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Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other

by kfk 9y ago

Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.

easytiger 9y ago
You have more than one pod?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Do you link them physically, do you have enough braking distances, or do you, as musk suggests, run pods that are separate close enough that in case of a disaster all pods will crash?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - easytiger 9y ago
    I believe they have gaps and the original design had safety stops, breaks, and wheeled propulsion to get you to safety
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The issue is the required gap to slow down from those speeds. You might want to take a look at the train crash in Emden at the Transrapid facility. A maglev train crashed into a maintenance vehicle at a speed of 500km/h because it takes too long to slow down. The required gaps to operate a maglev system efficiently would end up with one capsule every 10 seconds - which means it can carry less passengers than a lane of highway. The only way to get more capacity is by running actual trains.
zeigotaro 9y ago
Very much agreed, lots of FUD for a technology that's only now being prototyped. Would the author rather technologists not get excited by interesting possible solutions to long-standing problems?
Asdfbla 9y ago
>You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? Besides, smartphones didn't come from nothing. Prototypes and similar things had been around since the 90s. And they are arguably a much easier problem than infrastructure.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? No, but maybe the lesson is, people should chill a bit with criticism. It's easy to armchair-criticize anything, but the west has serious problems with infrastructure projects right now. Shooting down any attempt at doing something large-scale is counterproductive to the growth and survival of our society.
hsitz 9y ago
"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they used the train. (Wouldn't even need to carry as many people, if each person were motivated to pay more to reach destination in much shorter time.)
- jcranmer 9y ago
  High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.
  - com2kid 9y ago
    > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Which seems in itself to be a huge problem. If Hyperloop can dispatch pods at shorter intervals, then high speed transit becomes a lot more user friendly. For the same reasons buses that run every half an hour are not the solution to mass transit, but put buses out that run every 5 or 10 minutes and the usefulness shoots way up.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Depends on what you mean by high speed. Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes. And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).
protomyth 9y ago
If we take two lines (one rail and one hyperloop) and compare the number of people that can be transported in an hour, then we can judge if multiple 12 person pods can transport more/less than trains over the same period. I suspect that pods might have a pretty good shot at winning.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I would want to see such throughput numbers scaled to cost. (because if one or the other wins by spending 10x, well, duh)
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Oh, absolutely, cost is a huge factor. I’m sure Californians are well aware of the cost of a rail project these days. I do hope part of the cos analysis is likely rent / housing costs paid by the commuters as a result of the build. I tend to think an extended range from higher speeds would decrease total housing costs but I too would want to see figures.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      I bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a stop.
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Maybe, but a stop that can be twice as far away while taking the same commute time will probably yield lower housing costs since the amount of housing in an acceptable commute area is going to be much larger.
        maxerickson 9y ago
        I was thinking about the amount of infrastructure needed to service the whole project corridor. Of course it isn't clear how the hyperloop would work in practice, but I doubt a station would be less footprint than a train stop. And running the services simultaneously is probably harder with small shuttles than with a train that just stops at each station. Likely faster, but a lot more complicated.
jonstewart 9y ago
You can make this argument on any new transformative tech, but in the case of the Hyperloop, there's actually no new transformative tech as of yet. It's merely science fiction, which is the point of the article: it's more fun to talk about science fiction and less fun to maintain and improve the solutions we already have.

by kfk 9y ago

easytiger 9y ago

You have more than one pod?

kuschku 9y ago
Do you link them physically, do you have enough braking distances, or do you, as musk suggests, run pods that are separate close enough that in case of a disaster all pods will crash?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- easytiger 9y ago
  I believe they have gaps and the original design had safety stops, breaks, and wheeled propulsion to get you to safety
  - kuschku 9y ago
    The issue is the required gap to slow down from those speeds. You might want to take a look at the train crash in Emden at the Transrapid facility. A maglev train crashed into a maintenance vehicle at a speed of 500km/h because it takes too long to slow down. The required gaps to operate a maglev system efficiently would end up with one capsule every 10 seconds - which means it can carry less passengers than a lane of highway. The only way to get more capacity is by running actual trains.

zeigotaro 9y ago

Very much agreed, lots of FUD for a technology that's only now being prototyped. Would the author rather technologists not get excited by interesting possible solutions to long-standing problems?

Asdfbla 9y ago

>You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? Besides, smartphones didn't come from nothing. Prototypes and similar things had been around since the 90s. And they are arguably a much easier problem than infrastructure.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? No, but maybe the lesson is, people should chill a bit with criticism. It's easy to armchair-criticize anything, but the west has serious problems with infrastructure projects right now. Shooting down any attempt at doing something large-scale is counterproductive to the growth and survival of our society.

hsitz 9y ago

"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they used the train. (Wouldn't even need to carry as many people, if each person were motivated to pay more to reach destination in much shorter time.)

jcranmer 9y ago
High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.
- com2kid 9y ago
  > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Which seems in itself to be a huge problem. If Hyperloop can dispatch pods at shorter intervals, then high speed transit becomes a lot more user friendly. For the same reasons buses that run every half an hour are not the solution to mass transit, but put buses out that run every 5 or 10 minutes and the usefulness shoots way up.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Depends on what you mean by high speed. Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes. And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).

protomyth 9y ago

If we take two lines (one rail and one hyperloop) and compare the number of people that can be transported in an hour, then we can judge if multiple 12 person pods can transport more/less than trains over the same period. I suspect that pods might have a pretty good shot at winning.

maxerickson 9y ago
I would want to see such throughput numbers scaled to cost. (because if one or the other wins by spending 10x, well, duh)
- protomyth 9y ago
  Oh, absolutely, cost is a huge factor. I’m sure Californians are well aware of the cost of a rail project these days. I do hope part of the cos analysis is likely rent / housing costs paid by the commuters as a result of the build. I tend to think an extended range from higher speeds would decrease total housing costs but I too would want to see figures.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a stop.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Maybe, but a stop that can be twice as far away while taking the same commute time will probably yield lower housing costs since the amount of housing in an acceptable commute area is going to be much larger.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        I was thinking about the amount of infrastructure needed to service the whole project corridor. Of course it isn't clear how the hyperloop would work in practice, but I doubt a station would be less footprint than a train stop. And running the services simultaneously is probably harder with small shuttles than with a train that just stops at each station. Likely faster, but a lot more complicated.

jonstewart 9y ago

You can make this argument on any new transformative tech, but in the case of the Hyperloop, there's actually no new transformative tech as of yet. It's merely science fiction, which is the point of the article: it's more fun to talk about science fiction and less fun to maintain and improve the solutions we already have.