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Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

reuters.com

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Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#31

Post by JPKab »

timerol wrote: post #19
peterwoerner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the goal with the vacuum is to get to even higher speed rail which can compete with airplanes for speed and convenience. The thought being, rail has to be clearly better than flying for it work. That said vacuum comes with many technical issues.

The Northeast Corridor is wildly profitable for Amtrak (based on operating costs), despite being significantly worse than flying, and often slower than driving. (It's faster than rush-hour driving, but that's about it.) Making fast-enough rail that connects useful places, and upgrading the speed of existing rail that meets the same criteria, is a much better strategy IMO than trying to do "better than flying" rail ba…

America lacks the population density, even in the northeastern corridor (which I have ridden by the way, DC to Boston) to make the investment make sense. By the way, the price was too high, and it kept having to slow down near every city.

Tokyo to Osaka, for instance, is a relatively short distance (300 miles), and both cities are larger than any city in the US, with Nagoya at the half-way point. The quantity of humans that can serve is an order of magnitude higher than in the same distance in the USA, even on the eastern seaboard.

It just doesn't work for us. The dramatically reduced costs of infrastructure for constructing mounted tubes on pylons, with each section being a fungible, mass produced item, makes rail obsolete. Understood that a lot of the tech is "unproven", but it's too promising to let curmudgeons focus on the stupid, expensive fool's errand of high-speed rail in the US because they are too unimaginative to see what's available to us in the future.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#32

Post by dragontamer »

bigbubba wrote: post #30
dragontamer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Northeast Corridor is wildly profitable for Amtrak (based on operating costs), despite being significantly worse than flying, and often slower than driving. (It's faster than rush-hour driving, but that's about it.) Worse than flying? I can take the train from Wash. DC to New York City Penn Station, visit my friends who live in the city by walking alone, and then come back home in time for dinner. (Broadway, Ti…

The trains are also more comfortable than [coach] plane seats by a long mile, and you don't have to deal with TSA either. Showing up at the station the minute the train rolls out is/was very feasible, unlike with flying. When I lived in Philly I used Amtrak every chance I got, whether I was going north to NY, south to DC, or west to Harrisburg. It was great. Very comfortable and low stress. And I could generally get…

When I was a student, all I could afford was the $10 or $20 bus, which was uncomfortable as all heck.

Now that I'm an adult with some money, I'm willing to pay $80 on the train ticket. I agree with you, way more leg room, much less stress.

There's a train that departs every hour in the day (and every 2-hours during midnight hours). I don't even need to plan anything. Just walk up to the train station and go. If you do that with airplanes, your costs double or more.

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Once you account for the ~1 hour in airport security, you're basically at the same speed as a train anyway. Then the significantly inferior location of LaGuardia vs Penn Station comes into play (you really can get to far more locations from Penn Station than LaGuardia).

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> The trains are also more comfortable than [coach] plane seats by a long mile

I did take the higher-end Acela Express once, just to see what its about. The prices are way higher, but you get an entire table for you (and your family).

Its very expensive, but if I were ever going to take children to NYC, I'd probably consider it.

I found a review for the Acela, it matches my experience: https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/acela-business-class/

When I took the Acela Express, families were out playing board games during the train ride. Train-level comfort is far superior to plane comfort.

I'd say Coach Train seats are comparable to Airplane first-class. And first-class Train seats are... well.. you can see the Acela review for yourself.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#33

Post by bigbubba »

JPKab wrote: post #22
soyiuz wrote: post #2

Hyperloop sounds like a bunch of hype. High speed trains are a thing already, as are MagLev trains, as are trains that go through tunnels, called the subway. The lack of their success in the US market has little to do with the technology itself and more to do with politics. The addition of vacuum tunnels does little to alleviate the administrative / financial challenges of our struggling train systems. Vacuum has few…

You're focused too much on the vacuum aspect of the tube, and not nearly enough on the fact that it's a tube, with enough self-support to be elevated on pylons and is an order of magnitude easier to build than pouring a foundation for maglev tracks. High speed rail track is dramatically more difficult and expensive to build than a hyperloop tube system. This was, from the beginning, the huge differentiator between th…

Hyperloop tubes are pipe dreams, nobody has actually ever build one, so all the pros you cite are purely speculative.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#35

Post by flavor8 »

soyiuz wrote: post #2

Hyperloop sounds like a bunch of hype. High speed trains are a thing already, as are MagLev trains, as are trains that go through tunnels, called the subway. The lack of their success in the US market has little to do with the technology itself and more to do with politics. The addition of vacuum tunnels does little to alleviate the administrative / financial challenges of our struggling train systems. Vacuum has few…

We don't have a solution for flying without oil based fuels (yet). We might get there, but it makes sense to try to develop much faster ground based transportation in parallel. If they efficiently can hit 600mph without risk of obstruction on the tracks, it becomes a contender. Money will become available to develop the infrastructure if flying becomes prohibitively expensive due to carbon offsets and/or dwindling reserves. As a 25-50 year plan it's fine.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#36

Post by nickik »

soyiuz wrote: post #2

Hyperloop sounds like a bunch of hype. High speed trains are a thing already, as are MagLev trains, as are trains that go through tunnels, called the subway. The lack of their success in the US market has little to do with the technology itself and more to do with politics. The addition of vacuum tunnels does little to alleviate the administrative / financial challenges of our struggling train systems. Vacuum has few…

The original Hyperloop concept avoids the things you mentioned.

It does not use vacuum:

> The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly hard to maintain a near vacuum in a room, let alone 700 miles (round trip) of large tube with dozens of station gateways and thousands of pods entering and exiting every day. All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the whole system stops working.

> However, a low pressure (vs. almost no pressure) system set to a level wherestandard commercial pumps could easily overcome an air leak and the transport pods could handle variable air density would be inherently robust.

It does not use MagLev:

> A viable technical solution is magnetic levitation; however the cost associated with material and construction is prohibitive.

There are still challenges, but because of the Hype any company doing anything related just calls their system 'Hyperloop' as well.

> It boggles the mind as to how investors are falling for this idea. > But perhaps marketing and branding are where Musk/Bronson's talents lie when it comes to high-speed rail? Please tell me otherwise, as I would love to see better rail infrastructure in the US.

Musk has not asked a single investor for money for Hyperloop. He likely knows its currently not a great investment.

Bronson is a guy who jumps on anything related to Musk and makes a bad copy of it that gather lots of money and then doesn't do much with it.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#37

Post by blisterpeanuts »

irrational wrote: post #4

When I think of WV, the main thing I think of is opioid addiction. Other than that and coal mining I don't really know anything else about WV. So, why WV?

It's probably less expensive than, say, Maryland or northern Virginia, more land available, cheaper labor, etc.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#38

Post by bigbubba »

nickik wrote: post #23
yabones wrote: post #3

I'm very skeptical of this concept because of how difficult it is to build and maintain a massive vacuum chamber that will experience that level of stress over its lifespan. As far as I know, the largest vacuum chamber in the world by volume is the SPF at NASA [1], which is only 37x30m in size. Building such a vessel hundreds of kilometres in length that would have bullet trains going through it multiple times a day…

I don't know about Virgin system but Elon Musk original Hyperloop paper clearly stated: > The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly hard to maintain a near vacuum in a room, let alone 700 miles (round trip) of large tube with dozens of station gateways and thousands of pods entering and exiting every day. All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the…

A modest low pressure in the tube would become high pressure in the tube when you start pushing a piston (Hyperloop car/capsule) down the tube. Where would all the air piling up in front go? This is why the original concept drawings had large fans on the front of the cars, however this concept seems to have been abandoned, leaving this problem unsolved.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#39

Post by djrogers »

JPKab wrote: post #31
timerol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Northeast Corridor is wildly profitable for Amtrak (based on operating costs), despite being significantly worse than flying, and often slower than driving. (It's faster than rush-hour driving, but that's about it.) Making fast-enough rail that connects useful places, and upgrading the speed of existing rail that meets the same criteria, is a much better strategy IMO than trying to do "better than flying" rail ba…

America lacks the population density, even in the northeastern corridor (which I have ridden by the way, DC to Boston) to make the investment make sense. By the way, the price was too high, and it kept having to slow down near every city. Tokyo to Osaka, for instance, is a relatively short distance (300 miles), and both cities are larger than any city in the US, with Nagoya at the half-way point. The quantity of huma…

> and both cities are larger than any city in the US,

While Tokyo is more populous (I assume that's what you mean by 'larger', if not Houston and LA have a few words for you) than any city here in the US, Osaka is not - however New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are far more spread out than could ever be possible in Japan.

Re: Virgin Hyperloop picks West Virginia to test high-speed transport system

#40

Post by jcranmer »

Brendinooo wrote: post #24
jcranmer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... West Virginia is nowhere near the NYC-DC axis. It is potentially on the route between DC and Chicago, but most crayon maps would rather hook the Midwest into the Northeast Corridor by going via Pittsburgh, the Juniata water gaps, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia instead of picking a more southerly route that hits Baltimore or DC.

The site selected is about three hours from DC. But yeah, nowhere near NYC. Interestingly enough, I was reading an article[0] about how Wheeling and Pittsburgh were competing to be the gateway to the west. When the National Road bypassed Pittsburgh, that was a big win for Wheeling. Most of the rail ended up going through Pittsburgh, though, and then the PA Turnpike opened a path through the mountains that further sol…

In the 1820s and the 1830s, after the opening of the Erie Canal, there was serious competition to figure out which Ohio River city would be the western terminus of various eastern seaboard cities. By the 1840s, however, it became clear that the answer to transportation was going to be the railroad, and terminating at the Ohio River made no sense; the real target was the western entrepôts such as Chicago.

From the perspective of the major NE railroads, the New York Central traveled through the same Mohawk Gap that the Erie Canal uses, and then travel along the south bank of Lake Erie. The Pennsylvania Railroad followed the route of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal system, that traveled Philadelphia-Pittsburgh via Altoona.

The B&O (originating from a state that had no access to the Ohio River) tried playing off Virginia and Pennsylvania against each other, but Pennsylvania stopped playing ball when it committed to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Virginia forced the B&O to pick Wheeling over Parkersburg to make it harder for B&O to bridge the Ohio River and push on to Chicago. (The B&O would eventually reach Parkersburg, cross the Ohio there, and continue to Chicago, but this happened a generation later).

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was based on the route of the South Pennsylvania Railroad, which was never built.

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