Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy • Hacker News Board

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#181

Post by klipt » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #128

klipt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is almost always unprofitable without some way of capturing the increased land value near the stations. Supposedly some subways (eg Hong Kong?) own the land near the stations and use the rents to fund the subway, rather than just using fares. A land value tax that goes back into public transit would probably work too.

Regular property tax works fine. Montreal recaptures the increase as values rise through transfer taxes and ocassional reassesments.

Unfortunately California doesn't have regular property tax thanks to Prop 13: even if values rise, taxes don't.

So high speed rail in California is always going to be a boondoggle.

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#182

Post by URSpider94 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

SenHeng wrote: post #178

klipt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is almost always unprofitable without some way of capturing the increased land value near the stations. Supposedly some subways (eg Hong Kong?) own the land near the stations and use the rents to fund the subway, rather than just using fares. A land value tax that goes back into public transit would probably work too.

That's how it works in Japan. All the major train companies own the land around the major train stations and that's why you see all these department stores named after a train company. Here's one, just follow the links to the group companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyu_Department_Store

Yup, if you’ve spent time in Japan, you can see how stores, hotels and attractions are laid out to drive train passenger traffic.

The same was true for streetcars in the USA, many streetcar companies built amusement parks in the countryside at the end of their lines to encourage weekend trips.

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#183

Post by wombatpm » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #128

klipt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is almost always unprofitable without some way of capturing the increased land value near the stations. Supposedly some subways (eg Hong Kong?) own the land near the stations and use the rents to fund the subway, rather than just using fares. A land value tax that goes back into public transit would probably work too.

Regular property tax works fine. Montreal recaptures the increase as values rise through transfer taxes and ocassional reassesments.

Transfer taxes are avoided by the wealthy. See London and NYC. An LLC purchased property. From that point the LLC is bought/sold/merged and the assets never change ownership

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#184

Post by scoopertrooper » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

> “Mostly this would be for freight,” says Mark Patton, who oversees transport plans for the Columbus region. Paul Judge, who runs a thriving plastics manufacturer, Axium, in the city, says he would welcome it if it meant he could run a big factory, cheaply, in one spot and ship his billions of units of shampoo bottles, hand-sanitisers and the like to markets in the region.

This makes zero sense to me. Surely, there must be a law of decreasing returns in supply chain latency. How could reducing delivery times times to hyperloop levels possibly provide a reasonable pay-off period, given the considerable cost of building and maintaining a subterranean vacuum tube train network?

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#185

Post by tomcam » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #114

disk0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first time I heard that term was in donoteat01's video on the loop[0], haven't got around to reading that post till now though (thanks for the reminder) [0] Elon Musk's "Loop" - It's bad, folks https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs

donoteat01 is legitimately one of the greatest techno-political YouTubers.

I agree and my politics are definitely not his

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#186

Post by tomcam » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #172

Robotbeat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple ways to solve this problem. It’s not a showstopper. 1) Bury the lines. Basically isothermal at depth. 2) insulate the tube and maintain stable temperature 3) use materials that don’t drastically change length with temperature 3) allow the tubes to change length. Put them on rollers. 4) use vacuum expansion joints just like us common in vacuum engineering. People act like vacuum is this new thing. P…

1) Kaa-ching! You can't just bury it as a gas tube. It has to be suspended in a tunnel to allow for ground movement compensation etc. 2) Kaa-ching! Both upfront and ongoing. 3) Kaa-ching! There is reason materials such as Invar are not found in railways, and cost is only one of them. 4) There is no precedent to using vacuum seals at that scale (or maintaining vacuum in that sort of volume). Elon Musk just says "let i…

Downvoted because of sarcasm? Honestly want to know, because it's all true, whether you like it or not.

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#187

Post by scoopertrooper » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #174

jbay808 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. A little hyperloop is nothing compared with CERN.

Cern beam tube is 6.3cm in diameter. And, you know, it didn't have trains zooming in it at 600m/s.

Also it's not even that long, it's only about 27 km, which pales in comparison to the globe-crossing aspirations of the hyperloopers.

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#188

Post by kanox » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

liability wrote: post #107

GuB-42 wrote: post #45

Can someone explain me how Hyperloop is supposed to work? There are so many things wrong with it. - Hyperloop is a vactrain, a century old idea, and to this day, despite numerous attempts, nothing came close to a working prototype, let alone something production-ready. - By contrast, high-speed trains carries millions of passengers every day in many parts of the world. They are safe, comfortable, and commercially via…

> "Can someone explain me how Hyperloop is supposed to work?" 1) Mass transit competes with cars. 2) Elon Musk sells cars. 3) High speed rail projects get derailed by people saying "but if we wait N years we could build a hyperloop instead" That's how Elon Musk intends Hyperloop to work.

This is one of the sillier Elon conspiracy theories.

Tesla competes with gas cars, not trains.

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#189

Post by simonebrunozzi » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

owenversteeg wrote: post #144

owenversteeg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "Gadgetbahn" article is great, but I do have one criticism. From the article: "If the idea is viable and the people behind it are competent, it should have attracted private investment, as there should be a potential to make profit selling the technology. After all, the proposal has been around for 23 years." High speed rail on a large scale is really something that has to come from the government. While there a…

Since this is getting to be a bit popular, I'm going to push the "technology really doesn't matter" point a bit more here: in 1955 the French built this [0] (just look at the picture!) and sent it down a traditional (wooden sleepers, rocks for ballast) rail line between Bordeaux and Irun [1]. It got up to 333 km/h, which is faster than any TGV currently operates in the year 2020 on their fancy concrete HSR tracks. [0…

Great!

Even better, this steam-powered train, reaching 126 mph (203 km/h) in year 1938! [0]

Why do I know about this? Because I played Railroad Tycoon as a teenager in ~1990, and got fascinated by trains.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard

Re: Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy

#190

Post by richardw » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

scoopertrooper wrote: post #184

> “Mostly this would be for freight,” says Mark Patton, who oversees transport plans for the Columbus region. Paul Judge, who runs a thriving plastics manufacturer, Axium, in the city, says he would welcome it if it meant he could run a big factory, cheaply, in one spot and ship his billions of units of shampoo bottles, hand-sanitisers and the like to markets in the region. This makes zero sense to me. Surely, there…

Let’s think it out (as in: add your thoughts). If it’s for goods, you don’t need a human size pod. You can scale pods to a size that represents goods that make sense to transport quickly. Obviously you want benefits that come from standardisation, like containers give you.

Fully automated transport between all major cities for anything less than a metre diameter? I think that looks like the future. Mail, Amazon, fresh produce, run as a stream rather than in large batches, automatically routed, staying off highways. More efficient stock management that can react to surges in demand. Charge for it with spot pricing so high value items get priority.

Edit: produce sounds a bit silly but taken to extremes might be interesting. When you deliver a ton of lettuce, it’s sold as a stream. Someone gets the fresh stuff and someone gets the three-day old stuff. If you can reorder every 30m, everyone gets fresh. Smaller shelves and stores, maybe no store except online.