If they get a new leader (no, not Corbyn and definitely not Starmer) then it might be a bit easier.
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This might be the worst reading of engineering history I have ever seen. Did you even make a stop by Wikipedia first?
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For the record I don’t think that Hyperloop would be immune to these problems and I doubt it will ever be built, at least in a form anything like what they’ve been testing so far. But if someone is claiming that high speed rail is a practical, affordable transportation solution, I’d say the experience we’ve had in California is an example of how that’s not always the case, at least in a location where the government needs to acquire huge amounts of expensive, privately owned land through neighborhoods that can exert significant political influence. (Whether or not you think it’s the “fault” of high speed rail, it’s an inherent problem in all ground-level rail projects, and all the more so for high speed tracks that need to stay as straight as possible.) Finding politically acceptable solutions to public transit can be just as significant a challenge as technical challenges.
Also, not that it would be successful in accomplishing this, but I believe one of the main selling points in the original Hyperloop white paper was that the footprint on pylons would be significantly smaller and require far less land acquisition, expensive rail crossings, etc.
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I’m guessing the frequent dust storms might be a problem for exposed rail. You’re right that the pressure differential isn’t needed, but I think the shelter is.
Sorry, what? I was simply pointing out that ideas we take for granted now sound ridiculous if you present them in such a way.
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Yeah, this is the part that never made sense to me, as it’s nonsense on the face of it - there’s stricter requirements for hyperloop than rail (e.g. extremely straight tubes). Anywhere you can put depressurized tubes (and associated infrastructure) to carry a train car, you can have conventional rails to carry a train car. This was really the area where Musk showed his Dunning Kruger - he just handwaved away the biggest issue, as if whole industries didn’t struggle with it, because he assumed he was smarter than they were, and that would somehow fix the issue.
Yeah, but as new infrastructure, that’s not what it’s competing/being compared with, which is high-speed rail. When you make even a rough, janky prototype of a new technology, it still needs to demonstrate it has at least one advantage over the alternative in at least one respect, otherwise what’s the point? And much of the reason why US rail is so slow has nothing to do with the technology, but practical impediments around how rail lines are situated (vehicle crossings, curves, etc.) and frequency of stops, issues which hyperloop wouldn’t be immune to, either…
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Yes, that’s BS.
In reality, an all-elevated system is a bug rather than a feature. Central Valley land is cheap; pylons are expensive, as can be readily seen by the costs of elevated highways and trains all over the world. The unit costs for viaducts on California HSR, without overhead and management fees, are already several times as high as Musk’s cost: as per PDF-page 15 of the cost overrun breakdown, unit costs for viaducts range from $50 million to $80 million per mile. Overheads and contingencies convert per-mile cost almost perfectly to per-km costs. And yet Musk thinks he can build more than 500 km of viaduct for $2.5 billion, as per PDF-page 28 of his proposal: a tenth the unit cost. The unrealistically low tunnel unit cost is at least excused on PDF-page 31 on the grounds that the tunnel diameter is low (this can also be done with trains if they’re as narrow as Hyperloop, whose capsule seating is 2-abreast rather than 4- or 5-abreast as on HSR; see below on capacity). The low viaduct unit cost is not.
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Well yes, elevated HSR tracks are massive structures that are crazy expensive and that’s why nobody is proposing using them in areas like the Central Valley. No doubt that elevated tubes would also be very expensive, probably MUCH more expensive than Musk’s assumptions, but I think it’s hard for anyone to confidently compare the relative construction-cost-per-mile of an elevated tube vs. a much larger elevated HSR track. Maybe the Hyperloop folks would figure out a way to make them cheaper per mile. Probably not! If they did somehow succeed in doing it, though, it would definitely go a long way towards being less disruptive to property owners, both rural and urban, than a ground-level track with significant distance between crossings.
My personal theory is that both technologies will be obsolete before they come to fruition in California. Whether you think it will be in 5 years or 20, self-driving cars (hopefully much better than Tesla’s) are on the horizon, and if I could tell my car to take my family and all our luggage from LA to our relative’s house in San Francisco while we slept, that would be an appealing option. The door-to-door transit time would be probably be less than a high-speed train when you account for the time and hassle of getting to and from the train station, and (assuming that I already own the car) it would be much cheaper than the projected ticket prices.
Oh yeah. Totally my point. It’s something that only sounds good in comparison to the US’s baldy jacked up infrastructure and if you don’t look for the reasons why the US’s infrastructure is jacked up.
Pick a pathetic stat, do slightly better than that. Hand wave away everything else.
Actually pay attention and this can’t even compete with bad, already existing high speed rail and doesn’t address the reasons why that high speed rail ain’t great.
The boring company and Musk’s hyper loop spent a decade and vastly more money to dig like a 1/2 mile of tunnel that was wholly inadequate for even what they were doing. And did a victory lap over how much better at digging tunnels they were than projects that completely out paced them.
Same thing here. They’re failing to provide an inadequate solution. And we’re all supposed to high five them for it.
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Skeptic: Is there a chance the tube could breach?
Musk: Not on your life, you meddling leech!
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Thanks for the quick dose of reality.
Whoever made that graphic has confused miles per hour and kilometres per hour, and the original top speed in 1964 was only 210 km/h (130 mph).
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I wish the forum software had double hearts. I can’t heart this post enough.
Musk is doing his best to be narcissistically disruptive. His false claims about the viability of hyperloop damage real efforts to create proven infrastructure because he creates an unrealistic metric by which to judge them.
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No - you said that history is full of crappy technologies, and that internal combustion engines are ludicrous ideas. Though your intended stance is arguably even worse. Creating false rhetoric just to say all technology is equally good because you can make ridiculous statements about any modern technology doesn’t address why people scoff at the hyperloop stuff doesn’t help anyone with anything, except maybe the egos involved.
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So essentially, a barf ride? [yes, @GagHalfrunt linked to his already, but this piece is definitely worth being referred to multiple times…]
Thing is, this is a tactic that has worked in the past with regards to dismantling public programs for private benefit:
Yep, and it’s par for the course for capitalism.
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There’s another problem called “cant”, i.e., the lateral inclination of a railway track in a curve. Medium and high speed passenger rail needs a certain amount of cant to limit the (perceived) lateral acceleration in curves. In contrast, for the low speeds at which freight rail is operating in the US, cant is unnecessary or even detrimental, as it significantly limits axle loads and increases track maintenance costs. So basically railway lines for low speed freight trains are not compatible with medium or high speed passenger rail unfortunately.
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Note, though, that this particular effort is Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, not Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Musk and his engineers created the concept, And SpaceX sponsors an annual student competition for scale-model pods. But SpaceX and Musk are not (currently) involved in any commercial effort to build the thing.
