4 ms·

Why doesn’t some industrious individual purchase an entire town roughly 50miles from midtown Manhattan, owning say a 5 mile radius, and install a high speed rai

by jmpman 5y ago

Why doesn’t some industrious individual purchase an entire town roughly 50miles from midtown Manhattan, owning say a 5 mile radius, and install a high speed rail (150MPH straight into Grand Central - no stops) 20min from Grand Central to the terminus, and then 10min from there to anywhere in the 5 mile radius. Now you can offer housing with a 30min commute to midtown. Only portions of Manhattan can offer that level of commuting convenience. Do the numbers not work out? Is this something that would only work in China, where the right of way, and land at the terminus could be acquired all at the same time without individual property owners trying to extract maximum value? Does a completely underground hyperloop resolve this land/right of way problem, reducing the entrepreneur to only having to acquire land at the terminus?

bobthepanda 5y ago
Underground doesn't help you. Western property rights operate under the ad coeleum doctrine, or "whoever's is the soil, it is theirs all the way to Heaven and all the way to Hell". The upper limit has been established by the US Supreme Court but there hasn't been a solid case about the lower limit, and testing this through litigation is a fairly difficult way to make money. A Hyperloop doesn't offer much advantage over conventional technology given the short distance (50 mi); even at normal high-speed-rail speeds you spend a good chunk of the time accelerating and decelerating. Speeding up and slowing down faster is not tenable, as no one wants to be on a roller coaster as a commute. The other thing is that the commuting range of New York is pretty far. The metro area is considered to stretch as far as Pike County PA (82 miles), Trenton NJ (70 miles), the entirety of Long Island, and New Haven (80 miles). Anything that is feasible to develop already has been; anything that hasn't been is either some land use that can't be developed (a park), has unfavorable geography (the Meadowlands is a marsh that gets flooded often and is vital to local flooding protection), or other mitigating factors. Then there's the issue of the land assembling. No one could afford to assemble such a parcel. NYC's metro area was estimated to have 10% of the entire country's real estate value [1]. And even if one had the land you can't just do whatever you like because you're the owner; you're still subject to local zoning rules. --- [1] https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-urban-land-value-with-nyc-making-up-10/ https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-urba...
- jmpman 5y ago
  Check out Lebanon NJ. Still massive tracks of farmland and woods. 50 miles from midtown, currently with property for sale at $50k/acre. 5 mile radius is approximately 50k acres. At $50k/acre = $2.5B. With construction costs of $1B for an 18 mile run in Chicago, the Boring company could make this Lebanon <-> Manhattan for $2.5B. $5B for a 30min commute to Midtown Manhattan, and to break even, you’d only have to sell the land you acquired at $50k/acre at $100k/acre. I’d happily buy a 1 acre plot of land with a 30 min commute time to Midtown for $100k.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Lebanon NJ the town is covered entirely by a historic district. Like I said, you can't just do whatever you want and disregard local zoning if you own land. > With construction costs of $1B for an 18 mile run in Chicago, the Boring company could make this Lebanon <-> Manhattan for $2.5B. This is vaporware until it actually happens. Maglevs and monorails and personal rapid transit were also supposed to be significantly cheaper than their traditional counterparts, until they weren't. I could promise you HSR for $1, that doesn't mean I can make it happen.
    - jmpman 5y ago
      Right, you need Lebanon NJ residents to decide they’d prefer doubling their property value to some crumbling old buildings. Disney was able to have his way in Orlando. It can be done.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        Presumably if they went above and beyond normal local zoning restrictions with a historic district they care more than your average American. And presumably if you could make a bunch of Americans magically consider massive redevelopment on that scale, it would be more fruitful to do it in a place closer in where you don't have to spend billions of dollars on transportation infrastructure, or the other billions of dollars establishing services like water supply, a grid with adequate capacity, schools, fire, police, medical services, etc. Sidewalk Labs wanted to be in the middle of the action on the Toronto waterfront, not in the undeveloped boonies.

by jmpman 5y ago

bobthepanda 5y ago

Underground doesn't help you. Western property rights operate under the ad coeleum doctrine, or "whoever's is the soil, it is theirs all the way to Heaven and all the way to Hell". The upper limit has been established by the US Supreme Court but there hasn't been a solid case about the lower limit, and testing this through litigation is a fairly difficult way to make money. A Hyperloop doesn't offer much advantage over conventional technology given the short distance (50 mi); even at normal high-speed-rail speeds you spend a good chunk of the time accelerating and decelerating. Speeding up and slowing down faster is not tenable, as no one wants to be on a roller coaster as a commute. The other thing is that the commuting range of New York is pretty far. The metro area is considered to stretch as far as Pike County PA (82 miles), Trenton NJ (70 miles), the entirety of Long Island, and New Haven (80 miles). Anything that is feasible to develop already has been; anything that hasn't been is either some land use that can't be developed (a park), has unfavorable geography (the Meadowlands is a marsh that gets flooded often and is vital to local flooding protection), or other mitigating factors. Then there's the issue of the land assembling. No one could afford to assemble such a parcel. NYC's metro area was estimated to have 10% of the entire country's real estate value [1]. And even if one had the land you can't just do whatever you like because you're the owner; you're still subject to local zoning rules. --- [1] https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-urban-land-value-with-nyc-making-up-10/ https://www.6sqft.com/study-shows-huge-disparity-in-u-s-urba...

jmpman 5y ago
Check out Lebanon NJ. Still massive tracks of farmland and woods. 50 miles from midtown, currently with property for sale at $50k/acre. 5 mile radius is approximately 50k acres. At $50k/acre = $2.5B. With construction costs of $1B for an 18 mile run in Chicago, the Boring company could make this Lebanon <-> Manhattan for $2.5B. $5B for a 30min commute to Midtown Manhattan, and to break even, you’d only have to sell the land you acquired at $50k/acre at $100k/acre. I’d happily buy a 1 acre plot of land with a 30 min commute time to Midtown for $100k.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Lebanon NJ the town is covered entirely by a historic district. Like I said, you can't just do whatever you want and disregard local zoning if you own land. > With construction costs of $1B for an 18 mile run in Chicago, the Boring company could make this Lebanon <-> Manhattan for $2.5B. This is vaporware until it actually happens. Maglevs and monorails and personal rapid transit were also supposed to be significantly cheaper than their traditional counterparts, until they weren't. I could promise you HSR for $1, that doesn't mean I can make it happen.
  - jmpman 5y ago
    Right, you need Lebanon NJ residents to decide they’d prefer doubling their property value to some crumbling old buildings. Disney was able to have his way in Orlando. It can be done.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Presumably if they went above and beyond normal local zoning restrictions with a historic district they care more than your average American. And presumably if you could make a bunch of Americans magically consider massive redevelopment on that scale, it would be more fruitful to do it in a place closer in where you don't have to spend billions of dollars on transportation infrastructure, or the other billions of dollars establishing services like water supply, a grid with adequate capacity, schools, fire, police, medical services, etc. Sidewalk Labs wanted to be in the middle of the action on the Toronto waterfront, not in the undeveloped boonies.