You listed something you saw as a problem despite already having a solution in several types of systems. A sudden change of a max of 1 atmosphere is not a lot and there's nothing to suggest it would cause a single structural problem. We can build structures that can easily withstand many times that without even batting an eye. And we can also design systems that don't introduce air all at once if necessary. Again, not insurmountable.

 

People come up with problems and state them as though those involved had never thought of them before. The designers are smart and know what they're doing and anything you can think of they've thought of and then some.

Hyperloop for freight:

 

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/08/dubai-hyperloop-freight/496394/

A Kink in the Hyperloop:

 

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/10/the-kink-in-elon-musks-hyperloop.html

It seems Central Ohio will literally do anything to avoid building rail... :roll:

 

Columbus semi-finalist for futuristic, high-speed transportation system

 

It sounds like science fiction, but the Chicago-to-Columbus-to-Pittsburgh route is one of 35 international semifinalists in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Hyperloop One, the California-based company holding the competition, aims to make the fast, easy shipment of people and goods via tube happen. The company says its transportation mode combines the speed of air with the reliability of rail.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2017/01/09/columbus-semi-finalist-for-futuristic-high-speed-transportation-system.html

Just visited Hyperloop One's HQ in September. Can't wait to see what the future holds for this company.

What a goddamn joke. 

You'd think that even if this technology pans out, that wouldn't be a case for avoiding building rail in Columbus itself for local use.  But whatevs.

If Wi-Fi poles in Linden are being used as justification for not building rail in Columbus, you know they will definitely use this idea to avoid it.

Hyperloop is a form of rail, is it not?  In function it doesn't seem all that different from a traditional subway.

Sort of, except that a subway is among the highest-density, shortest-distance type of enclosed transportation, whereas the Hyperloop would be the exact opposite.  In most subway-served areas, if you get out and walk, it seldom takes more than 10-15 minutes to walk from one subway station to the next one along the same lines, barring an underwater tunnel or some other major obstruction.  Hyperloop technology, even in concept (obviously we have no real-world demonstration yet), would be designed for regional-rail distances or further because it takes a little bit of time to get up to top speed and there's not much point in a subway system that runs at near-supersonic speeds.

 

The Hyperloop could also run along the ground or not far above it; it's not like we'd actually be tunneling from here to Pittsburgh or Chicago.

Sort of, except that a subway is among the highest-density, shortest-distance type of enclosed transportation, whereas the Hyperloop would be the exact opposite.  In most subway-served areas, if you get out and walk, it seldom takes more than 10-15 minutes to walk from one subway station to the next one along the same lines, barring an underwater tunnel or some other major obstruction.  Hyperloop technology, even in concept (obviously we have no real-world demonstration yet), would be designed for regional-rail distances or further because it takes a little bit of time to get up to top speed and there's not much point in a subway system that runs at near-supersonic speeds.

 

The Hyperloop could also run along the ground or not far above it; it's not like we'd actually be tunneling from here to Pittsburgh or Chicago.

 

Yeah, HSR is probably a more apt comparison.

Well it (in concept, since one doesn't exist yet) is certainly "fixed guideway".  Switch tracks have always been a sticking point for monorails as compared to traditional rail (monorails can't really have crossovers at the end of each station like most transit systems do which permit single-tracking during maintenance or temporary problems).  It appears that a hypertube, among its various glaring shortcomings as compared to traditional high speed rail, is that switch tracks will require the thing to completely stop and perhaps be shuttled into a separate tube by a crane or something like that. 

 

Everyone is just focusing on the possible top speed of this technology and not the total landscape.  Between this and several other things the Musk-man has been involved in, the guy is Trump-esque in his wild self-serving predictions. 

Everyone is just focusing on the possible top speed of this technology and not the total landscape.  Between this and several other things the Musk-man has been involved in, the guy is Trump-esque in his wild self-serving predictions. 

 

I think that's unfair.  He himself said that it's a further-future concept, which is why he released the preliminary work for basically anyone to pick up and run with.  He's never implied that any of his companies see a way to make it happen in the near future.  Tesla is doing very well and SolarCity was doing at least sort-of OK before Tesla bought it.

The best minds in the world converge on Musk's playground, mediocrity ensues:

 

http://www.dailynews.com/science/20170129/hyperloop-competition-brings-new-mass-transit-technology-to-life-in-hawthorne?source=most_viewed

 

 

It is indeed bothersome that City of Columbus officials get overly excited about "smart city" technology and hyperloop dreams -- and that current needs for intra-city and inter-city rail aren't on their radar. Despite my skepticism about the futuristic gambits, I try to keep an open mind, and I've talked to the ED and the transportation director at Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission about this (MORPC has a hand in both applications). They both stress that their interest in Smart Cities and Hyperloop are not at the expense of their commitment to local and regional conventional rail. Two good points come out of my conversations with them:

 

1) Environmental Impact and any other studies needed for Hyperloop would also be relevant for conventional Columbus-Chicago rail (basically every city on the corridor except Columbus is on board)

2) Making the first cut from among 2,600 worldwide applications for a Hyperloop pilot project lends considerable credibility to the viability of a Pittsburgh-Columbus-Chicago rail corridor. So, if or when Columbus fails to make the final cut, the justification for the route remains.

It just seems like Ginther is all "Sorry, no rail until Central Ave. is cleaned up." then it will be "Oh, well now Mill Run is starting to look bad; we have to do something about that."

The best minds in the world converge on Musk's playground, mediocrity ensues:

 

http://www.dailynews.com/science/20170129/hyperloop-competition-brings-new-mass-transit-technology-to-life-in-hawthorne?source=most_viewed

 

 

 

From the article:

 

Meanwhile, Musk has been promoting a tunnel-building project on his Twitter account for weeks that began construction Friday next to the Hawthorne airport, at Crenshaw Boulevard and 120th Street. The tunnel will be 50 feet deep and at least 50 feet wide, according to city permits obtained for the construction.

 

But Musk said he hasn’t decided exactly what he’s going to build, other than a walkway for SpaceX employees to easily get to their parking lot across the street.

 

The future is here!  :-D :-D :-D :-D

Musk, like usual, is just creating a huge distraction while he rolls out a scam.  He acts like he's all about science but he's really all about money -- free money from the government.  That he started with paypal should indicate that he probably knows more and loves more about finance and Hollywood accounting than rockets and race cars and pneumatic tubes. 

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html

 

:roll:

ridiculous a 3Cs route got shut out of the 11 hyperloop finalists. thats such a gimmee. was it even considered? the chi-cols-pits route made the finalists cut:

 

https://electrek.co/2017/04/06/hyperloop-one-us-routes/

ridiculous a 3Cs route got shut out of the 11 hyperloop finalists. thats such a gimmee. was it even considered? the chi-cols-pits route made the finalists cut:

 

https://electrek.co/2017/04/06/hyperloop-one-us-routes/

 

Pfft...I wouldn't be too concerned about this. These routings are ridiculous. Vegas-Reno? Denver-Dallas? Cheyenne-Houston? Even Seattle-Portland, what problem is Musk solving by starting at these places first? Yet on the East Coast the only routing is Boston-Somerset? Just silly. Even a gondola makes more sense than this.

Chicago to Columbus in 30 minutes? 'Hyperloop' backers make their pitch

 

 

The company tasked with creating a speedy new form of transportation that would connect Chicago to Pittsburgh – through Columbus – says it can be ready in as soon as five years.

 

More below:

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2017/04/07/chicago-to-columbus-in-30-minutes-hyperloop.html

https://www.citylab.com/tech/2017/04/with-its-first-test-track-hyperloop-moves-forward/522150/

 

Hilarious.  So they want to move freight?  Well, a container would have to be able to be lifted onto a trailer at the end, and could only be 10-foot diameter at most to fit on a standard truck.  But inside that 10-foot circle you could only really fit one standard 48 wide by maybe 60-inch high skid.  So then you'd have trucks both heading to and from the hyperloop with unbelievably small loads. 

 

A 53' semi fits as many as 52 skids (loaded 2x2).  So a 53-foot trailer with a freight "capsule" could only fit 13 skids. 

 

This is such a goddamn joke.  There is no market for this. 

 

 

I'm also surprised that Berger from MIT was arguing for building it around the peripheries of cities rather than into centralized, downtown locations.  I get the point that much of commuter traffic is periphery-to-periphery, but my understanding of Hyperloop technology is also that it takes a while to get up to speed and then to get down to a stop, meaning that it ideally works similar to an express train model (fewest possible stops).

 

My gut still tells me that the most sensible stops would be at either airports or on the edges of downtowns.  I get that it shouldn't be right in the middle of downtown because you need room for last-mile transportation (fleets of Ubers, taxis, buses, etc.) to crowd around and pick up lots of passengers.  Airports obviously already have that infrastructure in place.  But there are places near most major downtowns where that could be done as well.

 

Why would a hyperloop to Columbus want to locate in, for example, Galloway and Pickerington rather than the Arena District?  I just don't see it.

^If we're moving humans, driving to the north edge of Cincinnati to then be shot to the south edge of Cleveland makes no sense.  That's why there isn't a commercial flight between those two cities.  You would have a half hour drive to the tube, a half our check-in, a half hour getting shot through a sewer pipe, at least 15 minutes getting out of the sewer pipe, and then a half hour is some magical driverless taxi to your in-town destination.  It's not saving any real time versus traditional flying and in some cases wouldn't be much faster than driving. 

 

Again, if they want to move freight using the standards we already have in place, they will need a pipe much larger than the one they are planning.  Do the math on being able to take a traditional 40-foot container, putting that in a "container capsule", and shooting it to some market that can't already be reached by truck, which is absolutely nowhere in the United States.  Remember, fright traffic would be in competition with those driverless trucks we keep hearing about.

https://www.citylab.com/tech/2017/04/with-its-first-test-track-hyperloop-moves-forward/522150/

 

Hilarious.  So they want to move freight?  Well, a container would have to be able to be lifted onto a trailer at the end, and could only be 10-foot diameter at most to fit on a standard truck.  But inside that 10-foot circle you could only really fit one standard 48 wide by maybe 60-inch high skid.  So then you'd have trucks both heading to and from the hyperloop with unbelievably small loads. 

 

A 53' semi fits as many as 52 skids (loaded 2x2).  So a 53-foot trailer with a freight "capsule" could only fit 13 skids. 

 

This is such a goddamn joke.  There is no market for this. 

 

There are at least three sizes of tubes being discussed, including one that would accommodate a standard container.

We needs to take Musk's name off the title. He's not involved with what's going on now.

 

I believe the top speed of the Hyperloop so far has been an underwhelming 110mph on a track with no curves. Dreams and ideas are great and all but this won't be operating by 2022, that's for sure.

https://www.citylab.com/tech/2017/04/with-its-first-test-track-hyperloop-moves-forward/522150/

 

Hilarious.  So they want to move freight?  Well, a container would have to be able to be lifted onto a trailer at the end, and could only be 10-foot diameter at most to fit on a standard truck.  But inside that 10-foot circle you could only really fit one standard 48 wide by maybe 60-inch high skid.  So then you'd have trucks both heading to and from the hyperloop with unbelievably small loads. 

 

A 53' semi fits as many as 52 skids (loaded 2x2).  So a 53-foot trailer with a freight "capsule" could only fit 13 skids. 

 

This is such a goddamn joke.  There is no market for this. 

 

There are at least three sizes of tubes being discussed, including one that would accommodate a standard container.

 

The technology (which doesn't exist yet) doesn't necessarily scale up without an exponential increase in costs.  A standard shipping container is almost 12 feet high, meaning the diameter of a freight tube would need to be 18-19 feet.  The test tube they've built is only 11 feet.  So we're talking about a tube with a circumference of 70 feet as opposed to 119 feet.  At least double the material and perhaps triple since the larger tube would need to be thicker and have more robust support. 

 

So create a visual, imagine a pair of 119-foot roadways (like an 8-9 lane interstate highway) rolled into a burrito but made out of an inch of steel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So create a visual, imagine a pair of 119-foot roadways (like an 8-9 lane interstate highway) rolled into a burrito but made out of an inch of steel. 

 

 

Remember, in the electric mind of the Muskman, somehow this massive steel burrito is cheaper than four rails connected by concrete ties sitting on some gravel. 

 

Not necessarily cheaper.  Better.  The Model 3 is preordered like crazy even though it's a bit on the expensive side for a middle class daily driver ($35,000 before options).  And the Model S can top $100,000 even without the performance package, and the P### models (with the performance package) have base prices north of $100,000, but they're among the best-selling luxury cars in the world.  If a hyperloop really did offer a 30-minute or even 60-minute trip from Columbus to Chicago, that would beat any train and honestly even any airplane, especially counting runway and gate time.

 

But of course this technology isn't expected to actually be mature for a long while yet.  It's nice to see people taking those first steps now, though.

Not necessarily cheaper.  Better.  The Model 3 is preordered like crazy even though it's a bit on the expensive side for a middle class daily driver ($35,000 before options).  And the Model S can top $100,000 even without the performance package, and the P### models (with the performance package) have base prices north of $100,000, but they're among the best-selling luxury cars in the world.  If a hyperloop really did offer a 30-minute or even 60-minute trip from Columbus to Chicago, that would beat any train and honestly even any airplane, especially counting runway and gate time.

 

But of course this technology isn't expected to actually be mature for a long while yet.  It's nice to see people taking those first steps now, though.

 

Better and unaffordable to most. Yeah, that's not going to work well in hauling cargo or mass transit especially if the tube can't eclipse 200mph yet.

 

Flight time to Chicago from Columbus is 45 minutes on average. Throw in 10 minutes of taxi on either end at it's 65 minutes. Going to need beat that time by a good amount if the plan is to charge a premium. Good luck!

 

I had this thought today -- no way this thing can be built in Ohio (or especially California) without handing over the power of eminent domain to the builder.  This was done back in the 1800s for the railroads -- but that's back when they were built primarily through virgin forest or across large tract farms.  Just imagine the negotiating and legal work necessary to acquire a 300-mile right-of-way between Downtown LA and Downtown SF!  The California High Speed Rail Authority does have the power of eminent domain and has acquired thousands of easements across the state but no way is referendum-happy California going to turn that power over to Elon Musk or another cold-blooded capitalist. 

 

 

Since this got bumped - https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15958224/hyperloop-one-first-full-system-test-devloop

 

Hyperloop One had its first full-system test of ultrafast transportation system

^Typical Musk bluster.  Whatever that device is, it is not a pod carrying 30 passengers.  Not a single live person has yet volunteered to ride in a hyperloop pod because a pod hasn't even been built or tested unmanned yet.  But Musk acts like this thing is ready to go.

 

This concept is crippled even more dramatically than a monorail when it comes to switch tracks and stations.  They can't easily do spurs or passing sidings.  They can't easily do intermediate stations or terminal stations.  It's telling that they haven't suggested it for the Northeast Corridor -- they know they can't move even a fraction of the passengers that use Penn Station just for intercity trains.  They'd have to dig a giant multi-billion cavern there or under downtown SF. 

The Hyperloop is a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb idea. It is a chimera that distracts us from what really is a simple and modest goal: dependable daily rail service between neighboring cities. An 85 mph daily train from Cincinnati to Cleveland or Chicago equipped with wifi would be an incredible asset. We as a society tend to design overly complicated technical solutions to problems when a political or social solution makes far more sense.

 

It's not going to work, and I don't know why people want it to work so badly. 

 

 

Said every naysayer about steam engines, automobiles, airplanes, high speed rail, maglev, electric cars, faster-than-sound air travel, the space shuttle, landing on the moon, intercontinental railroads, a plethora of "world's largest" ships, the space station, the construction of early skyscrapers, the Hoover Dam, an endless stream of bridges, the internet, wifi, smartphones, laptops, etc., etc., etc.

 

Failing to see the benefit of a major increase in the speed of land travel requires a complete inability to grasp the benefit of technological advance while living in a world that has relied on technological advances that people like yourself claimed wouldn't work.

 

If it's going to work you need scalability. Think of the amount of passengers that fly in the United States alone. People don't really comprehend it. Now transfer that total to users who can only use certain tubes to travel from place to place. If one capsule breaks down, then what? A bigger tube? More tubes? How many tubes will it take for travel between Cincy and C'bus? What about DC to Boston? Or Chicago to Denver? What about State College? Bangor? Cheyenne? Bismarck? Fairbanks? All these cities have air service. Do they get tubes? Now think of the NIMBY urban areas that won't want 700-mph "trains" moving through their neighborhoods. Think of the safety hurdles. The security issues. I don't think Elon Musk really has on this one. It looks cool don't get me wrong. This would be great for connecting areas on another planet that is mainly flat, like the Moon.

 

When commercial airlines started a roundtrip transcontinental flight cost almost as much as a new car.  The airlines carried a combined 6,000 passengers in 1930.  And look at them now...flying buses, complete with the "people of Wal Mart."  We have to start somewhere. 

The Hyperloop is a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb idea. It is a chimera that distracts us from what really is a simple and modest goal: dependable daily rail service between neighboring cities. An 85 mph daily train from Cincinnati to Cleveland or Chicago equipped with wifi would be an incredible asset. We as a society tend to design overly complicated technical solutions to problems when a political or social solution makes far more sense.

 

It's not going to work, and I don't know why people want it to work so badly. 

 

 

Said every naysayer about steam engines, automobiles, airplanes, high speed rail, maglev, electric cars, faster-than-sound air travel, the space shuttle, landing on the moon, intercontinental railroads, a plethora of "world's largest" ships, the space station, the construction of early skyscrapers, the Hoover Dam, an endless stream of bridges, the internet, wifi, smartphones, laptops, etc., etc., etc.

 

Failing to see the benefit of a major increase in the speed of land travel requires a complete inability to grasp the benefit of technological advance while living in a world that has relied on technological advances that people like yourself claimed wouldn't work.

 

If it's going to work you need scalability. Think of the amount of passengers that fly in the United States alone. People don't really comprehend it. Now transfer that total to users who can only use certain tubes to travel from place to place. If one capsule breaks down, then what? A bigger tube? More tubes? How many tubes will it take for travel between Cincy and C'bus? What about DC to Boston? Or Chicago to Denver? What about State College? Bangor? Cheyenne? Bismarck? Fairbanks? All these cities have air service. Do they get tubes? Now think of the NIMBY urban areas that won't want 700-mph "trains" moving through their neighborhoods. Think of the safety hurdles. The security issues. I don't think Elon Musk really has on this one. It looks cool don't get me wrong. This would be great for connecting areas on another planet that is mainly flat, like the Moon.

TI

When commercial airlines started a roundtrip transcontinental flight cost almost as much as a new car.  The airlines carried a combined 6,000 passengers in 1930.  And look at them now...flying buses, complete with the "people of Wal Mart."  We have to start somewhere. 

 

Right, this really wasn't my point. The airlines have the entire sky below 40,000 feet to route their aircraft. For the Hyperloop to work on a mass scale it will require digging through thousands of mountains and plowing over plenty of farmland because the tubes can't really bend. Placing these tubes everywhere can't be done without environmental assessments. We already have a massive highway system. Now we're going to compliment that with a series of tubes all over the place? Imagine tubes that will have to run through Native American Reservations to make a Midwest to West Coast route work. Look at the furor over the XL pipeline. It's going to have difficulties.

 

I'm entertained by some (not you Cleburger) who have a problem with adding a lane on an expressway or a runway at an airport yet seem to have little issues with the idea we can lay a tube over protected parkland in the Rockies to have faster transportation from Denver to Vail because it's a Musk idea.

 

Another issue is safety. Flying wasn't the safest mode of transportation at first but it eventually happened over time as government regulators and the airlines put a system in place which made it that way. The Hyperloop is at Wright Brothers stage in terms of safety. These machines have transported exactly zero people and regulators know this. They're not going let a ground vehicle speed around at Mach 1 and pretend it's OK because some think Elon Musk is a genius. It doesn't work that way. At those speeds, safety needs to be almost guaranteed not only because it needs to pass safety protocols but because the airlines have set a very high safety standard for high speed mass transportation. In other words, nobody will ride the Hyperloop even if the crash/malfunction risk is as low as 1-2% because airlines have brought their safety numbers to well below 1%. Look at the DC METRO system as an example of how several crashes and system failures have turned off a lot commuters from riding it. And METRO is slow moving compared to what we are talking about here.

 

 

I understand, and agree with you to a point.  The tunneling technology doesn't exist today, but perhaps could in the future.  In the meantime it's worth exploring, and maybe it could be of use on routes that are heavily congested, both in the air and on the ground (the existing NE corridor or the I5 in CA come to mind). 

I wish I could turn my acid trips into capital like Musk. Then my '70s McDonaldLand Amusement Park idea would raise $10 billion. Fry Guys would be whoosed all over the park where needed by tubes.

I'm willing to assume that they'll figure out how to build and get this thing to work point-to-point with a single capsule headed in each direction.  But I have yet to see anyone propose a workable switch track, intermediate station, or high capacity terminal station.  The ones I have seen look clumsy and slow.  The big HSR trains have upwards of 1,000 passengers, if not more than 1,000.  They'd need to be firing 30-passenger pods every minute or two to equal the capacity of HSR.  That leaves virtually no margin for error. 

 

Look at the sheer numbers of passengers the big-time modern rail systems are moving.  Up to 400 freight and passenger trains travel through the Chunnel per day.  It's absolutely comical to think these tubes can compete with that. 

I understand, and agree with you to a point.  The tunneling technology doesn't exist today, but perhaps could in the future.  In the meantime it's worth exploring, and maybe it could be of use on routes that are heavily congested, both in the air and on the ground (the existing NE corridor or the I5 in CA come to mind). 

 

Cleburger, I agree with your point here. I've always thought that aircraft and trains shouldn't be competing forms of transportation but complimentary. More HSR to crowded corridors to get aircraft out of the sky over California and especially the NE, I'm totally down with that. Japan does a great job with this.

 

That being said when you look at the project winners, the routes are designed in a way that make it look like they're building a national network to replace airlines. Houston-Cheyenne? In fact they're not even proposing Boston-DC! WTF? Good luck with trying to kill air travel, much easier said than done.

I'm willing to assume that they'll figure out how to build and get this thing to work point-to-point with a single capsule headed in each direction.  But I have yet to see anyone propose a workable switch track, intermediate station, or high capacity terminal station.  The ones I have seen look clumsy and slow.  The big HSR trains have upwards of 1,000 passengers, if not more than 1,000.  They'd need to be firing 30-passenger pods every minute or two to equal the capacity of HSR.  That leaves virtually no margin for error. 

 

Look at the sheer numbers of passengers the big-time modern rail systems are moving.  Up to 400 freight and passenger trains travel through the Chunnel per day.  It's absolutely comical to think these tubes can compete with that. 

 

It's just the straight line point-to-point aspect that blows my mind on how difficult this will be. Think of CVG and how many cities that airport serves. Now imagine a straight tube that needs to serve all those destinations from a central point in Downtown Cincy. Even if you can connect a few cities in a single tube you'll still need a massive amount of tunnels to get to all those destinations.

I understand, and agree with you to a point.  The tunneling technology doesn't exist today, but perhaps could in the future.  In the meantime it's worth exploring, and maybe it could be of use on routes that are heavily congested, both in the air and on the ground (the existing NE corridor or the I5 in CA come to mind). 

 

Cleburger, I agree with your point here. I've always though that aircraft and trains shouldn't be competing forms of transportation but complimentary. More HSR to crowded corridors to get aircraft out of the sky over California and especially the NE, I'm totally down with that. Japan does a great job with this idea.

 

That being said when you look at the project winners, the routes are designed in a way that make it look like they're building a national network to replace airlines. Houston-Cheyenne? In fact they're not even proposing Boston-DC! WTF? Good luck with trying to kill air travel, much easier said than done.

 

Remember as most pilots will tell you, it's not crowded in the sky.  Plenty of room for everyone.  It's landing and taking off that becomes an issue! :)  Maybe the future will see a combination of high capacity tubes and advanced aircraft with STOVL capabilities (eliminating the need for long runways). 

 

At this point it's all still futuristic speculation.  Houston to Cheyenne makes zero sense, but Houston to Dallas is needed tomorrow.

I understand, and agree with you to a point.  The tunneling technology doesn't exist today, but perhaps could in the future.  In the meantime it's worth exploring, and maybe it could be of use on routes that are heavily congested, both in the air and on the ground (the existing NE corridor or the I5 in CA come to mind). 

 

Cleburger, I agree with your point here. I've always though that aircraft and trains shouldn't be competing forms of transportation but complimentary. More HSR to crowded corridors to get aircraft out of the sky over California and especially the NE, I'm totally down with that. Japan does a great job with this idea.

 

That being said when you look at the project winners, the routes are designed in a way that make it look like they're building a national network to replace airlines. Houston-Cheyenne? In fact they're not even proposing Boston-DC! WTF? Good luck with trying to kill air travel, much easier said than done.

 

Remember as most pilots will tell you, it's not crowded in the sky.  Plenty of room for everyone.  It's landing and taking off that becomes an issue! :)  Maybe the future will see a combination of high capacity tubes and advanced aircraft with STOVL capabilities (eliminating the need for long runways). 

 

At this point it's all still futuristic speculation.  Houston to Cheyenne makes zero sense, but Houston to Dallas is needed tomorrow.

 

The routing is Houston-Dallas-Denver-Cheyenne. With two extra stops compared to flying and virtually no air traffic over the High Plains connecting Houston-Cheyenne is loser right out of the gate. Even Dallas-Denver isn't that busy of a corridor, especially compared to Boston-DC.

I could see this happening in an area like the Persian Gulf where Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar and Bahrain and Kuwait are sort-of in a straight line.  The respective Kings hold title to all of the land, and there are basically zero geographic features along the coast (Bahrain is obviously an island).  But I still struggle to see what dominating advantage this holds over HSR.  Electric rail is already very energy-efficient, so the hyperloop would need to use almost zero energy for that to be an economic motivator. 

 

What people don't get about high speed trains is that not only is there little rolling resistance on steel rails, but the cars pulled by an engine essentially draft behind it.  The aerodynamics of trains start suffering around 300mph from what I've read, which is why there has been little push toward maglev technology or building conventional trains that cruise at those speeds. 

 

The California HSR is designed to cruise at 220mph.  A lot of expense and track length was added to the project by routing it through the Central Valley cities of Fresno, Bakersfield, and the rest.  There is a ton of bridge, wall, and culvert construction going in those places as we speak.  All of that could have been avoided by completely bypassing those places and building the line through the strawberry fields.  But that misses the big point -- the HSR is going to open up all of those long-neglected tertiary locales to the economies of LA and the Bay.  30 more minutes on an express between LA and SF is not a big deal when the line will offer local very high quality local service to all of those cities. 

All of that could have been avoided by completely bypassing those places and building the line through the strawberry fields.

 

This was what was done in Taiwan, to save costs on a high speed rail line that is seemingly in tunnels or on bridges/viaducts more often than it's on the ground. The line still hits all of the major cities along the cost, but the stations are all way out on the outskirts, like this one in Tainan. There are also stations where entire neighborhoods sprung up around the stations, like this one.

 

 

The routing is Houston-Dallas-Denver-Cheyenne. With two extra stops compared to flying and virtually no air traffic over the High Plains connecting Houston-Cheyenne is loser right out of the gate. Even Dallas-Denver isn't that busy of a corridor, especially compared to Boston-DC.

 

But the Houston-Dallas segment is definitely needed.  I 45 is like a parking lot daily.  Southwest has dozens of flights daily between the two cities, plus United and AA operating out of DFW.  A high speed train or similar would be heavily used (which is why the Texas highway lobby and the airlines would fight it).

Both Dallas and Houston are expected to surpass Chicago in size by 2040.  Unfortunately, the lack of action by the state has left the door open for a private operator.  So no telling what the prices and quality of service will be on the privately-built and operated line as compared to one owned and managed by the state.  Do reporters ever sit in on freight railroad meetings?  No.  So the public will be pretty much in the dark.

 

 

All of that could have been avoided by completely bypassing those places and building the line through the strawberry fields.

 

This was what was done in Taiwan, to save costs on a high speed rail line that is seemingly in tunnels or on bridges/viaducts more often than it's on the ground. The line still hits all of the major cities along the cost, but the stations are all way out on the outskirts, like this one in Tainan. There are also stations where entire neighborhoods sprung up around the stations, like this one.

 

Looks like Taiwan has the advantage of having all of its settled areas arranged in a neat line along the coast. 

 

Elon Musk just tweeted:

 

Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.

 

 

What the h*ck does "verbal government approval" mean?

Ahahaha, everything with the government is done through the mail for sure. "Verbal government approval" is the kind of crap that gets dumb money excited.

Pretty easy to envision:

 

Elon: Can we dig a giant tunnel from DC to NY and skip all that environmental assessment cr@p?

 

The Don: Sure, absolutely, whatever you want. Covfefe.

 

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.  :drunk: