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In Brazil the building of a new high speed train between São Paulo and Rio was just delayed for the third for for lack of interested companies to build the system. The estimated cost is at US$ 17B. There are not earthquakes in Brazil and the length should be around 500km. It seems like a better candidate than SF-LA. just saying,
At 120 miles long[1] compared to the SFLA ~350 miles, a UK hyperloop would be even cheaper, especially since the major cost is the tube itself. A back of the envelope calculation[2] gives a cost of about £1.9bn ($2.9bn) which is suspiciously, almost absurdly, cheap.
If anyone can find any flaws in this argument (specifically related to e.g. UK-specific issues/laws that I may be unaware of) I'd be very interested to hear them!
[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-hs2s... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HS2 [2] using average cost values from the pdf, not accounting for differences in pylon height/amount of tunnel required etc.
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what happens when you develop unexpected gastric issues mid-30 minute journey?
The same thing that happens when you develop gastric issues on a 30-minute helicopter tour, as the minister in a wedding ceremony, or in a dentist's chair.
Thought this was amazing: $20 for a one-way, 35 minute trip from SF to LA.
Well it has to beat a standard commuter car (~$45 one way@34mpg) by a significant margin to be useful for consumers. What about freight?
The real problem, even once you add self-driving cars, is I-5's limited capacity.
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That's an argument in favor of a useful HSR system. But politics have resulted California's HSR system being deliberately pessimized; it may do more harm than good to the HSR cause, right?
“The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones.” -Chinese Proverb I've lived in China for over 3 years, and spend countless hours riding the HSR system. HSR combines the speed of a plane, with the cost and convenience of a regular bus. Traveling through the countryside of China at 380km/h made me feel like I was in the future. Coming home and seeing the the sad state of our infrastruct…
The problem with CAHSR isn't the "HSR" part, it's California's utterly dysfunctional political system, and going faster and putting the track up on pylons isn't going to cut through that morass without a stronger group of people standing up and saying YES, WE NEED THIS.
So, it's a two-lane highway where the cars are 5 miles apart? How many people will be able to use this thing?
"The Hyperloop is sized to allow expansion as the network becomes increasingly popular. The capacity would be 840 passengers per hour which more than sufficient to transport all of the 6 million passengers traveling between Los Angeles and San Francisco are as per year. In addition, this accounts for 70% of those travelers to use the Hyperloop during rush hour. The lower cost of traveling on Hyperloop is likely to re…
It's very interesting that this is a SpaceX project. Why not Tesla, or another company entirely?
This is not going to happen. It is a very rich, successful engineer musing at what might be possible if we thought radically different about transportation. I'm as big a fan of Elon Musk's projects as anyone, but the weight assigned to these napkin calculations is ridiculous. [Edit: If anything, this might lead people to take this type of eccentric and radical design more seriously. But given the criticism Musk's eng…
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The tube is not nearly as wide or heavy as a traditional train, so I don't know that it's fair to say that you can just as easily put a train up on pylons as you could this tube. It's interesting to think about, but also there are probably much higher costs associated with a completely untested system like this than estimated. I wouldn't be surprised if this system, if it actually worked at all, ended up being more e…
But why make it a traditional train? Just build a lightweight train if it gets you all of the hyperloop's cost advantages without the additional costs and complexity of a tube?
"In the case of the Hyperloop, Musk started focusing on public transportation after he grew disenchanted with the plans for California’s high-speed rail system." And who says that big government stifles entrepreneurial innovation? If ALL Musk does with the Hyperloop announcement is shed more light on the potential debacle that is to be our $70b+ high-speed rail in California, we owe him a debt of gratitude. PS - Dire…
Interesting point that big government provoked the advancement of the hyperloop idea - counterintuitive idea, and clearly yes. but any idea like this will need government cooperation. The real test of big government will be how they respond to the hyperloop. magic response: "of course we may be wrong, we'll look into this immediately." and then they decide to build it. likely answer: praise, perhaps even an evaluatio…