Hyperloop ! Will it work?

Developing the Technology - Yes
Buying the right of way at a viable price - No

 

combining with water pipeline and HVDC transmission can probably leverage existing row.

 

I think it's perfectly doable, but probably not between LA and SF. This is partly a function of population density, and partly a function of the free-market economy. Musk should be pushing this in China instead.

I've just come back from a four-week trip to China. I spent a lot of time on China's new high-speed train system. Trains go at 300-310km/h (186-192mph) on specially-built lines. They're comfortable, reliable, fast, convenient and cheap. The Beijing-Shanghai route, which I took three times in full and once in pieces during this trip, costs US$80 and covers 1,300km (800 miles) in about four and a half hours. I've used it dozens of times, and it's only been late once (and that was because a tornado was approaching the line).

They've been talking about a similar line in Australia, from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne, but it will never happen.
Putting together a line like this is incredibly expensive. You can't use existing infrastructure (as shown in Spain the other week) - you have to build new tracks. And then there's the cost of the trains and everything. It's always going to be difficult for something like this to generate a profit, so the most realistic way to justify the expense is for the project to be State-owned: the State can then look at the income directly generated by passengers, plus the economic benefit to the State (increased economic activity around the stations along the line, reduced pressure on air routes, saved time allowing people to do more work, and so on).

In China, it's easy for the State to do a cost-benefit analysis that takes all of these issues into account. In the US, where State ownership of infrastructure seems to be frowned upon, it's going to be difficult to do this. A private operator isn't going to get a decent return, and the return to the State in terms of economic benefit can't be factored in for a private operator.

The other issue is the passenger load. In the long term, China's high-speed network should be profitable in itself, because of the volume. On that Beijing-Shanghai route, there's a train every ten minutes for most of the day in each direction, and each train carries almost 2,000 people, and they're always just about full. So that's 144,000 passenger-journeys each way, every day. At US$ 80 per trip, that means that just on the Beijing-Shanghai-Beijing route, they're pulling in US$ 23 million (if my maths is right) per day. The thing is, that track connects Beijing and Shanghai, two cities that each have a population of over 20 million - so each city has roughly the same population as the whole of Australia. And the train stops at cities including Suzhou (10 million), Wuxi (6 million), Nanjing (8 million), Xuzhou (8 million), Jinan (6 million) and Tianjin (13 million). So there are a hell of a lot of people who need to travel along the line. On the Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne route, we'd never get close to that, so there's no way the line could pay for itself.

A hyperloop on that Beijing-Shanghai route would have no problem at all making its money back. But I don't think the LA-SF route has the necessary population or government structure to make it happen.

And on top of that, Chinese people aren't as tied to their cars as Americans or Australians: they're a lot more willing to use public transport.

So if I were Elon Musk, I'd be having a good chat to the Chinese government. (Actually, I'm not Elon Musk, and having a good chat to the Chinese government is what I do most days. But there you go.) That's where this idea could really take off.

 

The hyperloop would definitely be better. But this high-speed rail project looks pretty good: I didn't know anything about it, but it seems surprisingly well-thought-through, and surprisingly cheap. At least the timing isn't appalling: the British are taking twice as long to put together a shorter railway linking London with Manchester and Leeds. And the Australian government's latest plan for the Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne railway offering similar speeds to the Beijing-Shanghai and LA-SF lines says that it should be completed by 2053. The government says it will "offer an alternative to air travel". No it won't: in 2053 it'll offer an alternative to teleportation.

 

I'm moving my post and asking my redundant FHoP thread to be deleted.


There was a TV movie circa 1972 on solar-powered trains flying in underground tunnels at ballistic missile speeds. Going underground is not only expensive, but at risk of earthquakes. Musk seems to have thought this out pretty well!

I do have a tweak in his proposal: Do the first one not SF-to-LA, but NYC-to-Boston. Only 1/3 the distance with even greater population density.

Elon Musk's Hyperloop: 5 Things You Should Know | TIME.com

 

The water and petroleum pipeline and electric transmission line rights-of-way around here are not sufficiently straight. At the advertised speeds, the 'g' forces on the corners would kill the passengers.

 

I'd like it more if the tube were transparent - I do like travelling very fast along the ground. The fastest I've been on the ground is the Shanghai Maglev (430km/h / 270mph) that links the city to the airport, and the sense of speed is remarkable, especially when you go along the side of a motorway and look at the cars that are doing 120km/h and look like they're going backwards.

But I can see the engineering challenges of a transparent tube might be hard to overcome.

 

Railgun/MagLev requires rare earth elements to make the high power permanent magnets and it takes quite a bit of electricity to power the electro-magnets. Maglev is faster and smoother than rail - but rail is still more energy efficient and cheaper to make. The Shanghai Maglev has a top speed of 268 mph but normally goes at 200 mph.

It is about 360 miles from San Francisco to LA - about 8 hour drive by car. From San Francisco/Emeryville to LA using Amtrak's Coast Starlight. Reportedly takes about 12 hours and a one way ticket cost from $50 to $600. If you book a flight early enough from San Francisco to LAX a one way ticket will cost about $200 to 300 and a late ticket would cost about $450 (before all the other fees and taxes are piled on). A regular bullet train or Maglev would take about 1.5 hours to make the trip from San Francisco to LA.

Elon Musk's Hyperloop desigin concept is basically mating a Maglev with a pneumatic tube-like track (like the ones used by bank tellers) that would lowers aerodynamic drag forces so the top Maglev speed can be tripled (700 mph) and thereby drop the SF-to-LA time to 30 minutes.

The hyperloop's pod design is simple enough but maintaining the track could be expensive.

All this makes me think of the Simpson's Monorail episode...

 

In the opening animation sequence of Futurama - people are being moved via pneumatic tubs. Is the hyperloop a case where life imitates art?

 

what would the cost bem, the resouces.. what do we already have
do we need to travel in 30 min?
i only se a earth resource waist here.

 

I have met Travis a few times and he got some local news coverage yesterday as well.

Automated Track Could Whisk You Around Texas - keyetv.com Austin News, Weather, Traffic KEYE-TV Austin - Top Stories

 

Every time I've been on the Shanghai Maglev, it's travelled at 430km/h (270mph) during the day and I think 300km/h (186mph) when it's dark.

 

I said No...who wants to go to LA? If it was Philly to Pittsburgh, I'd have to give it some second thought. But seriously SST demonstrated greater speed is not needed. I think what we need is to avoid cars in Cities. The first time we went to San Diego, I was wondering: how can I not drive here? There was no way. We had a blast at the San Diego Zoo, but we had to rent a car.