem that will go away at some point, an…

I would be lonely doing remote work. I prefer to go to an office and interact with people every day. Sometimes I don't want to interact with them, but I wouldn't want to spend 8 hours a day alone in my house.

Coworking spaces might work. I haven't tried it, but I imagine its different interacting with people who aren't relevant to what you're doing all day.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#212

Post by ubernostrum »

picosat wrote: post #195
Tiktaalik wrote: post #112

The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle right now to get basic funding for proven conventional public transit services which would dramatically make life better for everyone. Musk dropping the promise of Hyperloop (with no interest on following up on the idea) has provided ammo for transit cynics and opp…

I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts. Musk's propositions should and will coincide with years of statistical analysis before actual implementation to prevent exactly what you're talking about. Hyperloop could be t…

I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts.

Before pursuing innovation, it's worth knowing what came before you.

The sheer number of people who speculatively re-invent bus lines when thinking about what Uber/Lyft could do in the future is proof of this.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#213

Post by JBReefer »

Retra wrote: post #205
m-s wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about improving public transport by investing in existing technologies that work for other cities? I'd consider that a more sensible approach than pouring public funds into an experimental technology which may or may not solve LA's transportation woes in 20 years.

Has that not already been tried? And if not, why not? LA has a government and they're surely aware of the transportation problems. One would think they could just pour their funds into this sensible approach and the problem would have been fixed two decades ago. And if that's not going to happen, maybe a desperate move is warranted.

Look up Measure R. LA has mostly given up on roads and is very aggressively building new public transportation lines. The city has repeatedly voted for taxes to fund these endeavors.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#214

Post by rtpg »

Spooky23 wrote: post #204
nihonde wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shinkansen isn't really priced to be a commuter rail service. Nagoya/Tokyo is roughly $90 each way.

Employers subsidize it. Japanese salaryman employment is like civil service employment. Mediocre pay + crazy benefits.

They tend not to pay fully for shinkansen tickets (monthly commuter tickets end up being a lot of money). Though some cities tend to subsidize them.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#215

Post by IanCal »

Invictus0 wrote: post #198
schiffern wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very rosy view, only looking at the positive side of the coin and ignoring the negative side. >1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. ...causing property values to rise in the "less expensive area" to match those in the urban center minus the cost of transport. Ultimately you're gentrifying the current residents out of their homes, causing more urban sprawl,…

> ...causing property values to rise in the "less expensive area" to match those in the urban center minus the cost of transport. This is a valid concern made invalid by the speed of the Hyperloop. If we estimate very conservatively that the Hyperloop can cut the average commute time 4x, then the radius that a city worker can live increases 4x. However, while the radius increases 4x, the area increases 16x (A=pi*r^2:…

Quickly, that's not exponential, it's quadratic.

More importantly though, it doesn't fix the travel time issue that well. It only speeds up a particular section of the journey and only between two specific points. You would need vast amounts spreading out with lots of stops to get close to a squaring.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#216

Post by ClassyJacket »

mamon wrote: post #156
jacquesm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the established players in those markets did not manage to do any of that stuff. Not a huge Musk fan but still let's give credit where credit is due. I see people that have built two web apps call themselves serial entrepreneur, I think Musk is actually worthy of that title and so far he did deliver the goods.

Ok, so he is a great entrepreneur: knows how to run the company to be profitable, low cost, high revenue, knows how to advertise, how to make a lot of hype. Those are great skills, but have nothing to do with technology. There are many companies that are better at creating new, disrupting technologies: Google with all of its AI research and Android, Amazon with a cloud platform, even Microsoft with Windows and Office…

How can you possibly call Tesla not disruptive? They're a shining example of a disruptive company. They're turning the automotive industry on its head. No other company has made any comparable, widespread, viable attempt at a good electric car.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#217

Post by trevyn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193
jacquesm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings. I doubt you would because the cost of the trip would make that the most expensive food you ever ate.

A round trip economy ticket from New York to Hong Kong [1] is about $700. Kayak shows decent hotels at about $200 a night. Let's say 2 nights. That's $1,100 for travel and board. To match the $3,000 a romantic dinner for two costs at Thomas Keller's Per Se , I'd have to spend almost $1,900 on dumplings and knick knacks. [1] On Delta, about a month out

You're looking at closer to $1500 total for dinner for two with wine at Per Se, unless you're ordering something extra-fancy.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#218

Post by vidarh »

dalbasal wrote: post #18

One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite. If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distan…

I live in London, and this is a pet peeve of mine. Central London traffic moves slowly above ground and the trains are usually full. So of course we need more trains? Billions gets poured into it.

But like you I don't think it will help.

Instead I wish government here would stop all expansion of Central London lines. Very publicly. And instead focus on picking, say, a dozen towns near the motorways and rail lines surrounding London, and expanding the connections between them and further out. Especially towns where there'd be little resistance to high density development.

Instead we get high speed links to other cities so people can travel from even further out to the centre of London in less time.

E.g. I live in a suburb where better train connections along the edge of London + further out could easily make it a viable commuter destination for 4-5m people where it's now viable for about 2m. In some cases the rail is already there, but there just aren't any direct trains. There are many similar opportunities. Developing satellites like this would be so much better than the relentless focus on the centre.

And there are many hubs like London around the world where we're just shooting ourselves in the foot by seeing congestion and thinking the problem is lack of roads, rather than seeing congestion and thinking it reflects a lack of alternative destinations.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#219

Post by bronson »

dwaltrip wrote: post #190
njarboe wrote: post #13

Such a negative, do-nothing article. "taking every billionaire’s quirky visions at face value". Elon Musk is a bit different than every billionaire. Re-usable orbital class boosters and the Model S is what gives Elon the street cred others don't have. "so-called Boring Company" WTF? The New Yorker was always a purveyor of a certain type of elitism, but since the Trump election they have really upped the intensity. No…

Obviously, Musk is killing it with Tesla and SpaceX. There is no doubt about that. He will be remembered in the history books for this. But is he really serious about this Boring company stuff? The whole thing sounds ludicrous. Even if he reduces cost 10x, they are still crazy expensive and have a lot sorts of strange complications. I don't get it.

Five years ago people were saying that about both Tesla and SpaceX.

"Is he really serious about going into space? The whole thing sounds ludicrous. Even if he reduces the cost 10X, launches are still crazy expensive and have al sorts of strange complications."

"Is he really serious about electric cars? The whole thing..." etc.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#220

Post by kwhitefoot »

jcranmer wrote: post #105
hsitz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they u…

High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-se…

> High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs,

Depends on what you mean by high speed.

Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes.

And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).

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