801–810 of 983 posts
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I see, fair enough, cheers for pointing that out. I'm in the UK and we're pretty well connected by rail, I wasn't expecting the alternative to be that ridiculous, just normal slower trains.
In the US, rail is optimized for freight, not people.
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It's kind of cool that Elon Musk is competing with himself here -- Hyperloop vs. a 3rd generation Tesla (which should be even cheaper than $45 one-way per car, including depreciation and electricity.) The real problem, even once you add self-driving cars, is I-5's limited capacity.
Isn't the real problem that it sucks to drive 7 hours?
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Even the most expensive TGV lines, have a per-km cost of around $20m/km in present dollars, and that's high enough to cause controversy. The bulk of the network was built for prices of $2-4m/km at the time, which is about $3-5.5m/km if you adjust for inflation. For a 700-km line like SF-LA, even the $20m outlier cost would work out to only $14 billion. Where's the 8x multiplier coming from? No TGV line has cost >$100…
France probably doesn't tie both its rail agency's hands behind its back with pointless environmental impact reports (the sole purpose of which seems to be to generate extra revenue for civil engineering contractors) and then let NIMBYs sue because this or that insignificant detail wasn't included.
Another factor at play is that TGV lines are purpose built for high-speed traffic (curve radius, climb rate, ...) while for example in Germany they are mostly shared. That makes the single TGV track cheaper, but you still ahve to built another track for lets say freight. If want another track, that is.
But the cool thing ist that TGV don't stop at every single village that happens to be the hometown of some polititian.
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you speak as though it needs to be run as a charity to be a game changer. I only mention that price point because that is just underneath the cost of flying, and that's how economics works. The operator will likely want to make as much profit as it can, while still sucking customers away from the airports. In the beginning, the operator will likely charge MORE than the airplanes, because the customer will be liable t…
The total price of flying may be higher than you think. Don't forget to include: * transporting you to and from the airport * getting to the airport ~1h before your flight * flight time of ~1:30 vs :30 on the Hyperloop If the Hyperloop works as Musk imagines, then it'll be more like hopping on the subway: go to the station in the middle of town, wait maybe 10min at most, ride, get off in the middle of town. On the ot…
Well, except that the termini aren't even close to the "middle of town" (at least, not of the cities motivating the plan). There way out on the fringes of the metro region, and unlike CA HSR, none of the costs of improving connecting systems are part of the plan.
The low cost estimate is due in large part because it gets you from the place people aren't to the place people don't want to be. (On either end)
Which is one (of the many) reasons its not a serious alternative to HSR -- even if the technology was ready, what Musk is proposing fails to do the hard part of transportation improvement: connecting the places people are with the places they want to get.
God damn it, Elon! It looks amazing but the logistics are just not adding up! 2-minute departure time scales? Good luck getting the future Hyperloop TSA to do that. But, the numbers don't quite crunch for this to be a legitimate business (unless we are talking no returns for 25 years charging customers an average of 1500-3000 dollars per ride .. but the demand is not there for those prices). Idea is awesome .. yes! V…
Vehicle loading and unloading terminals can fan out from the automated system that loads them and unloads them from the actual Tube.
For all of you whose panties get wet at the sound of Elon Musk's name Hyperloop is essentially just Aérotrain in a tube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A9rotrain This guy isn't really a genius, he's just rich.
And a self-promoter. This is how you maintain you image of a super-hero.
The Hyperloop is a cool idea, and I hope its the future. But anyone who believes this can be built, today, for $6BB is out of their mind.
"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…
The Republicans haven't yet adapted to the people of the State taking away their ability to roadblock budgets from the minority, which is a crutch they'd come to rely on to avoid dealing with the difficulty of trying to build a minimum winning coalition in CA while at the same time toeing the line of the national party.
I'd be surprised though if they haven't started returning to being an effective opposition by the 2014 elections.
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Are you guys serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Operational_systems_ser... Linimo, Shanghai, Daejon, and then all the test tracks, e.g. the transrapid in germany... Maglev is reality now . It simply happened to be built in China, Japan and South Korea rather than in the US.
It's got three short (1 km, 9 km, 30 km) deployments around 40 years after work first started. Are you saying that's the kind of deployment record Musk would like to see for his wundertechnology?
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I wouldn't be so fast to make that declaration. Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX are pretty influential players right now, and I don't think anyone reading this white paper are anything less than wide eyed at the possibility that the future of travel is written right here and we could build it, for cheaper than the current slow expensive system. Influential people and money people and politicians are all going to read th…
I hope you're right, but in reality most people haven't even heard of Elon Musk. I've had to explain to many highly educated people what he has done, what SpaceX is, what Tesla is etc. While he's been rather successful so far, he's not in the clear when it comes to either of his companies right now, he's not exactly at the Gates level of success yet. I'm rooting for him though, he has the potential to be one of the m…