3 ms·

German here. ICE rocks. Until like 2 years ago, I used to travel long distance nearly every week, often all the way across germany. The problem is not the ICE

German here. ICE rocks. Until like 2 years ago, I used to travel long distance nearly every week, often all the way across germany. The problem is not the ICE or high speed rail connectivity, the problems arise at the edges, when you need to switch over and travel the last few miles. For example, I used to travel from Berlin to Hamburg for on-site work. The leg from Berlin to Hamburg was faster than the connection from Hamburg Main to the client site. Certainly, there’s delays, but I’ve done the same trip by car and it constantly took longer than by train, I had very few trips where I didn’t end up caught in a traffic jam somewhere on the autobahn. There’s a bit of a perception problem: nobody notices if you’re late by five minutes if traveling by car because no one has such an exact expectation for car travel. Delays in train travel also have a problem that is exacerbated by the timetables of the DB: In an attempt to make travel times seem shorter, there’s often insufficient buffer at places where you need to change, so that a few minutes of delay will result in an hour of layover. Combine that with lack of maintenance on the rails and you get unfavorable results. None of the problems would be solved by hyper loop or any other technology. It’s a result of misaligned incentives. Still, with all the things wrong in planning, maintenance and political incentives around it, high speed rail still is the best way to travel medium and long distance.

j-pb 6y ago
You neglect the timing advantages gained from smaller independent crafts. Hyperloop has the ability to essentially do driverless packet routing. You can't do that with high speed rail.
- masswerk 6y ago
  For safety concerns, you'd probably have to divide the route into air-locked sections with a pod per block. This gives you about one packet every 25 miles or so – and rather slow packet routing (more like RFC 1149 – https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 )
  - j-pb 6y ago
    At 1200km/h thats one every 2 minutes per 40km (25miles). So you get 30 pods per hour. With 28 passengers each. Which is 840 passengers per hour. Compared with the different ICE 4 models, even the Largest ICE transports less passengers per hour. 499 (K1n) 724 (K3s, 10-car) 830 (K3, 12-car) Sure, you might say that those are only the planned stats for the hyperloop. But even halfed it's still competitive due to speed alone. Furthermore ICE trains are half empty most of the time, even when it's packed. Why? Because DB insists on having 18th century style 1st and 2nd class tickets. And most people can't afford that. However hyperloop has no such distinction, because all the pods can be made to "first class standards" due to the direct point A to point B routing nature. Alternstively, the richt people have to wait until their pod is at capacty, which I'd be delighted to see. So in reality ICE capacity is probably half of what hyperloop could provide. Edit: I'm using the assumption of 1 ICE per hour, because that's how the entire german train system is sheduled. And we're comparing Hyperloop to the current system.
    - detaro 6y ago
      Seriously, taking per train numbers as hourly limits? And why would hyperloop magically be cheaper?
      - j-pb 6y ago
        Even if it was the same price, it's better in every other metric. It's cheaper because you can prefab parts that are otherwise not prefabbable due to the high weight of trains, and that require less maintenance due to not being exposed to the elements. The entire german train system is build on crushed stone. With mechanically tensioned electrical lines that are in constant abrasive contact with the train. The main cost here is not the crushed stone, but the workforce required to set everything up. Having the thing run as a highline with integrated contactless propulsion made from robotically mass produced segments, would be a lot cheaper, and a lot easier to maintain. In theory you could even build the tune in a factory and just push it out, with each pylon containing a small pusher system. That way you can just produce it at the station and only need a groundgrew for the pylons and for alignment. If you cover it with PV it'll even be energy net positive. The price we save on CO2 and climate change alone would be worth it. 50% of ICE electrcity is still coal and will be for the coming decades. (Datteln 4)
- Xylakant 6y ago
  How would any of this be impossible on rail? None of that depends on “pods need to move in a tube”. And if it’s such a major benefit, why hasn’t any of this been done on light rail? There’s no driverless light rail anywhere in germany - and the question you need to answer is “why is that?” You’ll quickly figure out that some of the reasons are technical and some are political, but “must be in a tube and maglev” is not one of them. Hyperloop appeals to us technical folks because it’s cool. But it suffers from many of the same problems that occur when technical folks propose solution, we tend to propose technical solutions to non-technical problems. And we usually fail because we ignore the non-technical side.

j-pb 6y ago

You neglect the timing advantages gained from smaller independent crafts. Hyperloop has the ability to essentially do driverless packet routing. You can't do that with high speed rail.

masswerk 6y ago
For safety concerns, you'd probably have to divide the route into air-locked sections with a pod per block. This gives you about one packet every 25 miles or so – and rather slow packet routing (more like RFC 1149 – https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 )
- j-pb 6y ago
  At 1200km/h thats one every 2 minutes per 40km (25miles). So you get 30 pods per hour. With 28 passengers each. Which is 840 passengers per hour. Compared with the different ICE 4 models, even the Largest ICE transports less passengers per hour. 499 (K1n) 724 (K3s, 10-car) 830 (K3, 12-car) Sure, you might say that those are only the planned stats for the hyperloop. But even halfed it's still competitive due to speed alone. Furthermore ICE trains are half empty most of the time, even when it's packed. Why? Because DB insists on having 18th century style 1st and 2nd class tickets. And most people can't afford that. However hyperloop has no such distinction, because all the pods can be made to "first class standards" due to the direct point A to point B routing nature. Alternstively, the richt people have to wait until their pod is at capacty, which I'd be delighted to see. So in reality ICE capacity is probably half of what hyperloop could provide. Edit: I'm using the assumption of 1 ICE per hour, because that's how the entire german train system is sheduled. And we're comparing Hyperloop to the current system.
  - detaro 6y ago
    Seriously, taking per train numbers as hourly limits? And why would hyperloop magically be cheaper?
    - j-pb 6y ago
      Even if it was the same price, it's better in every other metric. It's cheaper because you can prefab parts that are otherwise not prefabbable due to the high weight of trains, and that require less maintenance due to not being exposed to the elements. The entire german train system is build on crushed stone. With mechanically tensioned electrical lines that are in constant abrasive contact with the train. The main cost here is not the crushed stone, but the workforce required to set everything up. Having the thing run as a highline with integrated contactless propulsion made from robotically mass produced segments, would be a lot cheaper, and a lot easier to maintain. In theory you could even build the tune in a factory and just push it out, with each pylon containing a small pusher system. That way you can just produce it at the station and only need a groundgrew for the pylons and for alignment. If you cover it with PV it'll even be energy net positive. The price we save on CO2 and climate change alone would be worth it. 50% of ICE electrcity is still coal and will be for the coming decades. (Datteln 4)
Xylakant 6y ago
How would any of this be impossible on rail? None of that depends on “pods need to move in a tube”. And if it’s such a major benefit, why hasn’t any of this been done on light rail? There’s no driverless light rail anywhere in germany - and the question you need to answer is “why is that?” You’ll quickly figure out that some of the reasons are technical and some are political, but “must be in a tube and maglev” is not one of them. Hyperloop appeals to us technical folks because it’s cool. But it suffers from many of the same problems that occur when technical folks propose solution, we tend to propose technical solutions to non-technical problems. And we usually fail because we ignore the non-technical side.