I'm still wondering how a neighbourhood will react if you want to build two massive tubes through it. I can't imagine people will like those tubes.
Yes, you could put them underground but this will increase your costs.
Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
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Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#72I'm still wondering how a neighbourhood will react if you want to build two massive tubes through it. I can't imagine people will like those tubes. Yes, you could put them underground but this will increase your costs.
Wasn't one of the ideas to put them through the existing highway infrastructure, elevated in the meridian?
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#73There's a palpable excitement around Hyperloop and I can't wait to know if this will reshape our world or not. One of the largest problem I can see is not technical. The consensus is that a "standard" Hyperloop track (between 2 cities, 300 to 800km apart) would have a ~1,500 passengers/hour max capacity. High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. Even if Hyperloop managed to get built…
These are good points — many have tended to look at just the consumer applications. It may be that the economics lend themselves more to industrial transport or logistics than they do to moving bodies.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#74I know it's a cynical point of view, but IMO these companies working on Hyperloop is akin to Hooli building inside out compression. I don't think it's going to work.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last I checked, wasn't the project over budget and hitting close to $100Bn in costs? Honestly, even $50Bn sounds like chump change for a project as ambitious as the Hyperloop. Nearly all large scale public infrastructure projects end up costing billions of dollars over estimated costs anyway.
If you're saying that the HSR project is over budget, you're right, but you're not helping the Hyperloop argument. The point is that if the HSR people can't get something done for $X, it's unlikely that Musk can do something even more ambitious for $X/10.
IIRC, one of the big sources of cheap money is expecting that easements for giant elevated tubes would be available for much less than the land value of the required land underneath.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#76> Except it is really, really expensive. > Mr Musk says the cost of building the route would be in the region of $6bn (£4.1bn), an estimate most agree is extremely conservative. I'm pretty sure that should say "extremely optimistic". Musk's estimate of $6bn is over 10x cheaper than the high speed train line cost for the same route
If I remember right, part of the reason why Musk estimated that the hyperloop would be so cheap was that he assumed it could be built on highway meridians for free, and the tracks were to end end far outside the city centers. It also had a fraction of passenger capacity and number of stations as high speed rail. It seems likely that for the same amount of service as high speed rail, the hyperloop would be a lot more…
Maybe that's why he's not building it himself?
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Efficient != cheaper. The only thing that matters is what people are willing to pay, and that's not much for medium distance. And for the billions it costs to install the track in the first place, you can buy several airlines and operate them for years.
Cheaper != better. It's important to look at the hyperloop in the context in which it was proposed. This is California and environmental aspects need to be taken into account. Airlines are a major source of CO2 and California wants a more environmentally friendly solution. There is a proposed high-speed rail project with a $10B initial estimate that's sure to at least double by the time the project is complete. The h…
What does "better" mean?
Outside of governmental regulations, the market is what determines progress and there isn't much push by consumers for environmental impacts. They just want cheap and reliable transit. Price also wins over speed (and it's been show things like wifi have a greater effect on travel comfort than speed).
Unless you cut down the travel time significantly, it just doesn't matter. And at those speeds there are more engineering, operational and logistical costs that increase the ticket price so the value is reduced further. I also don't see how the engineering for a pioneering vactrain concept will somehow be cheaper than existing understood infrastructure.
Unless you can charge $50 and get from LA to SF in 30 mins while building the entire thing for just a few billion, this won't work.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#78Just imagine the TSA line for the hyperloop. You'll have to arrive days ahead of time.
Why? Wouldn't it be more like a train than a plane? A terrorist would only be able to kill ~28 people at a time (1 pod), compared to >200 for a plane
Blowing up inside a tube would be a lot more expensive than blowing up a train on the tracks.
But then again, someone could just plant a bomb on the outside of the tube so I guess it's moot.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#79There's a palpable excitement around Hyperloop and I can't wait to know if this will reshape our world or not. One of the largest problem I can see is not technical. The consensus is that a "standard" Hyperloop track (between 2 cities, 300 to 800km apart) would have a ~1,500 passengers/hour max capacity. High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. Even if Hyperloop managed to get built…
> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour.
How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32 Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry 5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is completely off (even taking into account the fact that Eurostar can go from London, Paris and Brussels) and 1500 passengers/hour is comparable to the number of passengers the Eurostar carries in an hour.
[0] http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-inf...
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#80I'm still wondering how a neighbourhood will react if you want to build two massive tubes through it. I can't imagine people will like those tubes. Yes, you could put them underground but this will increase your costs.
Wasn't one of the ideas to put them through the existing highway infrastructure, elevated in the meridian?
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