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Hypnotized by Hyperloop

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Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#221

Post by vidarh »

rtpg wrote: post #51
solatic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings. And that's a good thing, because it increases the amount of demand available to businesses. The more potential customers you have, the more product you can make to sell to that market, and the more product you can make, the better your economies of scale. The large population of New York is what allows it to offer so many…

counterpoint: it's also a bad thing because society functioning now becomes more reliant on this transportation method. It destroys "walkable" spaces and encourages centralization of services, when a more uniform spread of services across space is in fact healthier. I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people g…

You see the same in London too, where even within London, boroughs that'd be viable large cities of their own if they were further separated from London, has big gaps in various types of things because you can just go in to the centre.

E.g. nightlife is a typical one, where there are a few centres in London (and they change over time), and clubs and bars outside of those regions suffer compared to even smaller towns elsewhere.

On one hand it's great - you can head where the action is. On the other hand it means a night out might easily be an hour travel each way and/or expensive tax rides, instead of a 20 minute walk.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#222

Post by alphapapa »

stcredzero wrote: post #143
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…

One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite. It seems this is also true for cars and trucks. No matter how many roads we build, there is congestion. I think automated cars are going to show that one of the limiting factors to how much our society uses such transportation is the supply of piloting labor. Also to chime in: It's not literally infinite. It's just much hig…

> No matter how many roads we build, there is congestion.

Where? When?

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#223

Post by alphapapa »

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…

> For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels.

In other words, "You can't build more roads. If you build more roads, people will drive more, and then there'll be more cars on the road. And we can't have more cars on the road. So you can't build more roads."

Am I missing anything?

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#224

Post by brentdax »

m-s wrote: post #80
mark212 wrote: post #31

This is written by someone who's never lived in LA. "Trains that run on the tracks" is a joke in a region with virtually zero effective public transport.

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.

LA has as many bus stops as New York City, but about a third of the daily riders. It has as much subway track as Washington, D.C., but about half the daily riders. The city just isn't suited to traditional mass transit—it's too sprawled out.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#225

Post by vidarh »

pas wrote: post #157
ComradeTaco wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a functional limit for induced demand! But it effectively can't be reached in urban and suburban areas because cars scale really poorly. Cars don't scale well for three main reasons: (1) Cost. Building roads and highways inflicts both huge upfront capital costs and maintenance costs. A typical highway line has a throughput of 2,000 cars per hour. (2) Real Estate. Building the level of roads necessary to meet…

Only cost is important for tunnels, because there's still space sufficient for hundreds of layers of tunnels below cities.

Now figure out how to get people up and down, and how to cool them. Places like London has problems with both already.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#226

Post by divanvisagie »

bronson wrote: post #219
dwaltrip wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dont think its the same at all

Have we gont to space before? Yes

Have we done electric cars before? Yes

Have we solved congestion by increasing the speed of a transport medium? Concorde

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#227

Post by ojosilva »

Future-proof public transportation needs to steer away from the word "mass" as much as possible.

Mass transit, of any kind, is doomed by increasing security risks and vulnerabilities. Its strict timetables and geographic scopes are incompatible with a world that is now connected, 24/7 and mostly wants to move away from big urban centers.

We need more shared or individual transportation instead. Cars, planes and pods that are efficient and low cost. That's the only way humanity can scale and better adapt to the planet while freeing people that want to desperately break away from 9 to 5, rush hour and suburbs.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#228

Post by eesmith »

kurthr wrote: post #184
eesmith wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gases don't care about g-forces going through an expansion loop/bend. We still haven't solved the thermal expansion problem for railroads. Hot weather can cause tracks to buckle. It can also cause roadways to buckle.

So you expect this to be above ground? I'd expect that it would be bored since (in states where mineral rights aren't held by the land owner) it's cheaper than above ground right of way. At boring depths (greater than 60ft or 20m) temperature change is less than 0.1c and thermal expansion ~10ppm. Serpentines 100km in diameter could easily be used with radial deflections of only 10cm. The g-load at 1080km/hr=300m/s wi…

The original Hyperloop proposal was elevated, so ... yes.

As far as I am aware of, there are three different things: 1) Hyperloop as originally planned, for above-ground long-distance travel 2) tunnels under dense cities, for existing cars carried on, perhaps, electric sledges, 3) a "verbal agreement" mentioned by Musk about an Easy Coast tunnel hyperloop which no government official has confirmed, and with no concrete plans that anyone can say anything about. Will it be bored? Will it be 20+m down? What route will it take?

So, what is it that you expect will be bored? A, ~5 meter wide high-speed tunnel from L.A. to San Francisco across multiple active faults? (Or rather, two such tunnels as you want traffic in both directions.)

Gas pipelines are only, what, 100-150 cm across? They are built to either move with the ground or force the earth move around them. Any such movement is going to have rather less than a 100km radius. How do we scale up that knowledge to a Hyperloop tunnel? Will we also built the Hyperloop tunnel out of steel?

This isn't bike shedding. We know it's possible to build a Hyperloop by throwing enough money at the problem. For example, we can solve above-ground thermal issues by simply enclosing the hyperloop in a flexible insulated chamber and running heaters or chillers to keep the temperature inside constant. But that would be prohibitively expensive.

Since there isn't a concrete proposal for what some high-speed long-distance tunnel is supposed to be, there's nothing to bike shed. Tom Swiftian dreams of the World of Tomorrow must first demonstrate they can overcome the hard realities the the World of Yesterday discovered.

Why didn't Tom Swift dream of upgraded sewage treatment systems?

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#229

Post by squimmy »

stcredzero wrote: post #144
chongli wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

demand is almost infinite Almost infinite but still very much finite. If you could get anywhere in the world in seconds, Star Trek transporter style, then demand would level off. The number of people in the world is finite. Once everyone can get where they need to be as easy as sending a text message, we will have different problems to solve.

If you could get anywhere in the world in seconds, Star Trek transporter style, then demand would level off. Hell no. People raised on "jump cut" vlog culture will just start jump cutting in real life. (Before anyone takes offense, they should first read Larry Niven's seminal articles about how Sci-fi authors should extrapolate sociological issues, using teleportation as his prime example.)

I'm interested in these articles you mention, but am having trouble finding out more. Do you remember what they were called, or any details about their publication?

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#230

Post by kuschku »

easytiger wrote: post #145
kuschku wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you link them physically, do you have enough braking distances, or do you, as musk suggests, run pods that are separate close enough that in case of a disaster all pods will crash?

I believe they have gaps and the original design had safety stops, breaks, and wheeled propulsion to get you to safety

The issue is the required gap to slow down from those speeds.

You might want to take a look at the train crash in Emden at the Transrapid facility.

A maglev train crashed into a maintenance vehicle at a speed of 500km/h because it takes too long to slow down.

The required gaps to operate a maglev system efficiently would end up with one capsule every 10 seconds - which means it can carry less passengers than a lane of highway.

The only way to get more capacity is by running actual trains.

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