4 ms·

Yeah; you are pretty one-sided too when the example you use is "the convenience of 10.000s of people having a station a little closer" and not something along t

by ivanca 13y ago

Yeah; you are pretty one-sided too when the example you use is "the convenience of 10.000s of people having a station a little closer" and not something along the lines of "the difference between a straight route rather than two curves on it resulting in adding 30 minutes to the traveling of every person that uses that route now, and in the centuries to come" That example also shows why "millions" is not an understatement.

Silhouette 13y ago
"the convenience of 10.000s of people having a station a little closer" If the estimates that the Hyperloop would carry in the region of 3,000 passengers (either way) per hour are correct, calling it 10,000s seems reasonable. Indeed, it seems quite plausible that constructing something like the currently proposed Hyperloop would cause severe disruption to more people than would actually save a little time travelling on it in a year. Over its entire working lifetime, the number of person-hours lost because of construction effects might still heavily outweigh the number of person-hours saved because of marginally reduced journey times. "the difference between a straight route rather than two curves on it resulting in adding 30 minutes to the traveling of every person that uses that route now, and in the centuries to come" I didn't give that example because nothing we're talking about for either Hyperloop or the UK-based rail network is anything close to adding 30 minutes to the journey time. You're absurdly exaggerating the effects of rerouting. Maybe if you added numerous deviations to avoid numerous undesirable land conflicts you'd get to that kind of level, but in that case you have to balance it against numerous different sets of people who lose out in all those conflicts as well. Basically, the idea of claiming large amounts of land where people are living right now to build infrastructure like the Hyperloop is about as blatant an elitist land-grab as I can think of. If it really were severely inconveniencing a handful of people to make life significantly better for millions you might at least have a decent argument, but the real numbers don't appear to be anything like that from any of the Googling I'm doing today.
- ivanca 13y ago
  You must be bad at googling then, because the current transportation system of SF, the BART system, carries 373,945 people in average... per day![0] It was just an example and I was referring to the appropriation problem not specific in this case; but even if you want to stick with this one you can see that the suggestion of the analysis is to build the hiperloop along the freeway; unfortunately many high density cities don't have one already. Well, some napkin math: The current system travels at 110 km/h and the Hiperloop goes in a low-estimate average of 350 km/h, so it would save at least two thirds of the current time, if each one travels just 20 minutes using the BART system then let's say 190.000 people that would use the Hyperloop (instead of BART) would save 36932 years of time lost in the next 20 years (with assuming no increase in population, which is false), if it takes 10 years to be build and adds 5 minutes to the time of every car passenger (because it doesn't disrupt BART operation) and SF traffic is pretty good (meaning very low), and if SF moves ~270K cars daily[1] and assuming one passenger it would mean 540K people so it would mean 18750 years lost. But one single lifetime is usually longer than 10 years so most of the people losing time now will be part of the people saving time later thanks to the Hyperloop. So even accounting for the time lost -in a rough estimate- people would save half the time they spend now traveling. Many things I did not even take in account: - This will not disrupt car because if you can take the Hyperloop and arrive in 15 minutes while you play Angrybirds or use you car but take 30 minutes you would likely choose the former every time (not just sometimes). - Less Time save lives; if you are bleeding from a gun shoot arriving 10 minutes faster is the difference between life and death so it saved the rest of your lifetime. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit [1]http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.html http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.htm...
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    We seem to be talking about completely different things here. Where did this reference to BART and carrying 300,000-400,000 passengers daily come from? How is that local transport system anything like long-distance, high-speed infrastructure like the proposed Hyperloop system? They're completely different types of transportation, so your hypothetical scenario where one is somehow replaced by the other makes no sense. And how on earth did we get from talking about compulsory purchase/eminent domain to secure land for that kind of long-distance transport infrastructure over to talking about something to do with cars? Even if we had been talking about BART, to build a new system like that today, with around 100 miles of track and dozens of stations in urban/suburban areas, you'd have to buy up huge amounts of formerly residential land if the area was already well-developed. That would inevitably displace many thousands of people who previously lived there, as well as divide and blight the communities that remained. The social and economic costs of forcing a new system like that on a mature city would be staggering, and it would be likely that much of any new system would be built underground to avoid the damage on the surface.

by ivanca 13y ago

Silhouette 13y ago

"the convenience of 10.000s of people having a station a little closer" If the estimates that the Hyperloop would carry in the region of 3,000 passengers (either way) per hour are correct, calling it 10,000s seems reasonable. Indeed, it seems quite plausible that constructing something like the currently proposed Hyperloop would cause severe disruption to more people than would actually save a little time travelling on it in a year. Over its entire working lifetime, the number of person-hours lost because of construction effects might still heavily outweigh the number of person-hours saved because of marginally reduced journey times. "the difference between a straight route rather than two curves on it resulting in adding 30 minutes to the traveling of every person that uses that route now, and in the centuries to come" I didn't give that example because nothing we're talking about for either Hyperloop or the UK-based rail network is anything close to adding 30 minutes to the journey time. You're absurdly exaggerating the effects of rerouting. Maybe if you added numerous deviations to avoid numerous undesirable land conflicts you'd get to that kind of level, but in that case you have to balance it against numerous different sets of people who lose out in all those conflicts as well. Basically, the idea of claiming large amounts of land where people are living right now to build infrastructure like the Hyperloop is about as blatant an elitist land-grab as I can think of. If it really were severely inconveniencing a handful of people to make life significantly better for millions you might at least have a decent argument, but the real numbers don't appear to be anything like that from any of the Googling I'm doing today.

ivanca 13y ago
You must be bad at googling then, because the current transportation system of SF, the BART system, carries 373,945 people in average... per day![0] It was just an example and I was referring to the appropriation problem not specific in this case; but even if you want to stick with this one you can see that the suggestion of the analysis is to build the hiperloop along the freeway; unfortunately many high density cities don't have one already. Well, some napkin math: The current system travels at 110 km/h and the Hiperloop goes in a low-estimate average of 350 km/h, so it would save at least two thirds of the current time, if each one travels just 20 minutes using the BART system then let's say 190.000 people that would use the Hyperloop (instead of BART) would save 36932 years of time lost in the next 20 years (with assuming no increase in population, which is false), if it takes 10 years to be build and adds 5 minutes to the time of every car passenger (because it doesn't disrupt BART operation) and SF traffic is pretty good (meaning very low), and if SF moves ~270K cars daily[1] and assuming one passenger it would mean 540K people so it would mean 18750 years lost. But one single lifetime is usually longer than 10 years so most of the people losing time now will be part of the people saving time later thanks to the Hyperloop. So even accounting for the time lost -in a rough estimate- people would save half the time they spend now traveling. Many things I did not even take in account: - This will not disrupt car because if you can take the Hyperloop and arrive in 15 minutes while you play Angrybirds or use you car but take 30 minutes you would likely choose the former every time (not just sometimes). - Less Time save lives; if you are bleeding from a gun shoot arriving 10 minutes faster is the difference between life and death so it saved the rest of your lifetime. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit [1]http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.html http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.htm...
- Silhouette 13y ago
  We seem to be talking about completely different things here. Where did this reference to BART and carrying 300,000-400,000 passengers daily come from? How is that local transport system anything like long-distance, high-speed infrastructure like the proposed Hyperloop system? They're completely different types of transportation, so your hypothetical scenario where one is somehow replaced by the other makes no sense. And how on earth did we get from talking about compulsory purchase/eminent domain to secure land for that kind of long-distance transport infrastructure over to talking about something to do with cars? Even if we had been talking about BART, to build a new system like that today, with around 100 miles of track and dozens of stations in urban/suburban areas, you'd have to buy up huge amounts of formerly residential land if the area was already well-developed. That would inevitably displace many thousands of people who previously lived there, as well as divide and blight the communities that remained. The social and economic costs of forcing a new system like that on a mature city would be staggering, and it would be likely that much of any new system would be built underground to avoid the damage on the surface.