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Elon Musk says he has a green light to build a NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC hyperloop

138 points by denzil_correa 9y ago

Tiktaalik 9y ago
On the spectrum of likeliness to mean shit all, how does "verbal green light" compare to Obama announcing $8 billion toward high speed rail (which was later obstructed by republicans). I can't help but think of this Simpsons scene whenever I hear Musk talk about Hyperloop and the Boring company. http://imgur.com/a/KRmlS http://imgur.com/a/KRmlS The guy has no skin in the game, and meanwhile he's building a car company which does not benefit from increased public transit use. It's a sham folks.
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  So a hyperloop in the NE corridor means no one in the 320,000,000 person, 9,833,520 km2 landmass would want an electric car and all its potential benefits? Also, Tesla is a vehicle (heh) for battery research.
  - blackguardx 9y ago
    I may not be up to date, but my understanding was that Tesla makes battery packs, not the cells themselves. They get the cells from outside suppliers.
    - mortehu 9y ago
      Tesla Gigafactory 1 started making cells in January 2017.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - blackguardx 9y ago
        All the articles I've read made it sound less like Tesla was building cells, but that Panasonic was building cells inside the Gigafactory.
- mikeash 9y ago
  The Boring Company is meant to work with the road system by transporting cars underground. It fits perfectly with his car company. What's the nature of the supposed sham? It doesn't look like he's structuring this company in a way that will let him take the money and run, so what's the plan?
  - Tiktaalik 9y ago
    The sham is that he's creating hype in future nonexistent tech to distract government officials from investing in current infrastructure that would compete with automobiles. Governments could build high speed rail right now and significantly improve transportation options, but with the promise of some better Hyperloop system in the future, they could be encouraged to hold off. Of course Hyperloop may never appear at all. Similarly with the Boring Company Musk is asserting that increasing road capacity with tunnels will reduce congestion and improve the transportation system, when in reality this issue has been studied at length and has been proven false. Due to induced demand increasing road capacity simply encourages more people to drive, which Musk would of course be in favour of. Yet again by putting forward a zany idea and additionally hand waving about the future promise of autonomous cars, Musk distracts government officials from real transportation solutions that can be implemented today.
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      Your first paragraph doesn't make any sense. Our government could have built high speed rail any time in the past 30 years if there was the political will to get it done. There wasn't. The fact that someone is offering alternatives at this point just means that they realistically see that no one has no desire to build high speed rails in the US.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      I'd say the history of our public transport infrastructure over the past few decades demonstrates the utter unnecessity of this scheme, since it happens all by itself anyway.
    - mtotheizhphenom 9y ago
- crush-n-spread 9y ago
  The reality is that USA has terrible trains. Our transportation technology is horribly behind in everything but cars. You can tear down this guy as much as you want, but the truth is that our trains are decades behind China and Japan. This is an effort by private industry to bring us back to the forefront, and we should embrace it.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
"Verbal government approval" sounds like bullshit. There have to be at least a dozen different governments that would need to be involved in a project like this: the federal government, DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, NY state and a bunch of local governments. Who would be able to give verbal approval for all of them?
- sbuttgereit 9y ago
  Building inspector walks up to construction foreman overseeing the digging of holes in the ground, pouring concrete, etc. Inspector: Hi... can I see your permits? I hadn't heard about this. Foreman: It's OK... we have verbal permission from the zoning board and building commission. Inspector: Oh, I see, well... carry on! I think it's fair to say that there is no such thing as "verbal approval" when it comes to any government bureaucracy so empowered to approve/reject any activity. Sure, you might get the verbal commitment of bureaucrats and politicians to oil the wheels and speed things up, or even look the other way... but they can also just be giving you happy talk, too. It don't mean a thing until the right approvals are filed with the right offices, usually on the right forms, with the right seals, and the right signatures.
  - manicdee 9y ago
    "Verbal approval" aka "in principle support". I am not concerned about the surface substance of Elon's message. What I am concerned about is the Boring company having no experience building tunnels yet, having no test track, and having no experience building vehicle elevators. So many unknowns. The least of their issues right now is permission to start work.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Twitter-speak for some federal-level government spokesperson gave some sort of verbal approval. Musk is trying to drum up momentum for it. It'd be wrong to think he's gotten anything terribly official done, here.
  - headmelted 9y ago
pascalxus 9y ago
Whilst, I'm always pro on anything that can ameliorate our transportation network, I'd much rather see them connect areas where people work with areas where people can live - I think this is the biggest problem of our times. Optimize for the trips that are made the most frequently - people's commute to work.
- mtalantikite 9y ago
  If someone can get from Baltimore to NYC in about 20 minutes you're changing the scale of where people can live and commute from. I have plenty of friends that spend 45 minutes commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan and I'd guess a not insignificant number of them would be willing to live in Baltimore where housing is cheap if they could get to the city in 20-30 minutes.
  - uptown 9y ago
    "I'd guess a not insignificant number of them would be willing to live in Baltimore where housing is cheap if they could get to the city in 20-30 minutes." And I'd bet the cost of Baltimore housing would no longer be cheap when commuting options are expanded.
  - gk1 9y ago
    It won't stay cheap for long in that scenario. (I moved from Brooklyn to Baltimore, in part because of the >30% difference in housing prices.)
    - mtalantikite 9y ago
      Yeah, prices would certainly move and rebalance in this scenario. Not just in Baltimore, but in Philadelphia and D.C. as well. My point is mainly that we'd start thinking about commuting distance differently if we had a system like the hyperloop (assuming the cost isn't prohibitively high). We could conceivably even build other dense cities somewhere in the radius of 225 miles outside of places like NYC, LA, or SF to offload people if commute times are around 30 min. It can take me an hour to go see friends in Harlem or The Bronx, so you'd even open up the possibility of going to see friends or family for the evening 200 miles away for the same door to door travel time. Of course this is all futurist speculation, who knows what the numbers would actually add up to until a pilot program happens.
pizzetta 9y ago
I'll be reservedly optimistic about this. Besides money, right of way is going to have to be an issue. Hope DoT does all it can without having to get into eminent domain much. All the best, and please make up all the way to Boston.
- joekrill 9y ago
  I'm guessing with it being underground it may make things a little simpler?
  - pizzetta 9y ago
    I don't think they'd build the whole or even the majority underground --it's super costly and trench and cover tunneling still needs access to ground level.
    - randallsquared 9y ago
      Why buy into just part of the statement? I don't think The Boring Company has any plans to do trench-and-cover tunneling, anywhere...
    - joekrill 9y ago
      But that's what's implied. It's right there in the tweet: > Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. Obviously they'll need to be _some_ ground level access. But no where near the type of access an above-ground hyperloop would.
- peller 9y ago
  It sounded ridiculous the first time I heard it but trains actually have right of way over cars/pedestrians... I wonder if those rights transfer if you could buy up an old train line?[0] (Of course, a HyperLoop isn't as easy to just drive over like train tracks, but if the tracks are already there, it's actually the towns/taxpayers that are responsible for the cost of building a safe crossing for cars/people.) [0] The wiki article is pretty thin on details but it sounds like they do me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-of-way_(transportation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-of-way_(transportation)
Robotbeat 9y ago
Title should be changed. "Verbal government approval" doesn't imply green light.
njarboe 9y ago
For the Boring company to really get going and work like Elon Musk is dreaming about, I think the laws for mineral rights (underground property rights) will have to be modified in the US. Sort of like how the ownership of airspace was modified when airplanes became a big thing. Imagine every airline negotiating with all of the property owners they flew over for a coast-to-coast flight. Air travel would just have not developed in the US. Maybe below ground property rights should not be quite as absolute and people would have to allow tunneling below a depth where disturbance to the near surface is far below the background. They could receive some kind of predetermined fee and/or rent. I hope America is still flexible to implement such a legal change.
- jccooper 9y ago
  Even within the current framework, it shouldn't be hard to acquire an underground easement, by market or eminent domain. Shouldn't be very expensive, either. A deep underground tunnel means basically no diminution of property values. Subway and water tunnel projects tend to pay very small token amounts (a few hundred dollars) for similar underground takings. Not quite as streamlined as a "free groundspace" regime, but not a big obstacle.
syphilis2 9y ago
I was surprised to hear this, since there's already a rail line from DC to NYC. But maybe that's why they're so receptive, and 30 minutes is a whole lot better than 3 hours. I hope this succeeds, I'd love to see some lines between cities without rail connections.
bogomipz 9y ago
I would rather see an investment in Hyperloop instead of the "US tax payer-subsidized but still overpriced and unprofitable" Amtrak service. I imagine if this news is true it will get very political as Amtrak has recently secured billions from the Federal Government for new trains, along the same corridor: https://media.amtrak.com/2016/08/1610/?mc_cid=d3b3f1fecc&mc_eid=874274a502 https://media.amtrak.com/2016/08/1610/?mc_cid=d3b3f1fecc&mc_... Amtrak is largely a political problem with no will in Washington to fix. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Amtrak had actual competition. Even if the threat of Hyperloop were the kick in the pants Washington needs to fix Amtrak, Hyperloop would be a success. See: https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/07/amtrak https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/07/amtrak
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  Musk wants to gussy up interest in his Boring Company. Comparing the Northeast Megalopolis to West Germany is instructive, they are similar in size and population. Germany has had its Intercity-Express since the late 1980s. America on the other hand can't get its ass off the seat. No competition needed, just political will.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  Amtrak is profitable in the Northeast corridor.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Only if you exclude capital costs, which are paid for by the federal government.
    - apendleton 9y ago
      Sure, but the interstate highway system's capital costs are paid mostly by the federal government too -- gas taxes don't come close to covering it so it's decidedly not user-pays -- and nobody expects that to be profitable. National transportation infrastructure is a public good, not a business investment on the part of the government.
danr4 9y ago
Wait, was that his plan all along? I mean, is it feasible he released the idea of Hyperloop into the wild and let other companies battle it out and spend an enormous amount of money on R&D, only to build a "straightforward" company and sell it's "product" (infrastructure) to Hyperloop and the others?
otoburb 9y ago
>>"City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city"[1] This alone will drive up required funding exponentially. Almost all of the named city centers have onerous space, security and tunneling red tape that will intuitively drives up the marginal per-mile costs the closer to the city centers one tries to bore. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053729919877120 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053729919877120
voidbip 9y ago
If this is true, what is needed to cement public confidence in this techology is a quick and definite win. Maybe a tunnel between lower Manhattan and Staten Island? Both landings are government owned and would greatly improve upon the current 20 minute ferry ride across. It can also be the first link on the NYC-DC route.
Zaskoda 9y ago
The DFW/Houston/Austin triangle needs a hyperloop.
elchief 9y ago
Such cynicism! This is super cool. This is 1950s sci-fi stuff.
trimal 9y ago
I will wait till final confirmation. Maybe he forgot to mention to Trump it won't be running with clean coal technology and it might get axed.
bane 9y ago
It's more interesting in what this leaves out. Suppose this happens, some cities like Boston become simple "suburbs" to a more connected mega region.
flexie 9y ago
Ok, so let's say there is 350 km in an almost straight line. A great tunnel boring machine excavates around 20 meters per day in average (80 m on good days; next to nothing on other days). So that's 140 meters per week or 7 km per year. With 10 of those he could cover the distance in 5 years. For one tube. If he wants 2, 3 or 4 tubes, which would make sense on such busy stretch, he would need 2, 3 or 4 machines more. Musk claims the Boring Company will drill faster than traditional tunnel boring machines. If he could go twice as fast, he could do with half the machines. It's doable, I guess, but I think the regulatory obstacles, archeological excavations, etc would slow it all down more than the machines.
- danielharan 9y ago
  "The Boring Company's ambitions include reducing both the diameter of tunnels and increasing the speed of soft-soil boring machines to carve them. It wants to increase machine power and have them run on electricity instead of diesel, automate the process with fewer human operators, and tunnel continuously instead of erecting support structures. Noting that a snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil boring machine, the company says in bold that "our goal is to defeat a snail in a race." To highlight the point, it also links to a picture on Musk's Instagram of the company's mascot, a snail with a name and environs inspired by SpongeBob Squarepants." http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/news/a26565/elon-musks-boring-company-begins-to-explain-itself/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/ne...
- DeBraid 9y ago
  EDIT: refers more to cost, and not directly time. Musk claimed[1] existing tunnels are far too big/wide as they're over-engineered for safety + regulatory FUD. Boring plans to reduce tunnel diameter by half (from 28ft to 14), and then build a better machine to tunnel + support the walls simultaneously. Estimates would reduce costs by ~10x. [1]: https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s
  - pcl 9y ago
    I would imagine that cost and time are pretty interchangeable on a tunnel from DC to NYC, since you could simply add more boring machines all digging different sections of the tunnel.
abalone 9y ago
Even IF this means there are magically zero problems with tunneling rights... There's no way this gets approved without detailing fire safety. Tunnel fires are NO JOKE. Especially with very, very long underground tunnels with particularly narrow diameters and primarily (or exclusively) elevator-based access. A thousand firefighting and evacuation questions there that I haven't heard a single reporter ask.
- jitix 9y ago
  Hyperloop is supposed to use vacuum or close-to-vacuum tunnels to achieve those speeds, so fire is not really a problem. Still I think the tunnels should be accessible section by section to enable disaster recovery crews to operate.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  If it's Hyperloop, there supposed to be very low amount of air in the tunnel. That theoretically solves many fire problems.
  - abalone 9y ago
    The video does not illustrate an exclusively hyperloop system. But even if it is exclusively hyperloop, what if there's a fire or toxic gas release inside a pod and you have to escape?
    - aquadrop 9y ago
      Planes are dealing with this somehow, so I'm sure hyperloop can come up with the solution.
      - abalone 9y ago
        My claim is not that The Boring Company and related government public safety agencies can't figure this out. It's that the tunnel project is not going to get approved without detailing fire safety, which is a BIG deal and probably more complicated in terms of government approvals than "mere" tunneling rights. You mentioned planes. There are tons of regulations and engineering codes and procedures and training and on-board safety personnel that go into making airplanes fire safe. Including emergency landing and evacuation and firefighting procedures which need to be reimagined for deep underground, elevator-accessed tunnels. Even the existing procedures for subway systems probably need to be reimagined for deeper depths, narrower diameters and elevators which are the hallmark of The Boring Company's approach. And I should reiterate that the video shows cars using surface elevators and riding on electric sleds, not a more tightly controlled hyperloop system. So that further complicates safety.
janemanos 9y ago
Think it will happen. Sooner or later
haspok 9y ago
Hyperloop? A concept for which not even one single working prototype exists? And even if there was a prototype- who would pay for this? Dream on. Why not fix the train instead - you know, in some other parts of the world the high speed train is a reality, and works quite well.
- Romanulus 9y ago
  Big Government seems to be really hooking into the trend of these new and unproven tech trend, like solar roadways, because lets face it, it's a great way to soak millions into great sounding/feeling things and run away while everyone is still dreaming with their heads in the clouds.
evanwolf 9y ago
No New Jersey city on the route?
saalweachter 9y ago
If we could efficiently dig straight-line tunnels under the Northeast Corridor, would it actually make sense to stick a hyperloop in them? The reason trains are slow on (some of) the Northeast Corridor is because (1) tracks aren't straight (2) population density means you're frequently running through cities and (3) trains stop all over the place, so people can actually get on and off. The hyperloop sacrifices throughput for speed, but if you ran a conventional-style train fast through straight tracks underground, you could still do DC to NYC in 90 minutes or less, with a much higher throughput. Letting an order of magnitude or two of people make the trip in 2-3 times the time seems way more valuable than letting the smaller number make it faster.
dzaragozar 9y ago
Relevant Thunderf00t video discussing the hyperloop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk

138 points by denzil_correa 9y ago

On the spectrum of likeliness to mean shit all, how does "verbal green light" compare to Obama announcing $8 billion toward high speed rail (which was later obstructed by republicans). I can't help but think of this Simpsons scene whenever I hear Musk talk about Hyperloop and the Boring company. http://imgur.com/a/KRmlS http://imgur.com/a/KRmlS The guy has no skin in the game, and meanwhile he's building a car company which does not benefit from increased public transit use. It's a sham folks.

unethical_ban 9y ago
So a hyperloop in the NE corridor means no one in the 320,000,000 person, 9,833,520 km2 landmass would want an electric car and all its potential benefits? Also, Tesla is a vehicle (heh) for battery research.
- blackguardx 9y ago
  I may not be up to date, but my understanding was that Tesla makes battery packs, not the cells themselves. They get the cells from outside suppliers.
  - mortehu 9y ago
    Tesla Gigafactory 1 started making cells in January 2017.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - blackguardx 9y ago
      All the articles I've read made it sound less like Tesla was building cells, but that Panasonic was building cells inside the Gigafactory.
mikeash 9y ago
The Boring Company is meant to work with the road system by transporting cars underground. It fits perfectly with his car company. What's the nature of the supposed sham? It doesn't look like he's structuring this company in a way that will let him take the money and run, so what's the plan?
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  The sham is that he's creating hype in future nonexistent tech to distract government officials from investing in current infrastructure that would compete with automobiles. Governments could build high speed rail right now and significantly improve transportation options, but with the promise of some better Hyperloop system in the future, they could be encouraged to hold off. Of course Hyperloop may never appear at all. Similarly with the Boring Company Musk is asserting that increasing road capacity with tunnels will reduce congestion and improve the transportation system, when in reality this issue has been studied at length and has been proven false. Due to induced demand increasing road capacity simply encourages more people to drive, which Musk would of course be in favour of. Yet again by putting forward a zany idea and additionally hand waving about the future promise of autonomous cars, Musk distracts government officials from real transportation solutions that can be implemented today.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Your first paragraph doesn't make any sense. Our government could have built high speed rail any time in the past 30 years if there was the political will to get it done. There wasn't. The fact that someone is offering alternatives at this point just means that they realistically see that no one has no desire to build high speed rails in the US.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I'd say the history of our public transport infrastructure over the past few decades demonstrates the utter unnecessity of this scheme, since it happens all by itself anyway.
  - mtotheizhphenom 9y ago
crush-n-spread 9y ago
The reality is that USA has terrible trains. Our transportation technology is horribly behind in everything but cars. You can tear down this guy as much as you want, but the truth is that our trains are decades behind China and Japan. This is an effort by private industry to bring us back to the forefront, and we should embrace it.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

"Verbal government approval" sounds like bullshit. There have to be at least a dozen different governments that would need to be involved in a project like this: the federal government, DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, NY state and a bunch of local governments. Who would be able to give verbal approval for all of them?

sbuttgereit 9y ago
Building inspector walks up to construction foreman overseeing the digging of holes in the ground, pouring concrete, etc. Inspector: Hi... can I see your permits? I hadn't heard about this. Foreman: It's OK... we have verbal permission from the zoning board and building commission. Inspector: Oh, I see, well... carry on! I think it's fair to say that there is no such thing as "verbal approval" when it comes to any government bureaucracy so empowered to approve/reject any activity. Sure, you might get the verbal commitment of bureaucrats and politicians to oil the wheels and speed things up, or even look the other way... but they can also just be giving you happy talk, too. It don't mean a thing until the right approvals are filed with the right offices, usually on the right forms, with the right seals, and the right signatures.
- manicdee 9y ago
  "Verbal approval" aka "in principle support". I am not concerned about the surface substance of Elon's message. What I am concerned about is the Boring company having no experience building tunnels yet, having no test track, and having no experience building vehicle elevators. So many unknowns. The least of their issues right now is permission to start work.
Robotbeat 9y ago
Twitter-speak for some federal-level government spokesperson gave some sort of verbal approval. Musk is trying to drum up momentum for it. It'd be wrong to think he's gotten anything terribly official done, here.
- headmelted 9y ago

pascalxus 9y ago

Whilst, I'm always pro on anything that can ameliorate our transportation network, I'd much rather see them connect areas where people work with areas where people can live - I think this is the biggest problem of our times. Optimize for the trips that are made the most frequently - people's commute to work.

mtalantikite 9y ago
If someone can get from Baltimore to NYC in about 20 minutes you're changing the scale of where people can live and commute from. I have plenty of friends that spend 45 minutes commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan and I'd guess a not insignificant number of them would be willing to live in Baltimore where housing is cheap if they could get to the city in 20-30 minutes.
- uptown 9y ago
  "I'd guess a not insignificant number of them would be willing to live in Baltimore where housing is cheap if they could get to the city in 20-30 minutes." And I'd bet the cost of Baltimore housing would no longer be cheap when commuting options are expanded.
- gk1 9y ago
  It won't stay cheap for long in that scenario. (I moved from Brooklyn to Baltimore, in part because of the >30% difference in housing prices.)
  - mtalantikite 9y ago
    Yeah, prices would certainly move and rebalance in this scenario. Not just in Baltimore, but in Philadelphia and D.C. as well. My point is mainly that we'd start thinking about commuting distance differently if we had a system like the hyperloop (assuming the cost isn't prohibitively high). We could conceivably even build other dense cities somewhere in the radius of 225 miles outside of places like NYC, LA, or SF to offload people if commute times are around 30 min. It can take me an hour to go see friends in Harlem or The Bronx, so you'd even open up the possibility of going to see friends or family for the evening 200 miles away for the same door to door travel time. Of course this is all futurist speculation, who knows what the numbers would actually add up to until a pilot program happens.

pizzetta 9y ago

I'll be reservedly optimistic about this. Besides money, right of way is going to have to be an issue. Hope DoT does all it can without having to get into eminent domain much. All the best, and please make up all the way to Boston.

joekrill 9y ago
I'm guessing with it being underground it may make things a little simpler?
- pizzetta 9y ago
  I don't think they'd build the whole or even the majority underground --it's super costly and trench and cover tunneling still needs access to ground level.
  - randallsquared 9y ago
    Why buy into just part of the statement? I don't think The Boring Company has any plans to do trench-and-cover tunneling, anywhere...
  - joekrill 9y ago
    But that's what's implied. It's right there in the tweet: > Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. Obviously they'll need to be _some_ ground level access. But no where near the type of access an above-ground hyperloop would.
peller 9y ago
It sounded ridiculous the first time I heard it but trains actually have right of way over cars/pedestrians... I wonder if those rights transfer if you could buy up an old train line?[0] (Of course, a HyperLoop isn't as easy to just drive over like train tracks, but if the tracks are already there, it's actually the towns/taxpayers that are responsible for the cost of building a safe crossing for cars/people.) [0] The wiki article is pretty thin on details but it sounds like they do me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-of-way_(transportation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-of-way_(transportation)

Robotbeat 9y ago

Title should be changed. "Verbal government approval" doesn't imply green light.

njarboe 9y ago

For the Boring company to really get going and work like Elon Musk is dreaming about, I think the laws for mineral rights (underground property rights) will have to be modified in the US. Sort of like how the ownership of airspace was modified when airplanes became a big thing. Imagine every airline negotiating with all of the property owners they flew over for a coast-to-coast flight. Air travel would just have not developed in the US. Maybe below ground property rights should not be quite as absolute and people would have to allow tunneling below a depth where disturbance to the near surface is far below the background. They could receive some kind of predetermined fee and/or rent. I hope America is still flexible to implement such a legal change.

jccooper 9y ago
Even within the current framework, it shouldn't be hard to acquire an underground easement, by market or eminent domain. Shouldn't be very expensive, either. A deep underground tunnel means basically no diminution of property values. Subway and water tunnel projects tend to pay very small token amounts (a few hundred dollars) for similar underground takings. Not quite as streamlined as a "free groundspace" regime, but not a big obstacle.

syphilis2 9y ago

I was surprised to hear this, since there's already a rail line from DC to NYC. But maybe that's why they're so receptive, and 30 minutes is a whole lot better than 3 hours. I hope this succeeds, I'd love to see some lines between cities without rail connections.

bogomipz 9y ago

I would rather see an investment in Hyperloop instead of the "US tax payer-subsidized but still overpriced and unprofitable" Amtrak service. I imagine if this news is true it will get very political as Amtrak has recently secured billions from the Federal Government for new trains, along the same corridor: https://media.amtrak.com/2016/08/1610/?mc_cid=d3b3f1fecc&mc_eid=874274a502 https://media.amtrak.com/2016/08/1610/?mc_cid=d3b3f1fecc&mc_... Amtrak is largely a political problem with no will in Washington to fix. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Amtrak had actual competition. Even if the threat of Hyperloop were the kick in the pants Washington needs to fix Amtrak, Hyperloop would be a success. See: https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/07/amtrak https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/07/amtrak

HarryHirsch 9y ago
Musk wants to gussy up interest in his Boring Company. Comparing the Northeast Megalopolis to West Germany is instructive, they are similar in size and population. Germany has had its Intercity-Express since the late 1980s. America on the other hand can't get its ass off the seat. No competition needed, just political will.
saosebastiao 9y ago
Amtrak is profitable in the Northeast corridor.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Only if you exclude capital costs, which are paid for by the federal government.
  - apendleton 9y ago
    Sure, but the interstate highway system's capital costs are paid mostly by the federal government too -- gas taxes don't come close to covering it so it's decidedly not user-pays -- and nobody expects that to be profitable. National transportation infrastructure is a public good, not a business investment on the part of the government.

danr4 9y ago

Wait, was that his plan all along? I mean, is it feasible he released the idea of Hyperloop into the wild and let other companies battle it out and spend an enormous amount of money on R&D, only to build a "straightforward" company and sell it's "product" (infrastructure) to Hyperloop and the others?

otoburb 9y ago

>>"City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city"[1] This alone will drive up required funding exponentially. Almost all of the named city centers have onerous space, security and tunneling red tape that will intuitively drives up the marginal per-mile costs the closer to the city centers one tries to bore. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053729919877120 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053729919877120

voidbip 9y ago

If this is true, what is needed to cement public confidence in this techology is a quick and definite win. Maybe a tunnel between lower Manhattan and Staten Island? Both landings are government owned and would greatly improve upon the current 20 minute ferry ride across. It can also be the first link on the NYC-DC route.

Zaskoda 9y ago

The DFW/Houston/Austin triangle needs a hyperloop.

elchief 9y ago

Such cynicism! This is super cool. This is 1950s sci-fi stuff.

trimal 9y ago

I will wait till final confirmation. Maybe he forgot to mention to Trump it won't be running with clean coal technology and it might get axed.

bane 9y ago

It's more interesting in what this leaves out. Suppose this happens, some cities like Boston become simple "suburbs" to a more connected mega region.

flexie 9y ago

Ok, so let's say there is 350 km in an almost straight line. A great tunnel boring machine excavates around 20 meters per day in average (80 m on good days; next to nothing on other days). So that's 140 meters per week or 7 km per year. With 10 of those he could cover the distance in 5 years. For one tube. If he wants 2, 3 or 4 tubes, which would make sense on such busy stretch, he would need 2, 3 or 4 machines more. Musk claims the Boring Company will drill faster than traditional tunnel boring machines. If he could go twice as fast, he could do with half the machines. It's doable, I guess, but I think the regulatory obstacles, archeological excavations, etc would slow it all down more than the machines.

danielharan 9y ago
"The Boring Company's ambitions include reducing both the diameter of tunnels and increasing the speed of soft-soil boring machines to carve them. It wants to increase machine power and have them run on electricity instead of diesel, automate the process with fewer human operators, and tunnel continuously instead of erecting support structures. Noting that a snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil boring machine, the company says in bold that "our goal is to defeat a snail in a race." To highlight the point, it also links to a picture on Musk's Instagram of the company's mascot, a snail with a name and environs inspired by SpongeBob Squarepants." http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/news/a26565/elon-musks-boring-company-begins-to-explain-itself/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/ne...
DeBraid 9y ago
EDIT: refers more to cost, and not directly time. Musk claimed[1] existing tunnels are far too big/wide as they're over-engineered for safety + regulatory FUD. Boring plans to reduce tunnel diameter by half (from 28ft to 14), and then build a better machine to tunnel + support the walls simultaneously. Estimates would reduce costs by ~10x. [1]: https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s
- pcl 9y ago
  I would imagine that cost and time are pretty interchangeable on a tunnel from DC to NYC, since you could simply add more boring machines all digging different sections of the tunnel.

abalone 9y ago

Even IF this means there are magically zero problems with tunneling rights... There's no way this gets approved without detailing fire safety. Tunnel fires are NO JOKE. Especially with very, very long underground tunnels with particularly narrow diameters and primarily (or exclusively) elevator-based access. A thousand firefighting and evacuation questions there that I haven't heard a single reporter ask.

jitix 9y ago
Hyperloop is supposed to use vacuum or close-to-vacuum tunnels to achieve those speeds, so fire is not really a problem. Still I think the tunnels should be accessible section by section to enable disaster recovery crews to operate.
aquadrop 9y ago
If it's Hyperloop, there supposed to be very low amount of air in the tunnel. That theoretically solves many fire problems.
- abalone 9y ago
  The video does not illustrate an exclusively hyperloop system. But even if it is exclusively hyperloop, what if there's a fire or toxic gas release inside a pod and you have to escape?
  - aquadrop 9y ago
    Planes are dealing with this somehow, so I'm sure hyperloop can come up with the solution.
    - abalone 9y ago
      My claim is not that The Boring Company and related government public safety agencies can't figure this out. It's that the tunnel project is not going to get approved without detailing fire safety, which is a BIG deal and probably more complicated in terms of government approvals than "mere" tunneling rights. You mentioned planes. There are tons of regulations and engineering codes and procedures and training and on-board safety personnel that go into making airplanes fire safe. Including emergency landing and evacuation and firefighting procedures which need to be reimagined for deep underground, elevator-accessed tunnels. Even the existing procedures for subway systems probably need to be reimagined for deeper depths, narrower diameters and elevators which are the hallmark of The Boring Company's approach. And I should reiterate that the video shows cars using surface elevators and riding on electric sleds, not a more tightly controlled hyperloop system. So that further complicates safety.

janemanos 9y ago

Think it will happen. Sooner or later

haspok 9y ago

Hyperloop? A concept for which not even one single working prototype exists? And even if there was a prototype- who would pay for this? Dream on. Why not fix the train instead - you know, in some other parts of the world the high speed train is a reality, and works quite well.

Romanulus 9y ago
Big Government seems to be really hooking into the trend of these new and unproven tech trend, like solar roadways, because lets face it, it's a great way to soak millions into great sounding/feeling things and run away while everyone is still dreaming with their heads in the clouds.

evanwolf 9y ago

No New Jersey city on the route?

saalweachter 9y ago

If we could efficiently dig straight-line tunnels under the Northeast Corridor, would it actually make sense to stick a hyperloop in them? The reason trains are slow on (some of) the Northeast Corridor is because (1) tracks aren't straight (2) population density means you're frequently running through cities and (3) trains stop all over the place, so people can actually get on and off. The hyperloop sacrifices throughput for speed, but if you ran a conventional-style train fast through straight tracks underground, you could still do DC to NYC in 90 minutes or less, with a much higher throughput. Letting an order of magnitude or two of people make the trip in 2-3 times the time seems way more valuable than letting the smaller number make it faster.

dzaragozar 9y ago

Relevant Thunderf00t video discussing the hyperloop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk