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There's another corridor that might make sense as their first one DC<->WV<->NC Research Triangle. At 4h by car, with a marketed Hyperloop speed (emphasis on mar

There's another corridor that might make sense as their first one DC<->WV<->NC Research Triangle. At 4h by car, with a marketed Hyperloop speed (emphasis on marketed) of 670mph, you could theoretically cut the time to 30m. Meaning you could live in WV and commit to Durham,NC. WV is also somewhat equidistant to Pittsburgh,PA and Philadelphia,PA as well. If you managed to create a commuting hub that allowed 30 minute (plus time to hub, etc.) commutes to Pittsburgh, Durham, DC, and Philadelphia you would have a major hub with a great deal of value, akin to Chicago in the height of the railway days. That's a pretty big if though, and would take a lot of work, money, and politics. If they did it though they could expand the hub: * Add a station in Richmond, and a line to VA Beach * Expand north with a line from Philadelphia to NYC * Once you are in NYC, expand north line a line to boston * Finally, expand sound to Atlanta and then to Orlando. Lot of ifs in there, and not sure I would be on it happening, but if it did the benefits would likely be amazing in terms of less pollution from cars, less unemployment since your pool of workplaces is much higher, potentially less shipping costs,etc. It's something I'd love to see.

jcranmer 6y ago
West Virginia isn't well placed for that either. The good North-South corridors in the VA/NC area are going to be the Great Appalachian Valley (i.e., the I-81 corridor) or further east as far as the Fall Line (i.e., I-95 corridor). West Virginia doesn't expand that far east, excepting the area around Martinsburg. WV is a really crappy state to build any sort of hub in. Geographically, it's dominated by a desiccated plateau: every watercourse carves a gorge, with the depth of gorge largely determined by how big the watercourse is. The population of WV is really spread out with no concentrated urban areas. The most concentrated regions are along the major river courses of the Ohio, Kanawha, and Monongahela Rivers, along with the population in the small sliver of the Great Appalachian Valley within its borders. > with a marketed Hyperloop speed (emphasis on marketed) of 670mph That is the targeted top speed, AIUI. However, geography hits your butt hard here: it's a simple consequence of physics that higher speeds make your engineering headaches grow more than linearly. Your curve radii grows quadratically with speed, and curve transition length is cubic. Trying to reach max speed in the environment of the Appalachian Plateau will be extremely expensive in terms of viaducts or tunneling, and making up the height difference between the Plateau and the valleys to the east is also going to be challenging.

jcranmer 6y ago

West Virginia isn't well placed for that either. The good North-South corridors in the VA/NC area are going to be the Great Appalachian Valley (i.e., the I-81 corridor) or further east as far as the Fall Line (i.e., I-95 corridor). West Virginia doesn't expand that far east, excepting the area around Martinsburg. WV is a really crappy state to build any sort of hub in. Geographically, it's dominated by a desiccated plateau: every watercourse carves a gorge, with the depth of gorge largely determined by how big the watercourse is. The population of WV is really spread out with no concentrated urban areas. The most concentrated regions are along the major river courses of the Ohio, Kanawha, and Monongahela Rivers, along with the population in the small sliver of the Great Appalachian Valley within its borders. > with a marketed Hyperloop speed (emphasis on marketed) of 670mph That is the targeted top speed, AIUI. However, geography hits your butt hard here: it's a simple consequence of physics that higher speeds make your engineering headaches grow more than linearly. Your curve radii grows quadratically with speed, and curve transition length is cubic. Trying to reach max speed in the environment of the Appalachian Plateau will be extremely expensive in terms of viaducts or tunneling, and making up the height difference between the Plateau and the valleys to the east is also going to be challenging.