4 ms·
For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet min
by eloff 8y ago
For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet mind you - but it seems close at hand. You could cover nearly the whole state, not just LA <--> SF, and have 330,000 person capacity. By what measure would this train be better?
Certainly not economic, noise, land-use, speed, convenience, coverage, or flexibility. Probably in terms of operational costs - but not by a huge margin. And the economics change if you scale the capacity down to match the train system and invest the rest to partially cover the operating costs.
And it took me 5 minutes to think of a (possibly) better plan than theirs.
- richk449 8y agoVery impressive. But in just three minutes, I thought of an even better plan: put a $10M wormhole between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Wormholes don’t quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.
- eloff 8y agoThere was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.
- jakecopp 8y agoI thought of an even better plan: put a $7.5B Hyperloop between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Hyperloops don't quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-musks-hyperloop-economically-feasible.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-...
- landryraccoon 8y agoYour plan has never been done before. It might completely fail for risks you and everyone else has never considered. For all of rail's faults, we are certain it is possible. It's been done many times before. Maybe it can be done cheaper or more efficiently but there is no question that if we build it it will actually work.
- eloff 8y agoOk I'm sure it's a horrible plan. But I'm also sure if you think a little out of the box you could mop the floor with this rail project. Being too risk averse is also a risk, it's a risk of settling when you could have had better.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI don't think you can even get a (new) 10 seat plane for less than $10,000,000. And I doubt that a plane built using technology that doesn't exist yet will be 70% cheaper than ones you can get today. Even if you can find 33,000 planes for that cost there will be significant infrastructure costs (if you want to multiply the # of planes in the air in California by 10, you'll need more ATC, more runways, more hangars, more parking garages, and probably more airports). Upfront costs are just a small fraction of the price of flying planes around. That 3 (or 10) million per plane quickly gets subsumed by maintenance, staffing, and other recurring costs. I don't know how loud these hypothetical electric planes are, but if they're like traditional ones I doubt that they'd beat a train in terms of noise (even though HSR can be 10-20 decibels louder than slower trains). I would question that there would actually be an advantage in speed or convenience, at least between highly populated areas.
- geezerjay 8y ago> For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes If you intend to make a honest comparison then you need to factor in at least the cost of building and operating at least two airports.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range So, how much does all the new airport and hanger capacity and support infrastructure cost, and what are the maintenance, operations, and replacement costs like over time? > And it took me 5 minutes to think of a (possibly) better plan than theirs. Not even close.