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Drone footage reveals The Line megacity under construction in Saudi Arabia

35 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

imgabe 4y ago
Oh, they'll build something I'm sure. Why anyone would want to live in a giant shopping mall in the middle of a desert in a country with an oppressive, theocratic regime I have no idea.
- randStr_ 4y ago
  What do you want? The whole population to leave the country? The govt is bad doesn't mean people wouldn't want to thrive. Just because something doesn't go along with your view doesn't make it oppressive. And FYI, SA govt isn't fully theocratic. Islam doesn't support hereditary monarchy at all.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    I don't think what I want matters very much. I don't live there and don't ever plan to. I'm saying I don't see the appeal. Was this something the people of Saudia Arabia wanted? Was the population clamoring to live in a giant Line in the middle of nowhere? Did they ask what people wanted, or even look at where they are naturally gravitating to? Was that even a consideration in this project? Most cities build up over time as more and more people have a reason to live in a particular area. At some point it becomes self-reinforcing because more people want to live there because everyone lives there. Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well.
    - docdeek 4y ago
      > Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well. Aren’t there a number of big cities that have been built by decree and work well? I’m thinking of capital cities like Canberra (AUS), Brasilia (BRA) and Washington DC (USA). Granted, these are not quite so ambitious as The Line, but they turned mostly uninhabited swampland and farmland into major cities.
      - imgabe 4y ago
        The section of Seeing Like a State about Brasilia left me with the impression that it did not, in fact, work very well. I lived in DC for many years. There were people living there beforehand. It's at an intersection of 2 rivers. The original planning has been able to grow and adapt organically since then. But, go try to drive anywhere during rush hour (or anytime really) and ask again how well it works. It's also worth noting that all three examples are capitals of their respective countries, which is a built-in reason for people to need to live there. The Line doesn't have that, so why are people going to upend their lives and move there?
        piva00 4y ago
        I'm originally from Brazil and can attest to that: Brasilia as envisioned is a failed project. It moved the capital far away from any population centre making the disconnection between central government and the people much larger. The city was designed with a vision of each city block providing all the basic amenities needed to live in the block: shops, office spaces, apartments, etc. This plan was scrapped by the military dictatorship ending with the city having pretty massive blocks where you need to travel long distances to do anything, it became a nightmare of traffic as it wasn't planned that people would require traveling all the time. Like you mention, the only real reason there's a big population there is due to being the capital, all the bureaucracies of the State reside there and the cascade of employment created by that is basically its whole economy. As a Brazilian there is no reason to visit Brasilia except if you are dealing with the government (or feel like you need to see the capital's architecture for its own sake).
      - CaptArmchair 4y ago
        Regarding Canberra, after WWII: > Immediately after the end of the war, Canberra was criticised for resembling a village and its disorganised collection of buildings was deemed ugly.[96][97][98] Canberra was often derisively described as "several suburbs in search of a city Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies regarded the state of the national capital as an embarrassment.[100] Over time his attitude changed from one of contempt to that of championing its development. He fired two ministers charged with the development of the city for poor performance. Menzies remained in office for over a decade and in that time the development of the capital sped up rapidly.[101][102] The population grew by more than 50 per cent in every five-year period from 1955 to 1975.[102] Several Government departments, together with public servants, were moved to Canberra from Melbourne following the war.[103] Government housing projects were undertaken to accommodate the city's growing population." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra#Creation_of_the_nation's_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra#Creation_of_the_natio... Arguably, Canberra's local economy was/is able to rally around the workers who built the city followed by the influx of civil servants due to centralization of government branches and administrations. The same can be asserted about Washington DC or Brasilia. In the same vain: towns that emerge around a single economic activity. Like College / University towns. Or mining towns. Their common ground is a clear appealing, albeit single, economic activity that gives people the motivation to flock to the city. Canberra's local authorities only started to invest in housing projects after a clear need was asserted. That doesn't mean those cities are regarded as "livable" or "favorable". Brasilia, by and large, is viewed as a "workcity" where most of the daytime population consists of commuters who leave at the end of the day. Whereas The Line puts all the infrastructure in place without there being a growing community that needs catering to. It assumes that the appeal of the infrastructure in itself is enough for people to be willing to move in. I'd say that's premature optimization.
    - twelve40 4y ago
      > Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well. can you list some examples? Cuz all i can think of (as mentioned in this thread) are places like Ankara, Astana, Saint Petersburg (matter of fact i think _most_ cities in Russia were created by decree in a swamp) etc.
      - imgabe 4y ago
        I was thinking specifically of Brasilia and the criticisms of it in the book Seeing Like a State, how the planning ignored the reality of how people actually lived their lives. It's also interesting that all the examples you gave as well as the other reply, are (or were) capital cities of their respective countries. Of course, if it's the seat of the national government, people will need to live / work there and there will be a city. The Line doesn't have that, though.
        orbifold 4y ago
        If you go far back enough the Romans were responsible for founding a large number of modern day Western European cities. In CIV terms building a city surrounded by desert tiles is just a very late game move.
raydiatian 4y ago
First I heard about “The Line” was about a month ago in this rather skeptical breakdown: https://youtu.be/2b7uMJkvS0o https://youtu.be/2b7uMJkvS0o I’m not an architect but her points make sense to me. Seems like equal parts clueless Saudi billionaires and willing grifters.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
powerapple 4y ago
I wish them success. It could be an interesting experiment. I hope it is not a scam by some architects. From people living in other places, this is not attractive, but for people living in deserts, it could be something nice.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  A lot of the people who live in the desert (Howeitat tribe) are actually being imprisoned and/or executed to pave the way for this development.
  - powerapple 4y ago
    Sadly this is the real world. I have seen many migrate workers, the fact is that their lives back home is no better, that's why they have traveled to work in alien countries. There are people driving cars for 20 years without seeing his family. Things could be better, unfortunately it is typically not the reality. We still have to look forward.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  Same, I have no love for the Saudis but will cheer on anyone trying bold new projects, watching the usual tired old negativity from experts who clamour out of the woodwork to say something will never work only makes me want it to succeed more. I remember when everyone on earth knew for sure how SpaceX would fail. Terrorist affiliated tribesmen who the Jordanian government ban tourists from visiting out of safety fears are a strange bedfellow for western world moralisers desperate to make other people hate this thing.
  - olabyne 4y ago
    Do you remember when everyone was saying how Hyperloop would fail, when you looked throught the numers ? Well, it is dead now. Skepticism is good. SpaceX had already working prototypes from early phases. Come on, being able to tell the difference the difference between an investor scam anda true innovation is not that hard, just look at the few numbers, you get quickly on how realistic the projet is. This city is not.
trabant00 4y ago
2 minute official presentation of the project for anybody not familiar with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc When I first heard about it I thought it's going to be vaporware. I can make no sense of it. The deign and the location seem to indicate huge costs for no benefits in many areas. There's no fresh water over there. Complete glass facade in the desert requires a lot of cooling. The interior will require electrical illumination. And then there's the transportation issues caused by it being a line instead of a circle. Lack of streets compensated by flying taxis? Virtual on-line school for children I assume because you can't transport them to central schools? "AI" managed utilities? And I could go on and on and on. What do you make of this, from a practical standpoint?
- returnInfinity 4y ago
  Let it play out, we will find soon. The first phase is sort of a trial.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  A circle would have made more sense, I think, but having it in a line still makes a little sense: a long, narrow city usually works well with public transit because trains do well in moving along corridors. Still, a circle would have been better because you could have trains going both directions and the average time to get to any destination would be shorter. Anyway, your criticism of it being a line instead of a circle holds for Manhattan, for instance. The location doesn't seem to make much sense though. And what exactly will be the industry that supports this place economically? Most cities have some kind of local industry.
  - CommitSyn 4y ago
    > Still, a circle would have been better because you could have trains going both directions In this case couldn't you just walk across the street and take the opposite direction train? I may be misinterpreting the idea in my mind, but it seems like it could be treated as an extremely long, skinny ellipses (this sentence begs for a math nerd to comment with the correct terms.) You could even have multiple (or 60 each way, oil tycoon style) trains if utilizing tunnels and overhangs for people to 'walk through' the lines of running trains.
beardyw 4y ago
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. — Percy Shelley
joshxyz 4y ago
goodness gracious, will this be the next dubai?
- feet 4y ago
  Lol no
geoduck14 4y ago
They sentenced 3 men to death after protesting the election of the locals: https://www.dezeen.com/2022/10/17/neom-death-sentences-saudi-arabia/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/10/17/neom-death-sentences-saudi...
PoignardAzur 4y ago
It's a little puzzling to see commenters treat this project as if any part of it was serious. Every serious accounting of the project says the same: it's batshit insane. The scale is ridiculously big (170km long, 500m high), the location is ridiculous, the shape is the opposite of what you want in urban design (a straight line means the opposite ends are going to be disconnected, no matter how good your trains are), and every single design element is made to look good on a video presentation before being practical. Management is reportedly made of oil barons who get violently angry if anyone questions their decisions, and foreign contractors who know the project is doomed but don't want to speak up while the free money is flowing. It's a huge farce.
- N19PEDL2 4y ago
  > The shape is the opposite of what you want in urban design (a straight line means the opposite ends are going to be disconnected, no matter how good your trains are). 100% agree. I really don't understand why they didn't design it as Apple Campus-style, with a giant natural park inside (if this is possible in the desert), and railway lines along the diameter every 22.5° or so to connect opposite points of the circle, with an interchange station in the center.
  - tromp 4y ago
    Even a 4-spoke rail cross will require more rail than having all rail along the perimeter, and only speeds up the connection between opposites by pi/2.
    - true_religion 4y ago
      It’s so the center is connected to the outside, not because they want to speed up the connection between opposite sides. Typical cities are circles with most of the density being in the middle, and the 4 spoke optimizes for that. If on the other hand density is in a line around the perimeter, that’s the best place for rail.
  - PoignardAzur 4y ago
wink 4y ago
> Designed by US architecture studio Morphosis, it would be 500 metres tall but only 200 metres wide, with the gap in between filled by densely packed urban fabric alongside trees and plantlife and a high-speed rail network embedded underground. From the linked https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/08/sustainability-liveability-the-line-saudi-170km-city-naive/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/08/sustainability-liveability... I mean, I have no idea about architecture and city planning but 200m, a single building sounds awfully small. But just a little wiggling of, say (170km/2 = 85km) x 400m or even (170km/3 = 57 km) x 600m would have made it so much more compact and, to me, still 100% captured the spirit of "a very long line along some train tracks".
pigtailgirl 4y ago
-- knew this was going to be built when half the smart folks I know at Hitachi got hired away to work on it - check out this other new weird thing they’re doing: https://tonomus.neom.com/ https://tonomus.neom.com/ --
firstSpeaker 4y ago
It is for sure ambitious. But since a very young age I have seen massive self sustaining futuristic cities being proposed. Maybe this is a beginning for such megastructures being built. We won’t learn without doing and I hope either they succeed and build the amazing city they set to do or share enough experience and knowledge for the next one to be successful
amai 4y ago
"The transportation layer will include a high-speed rail system, which is claimed to allow people to go from one side of the city to the other side in 20 minutes when finished, reaching a speed of 512 km/h, which is faster than existing high-speed rail at the time of announcement." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia Going from one side to another (170 km) one would need an average(!) speed of 510 km/h (170 km/20 min * 60 min/h) . I think they would need something like Hyperloop to do that.

35 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

Oh, they'll build something I'm sure. Why anyone would want to live in a giant shopping mall in the middle of a desert in a country with an oppressive, theocratic regime I have no idea.

randStr_ 4y ago
What do you want? The whole population to leave the country? The govt is bad doesn't mean people wouldn't want to thrive. Just because something doesn't go along with your view doesn't make it oppressive. And FYI, SA govt isn't fully theocratic. Islam doesn't support hereditary monarchy at all.
- imgabe 4y ago
  I don't think what I want matters very much. I don't live there and don't ever plan to. I'm saying I don't see the appeal. Was this something the people of Saudia Arabia wanted? Was the population clamoring to live in a giant Line in the middle of nowhere? Did they ask what people wanted, or even look at where they are naturally gravitating to? Was that even a consideration in this project? Most cities build up over time as more and more people have a reason to live in a particular area. At some point it becomes self-reinforcing because more people want to live there because everyone lives there. Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well.
  - docdeek 4y ago
    > Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well. Aren’t there a number of big cities that have been built by decree and work well? I’m thinking of capital cities like Canberra (AUS), Brasilia (BRA) and Washington DC (USA). Granted, these are not quite so ambitious as The Line, but they turned mostly uninhabited swampland and farmland into major cities.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      The section of Seeing Like a State about Brasilia left me with the impression that it did not, in fact, work very well. I lived in DC for many years. There were people living there beforehand. It's at an intersection of 2 rivers. The original planning has been able to grow and adapt organically since then. But, go try to drive anywhere during rush hour (or anytime really) and ask again how well it works. It's also worth noting that all three examples are capitals of their respective countries, which is a built-in reason for people to need to live there. The Line doesn't have that, so why are people going to upend their lives and move there?
      - piva00 4y ago
        I'm originally from Brazil and can attest to that: Brasilia as envisioned is a failed project. It moved the capital far away from any population centre making the disconnection between central government and the people much larger. The city was designed with a vision of each city block providing all the basic amenities needed to live in the block: shops, office spaces, apartments, etc. This plan was scrapped by the military dictatorship ending with the city having pretty massive blocks where you need to travel long distances to do anything, it became a nightmare of traffic as it wasn't planned that people would require traveling all the time. Like you mention, the only real reason there's a big population there is due to being the capital, all the bureaucracies of the State reside there and the cascade of employment created by that is basically its whole economy. As a Brazilian there is no reason to visit Brasilia except if you are dealing with the government (or feel like you need to see the capital's architecture for its own sake).
    - CaptArmchair 4y ago
      Regarding Canberra, after WWII: > Immediately after the end of the war, Canberra was criticised for resembling a village and its disorganised collection of buildings was deemed ugly.[96][97][98] Canberra was often derisively described as "several suburbs in search of a city Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies regarded the state of the national capital as an embarrassment.[100] Over time his attitude changed from one of contempt to that of championing its development. He fired two ministers charged with the development of the city for poor performance. Menzies remained in office for over a decade and in that time the development of the capital sped up rapidly.[101][102] The population grew by more than 50 per cent in every five-year period from 1955 to 1975.[102] Several Government departments, together with public servants, were moved to Canberra from Melbourne following the war.[103] Government housing projects were undertaken to accommodate the city's growing population." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra#Creation_of_the_nation's_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra#Creation_of_the_natio... Arguably, Canberra's local economy was/is able to rally around the workers who built the city followed by the influx of civil servants due to centralization of government branches and administrations. The same can be asserted about Washington DC or Brasilia. In the same vain: towns that emerge around a single economic activity. Like College / University towns. Or mining towns. Their common ground is a clear appealing, albeit single, economic activity that gives people the motivation to flock to the city. Canberra's local authorities only started to invest in housing projects after a clear need was asserted. That doesn't mean those cities are regarded as "livable" or "favorable". Brasilia, by and large, is viewed as a "workcity" where most of the daytime population consists of commuters who leave at the end of the day. Whereas The Line puts all the infrastructure in place without there being a growing community that needs catering to. It assumes that the appeal of the infrastructure in itself is enough for people to be willing to move in. I'd say that's premature optimization.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    > Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well. can you list some examples? Cuz all i can think of (as mentioned in this thread) are places like Ankara, Astana, Saint Petersburg (matter of fact i think _most_ cities in Russia were created by decree in a swamp) etc.
    - imgabe 4y ago
      I was thinking specifically of Brasilia and the criticisms of it in the book Seeing Like a State, how the planning ignored the reality of how people actually lived their lives. It's also interesting that all the examples you gave as well as the other reply, are (or were) capital cities of their respective countries. Of course, if it's the seat of the national government, people will need to live / work there and there will be a city. The Line doesn't have that, though.
      - orbifold 4y ago
        If you go far back enough the Romans were responsible for founding a large number of modern day Western European cities. In CIV terms building a city surrounded by desert tiles is just a very late game move.

raydiatian 4y ago

First I heard about “The Line” was about a month ago in this rather skeptical breakdown: https://youtu.be/2b7uMJkvS0o https://youtu.be/2b7uMJkvS0o I’m not an architect but her points make sense to me. Seems like equal parts clueless Saudi billionaires and willing grifters.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

powerapple 4y ago

I wish them success. It could be an interesting experiment. I hope it is not a scam by some architects. From people living in other places, this is not attractive, but for people living in deserts, it could be something nice.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
A lot of the people who live in the desert (Howeitat tribe) are actually being imprisoned and/or executed to pave the way for this development.
- powerapple 4y ago
  Sadly this is the real world. I have seen many migrate workers, the fact is that their lives back home is no better, that's why they have traveled to work in alien countries. There are people driving cars for 20 years without seeing his family. Things could be better, unfortunately it is typically not the reality. We still have to look forward.
Grimburger 4y ago
Same, I have no love for the Saudis but will cheer on anyone trying bold new projects, watching the usual tired old negativity from experts who clamour out of the woodwork to say something will never work only makes me want it to succeed more. I remember when everyone on earth knew for sure how SpaceX would fail. Terrorist affiliated tribesmen who the Jordanian government ban tourists from visiting out of safety fears are a strange bedfellow for western world moralisers desperate to make other people hate this thing.
- olabyne 4y ago
  Do you remember when everyone was saying how Hyperloop would fail, when you looked throught the numers ? Well, it is dead now. Skepticism is good. SpaceX had already working prototypes from early phases. Come on, being able to tell the difference the difference between an investor scam anda true innovation is not that hard, just look at the few numbers, you get quickly on how realistic the projet is. This city is not.

trabant00 4y ago

2 minute official presentation of the project for anybody not familiar with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kz5vEqdaSc When I first heard about it I thought it's going to be vaporware. I can make no sense of it. The deign and the location seem to indicate huge costs for no benefits in many areas. There's no fresh water over there. Complete glass facade in the desert requires a lot of cooling. The interior will require electrical illumination. And then there's the transportation issues caused by it being a line instead of a circle. Lack of streets compensated by flying taxis? Virtual on-line school for children I assume because you can't transport them to central schools? "AI" managed utilities? And I could go on and on and on. What do you make of this, from a practical standpoint?

returnInfinity 4y ago
Let it play out, we will find soon. The first phase is sort of a trial.
midoridensha 4y ago
A circle would have made more sense, I think, but having it in a line still makes a little sense: a long, narrow city usually works well with public transit because trains do well in moving along corridors. Still, a circle would have been better because you could have trains going both directions and the average time to get to any destination would be shorter. Anyway, your criticism of it being a line instead of a circle holds for Manhattan, for instance. The location doesn't seem to make much sense though. And what exactly will be the industry that supports this place economically? Most cities have some kind of local industry.
- CommitSyn 4y ago
  > Still, a circle would have been better because you could have trains going both directions In this case couldn't you just walk across the street and take the opposite direction train? I may be misinterpreting the idea in my mind, but it seems like it could be treated as an extremely long, skinny ellipses (this sentence begs for a math nerd to comment with the correct terms.) You could even have multiple (or 60 each way, oil tycoon style) trains if utilizing tunnels and overhangs for people to 'walk through' the lines of running trains.

beardyw 4y ago

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. — Percy Shelley

joshxyz 4y ago

goodness gracious, will this be the next dubai?

feet 4y ago
Lol no

geoduck14 4y ago

They sentenced 3 men to death after protesting the election of the locals: https://www.dezeen.com/2022/10/17/neom-death-sentences-saudi-arabia/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/10/17/neom-death-sentences-saudi...

PoignardAzur 4y ago

It's a little puzzling to see commenters treat this project as if any part of it was serious. Every serious accounting of the project says the same: it's batshit insane. The scale is ridiculously big (170km long, 500m high), the location is ridiculous, the shape is the opposite of what you want in urban design (a straight line means the opposite ends are going to be disconnected, no matter how good your trains are), and every single design element is made to look good on a video presentation before being practical. Management is reportedly made of oil barons who get violently angry if anyone questions their decisions, and foreign contractors who know the project is doomed but don't want to speak up while the free money is flowing. It's a huge farce.

N19PEDL2 4y ago
> The shape is the opposite of what you want in urban design (a straight line means the opposite ends are going to be disconnected, no matter how good your trains are). 100% agree. I really don't understand why they didn't design it as Apple Campus-style, with a giant natural park inside (if this is possible in the desert), and railway lines along the diameter every 22.5° or so to connect opposite points of the circle, with an interchange station in the center.
- tromp 4y ago
  Even a 4-spoke rail cross will require more rail than having all rail along the perimeter, and only speeds up the connection between opposites by pi/2.
  - true_religion 4y ago
    It’s so the center is connected to the outside, not because they want to speed up the connection between opposite sides. Typical cities are circles with most of the density being in the middle, and the 4 spoke optimizes for that. If on the other hand density is in a line around the perimeter, that’s the best place for rail.
- PoignardAzur 4y ago

wink 4y ago

> Designed by US architecture studio Morphosis, it would be 500 metres tall but only 200 metres wide, with the gap in between filled by densely packed urban fabric alongside trees and plantlife and a high-speed rail network embedded underground. From the linked https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/08/sustainability-liveability-the-line-saudi-170km-city-naive/ https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/08/sustainability-liveability... I mean, I have no idea about architecture and city planning but 200m, a single building sounds awfully small. But just a little wiggling of, say (170km/2 = 85km) x 400m or even (170km/3 = 57 km) x 600m would have made it so much more compact and, to me, still 100% captured the spirit of "a very long line along some train tracks".

pigtailgirl 4y ago

-- knew this was going to be built when half the smart folks I know at Hitachi got hired away to work on it - check out this other new weird thing they’re doing: https://tonomus.neom.com/ https://tonomus.neom.com/ --

firstSpeaker 4y ago

It is for sure ambitious. But since a very young age I have seen massive self sustaining futuristic cities being proposed. Maybe this is a beginning for such megastructures being built. We won’t learn without doing and I hope either they succeed and build the amazing city they set to do or share enough experience and knowledge for the next one to be successful

amai 4y ago

"The transportation layer will include a high-speed rail system, which is claimed to allow people to go from one side of the city to the other side in 20 minutes when finished, reaching a speed of 512 km/h, which is faster than existing high-speed rail at the time of announcement." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia Going from one side to another (170 km) one would need an average(!) speed of 510 km/h (170 km/20 min * 60 min/h) . I think they would need something like Hyperloop to do that.