7 ms·

I don't understand why there is so much focus on doing this in California where they have tons of development and the huge issue of earth quakes. Surely there's

by trose 12y ago

I don't understand why there is so much focus on doing this in California where they have tons of development and the huge issue of earth quakes. Surely there's somewhere else that could reap the benefits of fast travel. Off the top of my head I would suggest doing this through the midwestern states which are incredibly flat and mostly void of development for hundreds of miles. You can pay ranchers and farmers for the right to build the support towers on their land. You'd have to worry about tornados and hail storms though. I'm not sure how much concern that would be. If this this is all steel and concrete it should be strong enough right?

grecy 12y ago
I think you also need the population density and a population that wants/needs to travel from A to B regularly to make it viable. Musk proposed LA->San Fran as a commuter route - i.e. people would take it both ways 5 days a week. How many people want/need to zip across the midwest both ways 5 days a week?
- rpedela 12y ago
  Chicago to/from any city is great for freight and possibly commuters.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    But the hyperloop isn't really targeted at freight, and would probably be a poor fit except for the most express of express freight. For general freight, Chicago already has plenty of railroad lines.
- nedwin 12y ago
  Also commuters with the capacity to pay for expensive tickets - this thing isn't going to be cheap, at least not initially.
- ulfw 12y ago
  So yea, he 'designed' it basically for himself (SpaceX in LA, Tesla in the Bay). Who else would do this commute daily (because it will certainly prohibitively expensive for just daily commuting)?
  - goatforce5 12y ago
    People are using the Eurostar train to commute between France and London, apparently: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f26fe984-943a-11dc-9aaf-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3MN53iXN6 http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f26fe984-943a-11dc-9aaf-00007...
    - ulfw 12y ago
      Well yea... "Also, the cost of Eurostar itself is not inconsiderable. There is a frequent traveller service that provides benefits, although not on price and there is no equivalent of a season ticket. Return tickets start at £59". Frankly I've rarely seen tickets under 150-200$. Doing this DAILY for a commute would add up, unless you're ridiculously wealthy (which I then suggest just getting a second home at your place of work for during the week).
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  And while I could see that as a neat trick (I think Elon was going more for the comparison to the High Speed Rail boondoggle) it would be much more interesting if it could do something like Reno/SF or maybe Boise/SF so that folks could live in a nice place and work in a trendy place. But the whole notion of 'tasked' cities (living cities vs working cities) is still not well developed.
  - HCIdivision17 12y ago
    This is, perhaps, the most obvious Jetsons-suburb style future we can attain. It's so alluring and outlandish. I tend to work in plants, but I end up commuting just to stay away from the soul crushing industry. (Or soul-crushing industry, depending...) To be able to live in a nice garden village and then take a 40 minute ride out of state to my plant would be an utter joy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- TrevorJ 12y ago
  That's a chicken and the egg sort of question. We've developed pretty separate east and west coast economies and cultures since the travel times preclude much else. If they didn't I think we would see a lot of demand come from it that we don't see the need for yet.
rpedela 12y ago
I doubt hail storms would be a problem, but tornadoes are another story. Maybe instead of the tube and pylons being exposed, they were covered in such a way that a tornado would go over top rather than through it.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
This is something the midwest desperately needs. Unfortunately, we tried high speed trains during the stimulus, but the GOP governors of Wisconsin and Indiana didn't want to play ball with Obama's policies. Imagine a fast line or a hyperloop between Chicago > Des Moines/Indianapolis/Madison/Cleveland/Memphis, etc. We've got the flat land, maybe the money, but we don't have the political will. On a more positive note, the 300 mile Chicago > Columbus line is funded and happening: http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-columbus-and-chicago-chug-forward/ http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-col... >The high-speed train would make the Chicago-to-Columbus travel time three hours and 45 minutes, compared to an almost six-hour drive. Not bad. No hyperloop, but if this is the begining of high-speed rail in America, it will be a game changer. Shame guys like Musk can't figure out ways to make traditional high-speed rail cheaper. I suspect that's just too unsexy of a problem for him.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That 3:45 travel time seems pretty unlikely. According to the feasibility study, it's based on the idea that trains with a 130MPH maximum speed will run at an average of 110MPH. The Acela Express maxes out at 150MPH, but averages only ~80MPH --- and that doesn't factor in service outages and other transient delays, which are common. An HSR line between Chicago and Columbus would probably in the best case be competitive with driving. Which is itself an achievement, one supposes, given how much worse trains are than driving currently.
  - fragmede 12y ago
    The Acela shares track with commuter and freight trains, as well as running on regular tracks, as opposed to tracks designed for HSR which is why it averages only a paltry 80 MPH. In comparison, the TGV in France averages 157 MPH (its top speed is 357 MPH), and Japanese bullet trains average somewhere in the neighborhood of 162 MPH. The 'thelantern' link provided above doesn't go into detail if the plan involves laying all-new tracks to properly support HSR, or if existing tracks to be re-used. Even then, parity with driving is an achievement. Drivers in traffic have this annoying habit of texting or worse while driving, even when illegal. I can put up with sitting next to someone texting on the train since they're not doing so while weaving in and out of traffic.
jakozaur 12y ago
As much as I love California, countries/regions need to compete to be the first place where Hyperloop will be built. Maybe it will be in USA (California, Texas, East Coast), maybe somewhere in Asia (China) or Europe. Building innovating infrastructure requires huge resources: land, money and political will. I'm not optimistic that there is some place where government would take a leap of faith, but that would require a lot of convincing in many places even to get one committed state.
dogprez 12y ago
Musk's businesses are split between LA and SF. He and his employees travel back and forth and he wants to use it.
hyperbovine 12y ago
You said it yourself, nobody lives in the midwest. By contrast, LA-SF is the second on third busiest passenger air route in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air_routes#United_States_.282013.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air...). Moving all those people by plane is hugely expensive and inefficient, and the 5 cannot handle any more car traffic. By some accounts, this is the biggest unsolved public transportation problem in America.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That is news to the residents of Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Milwaukee, Louisville, OKC, Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, and Indianapolis, which are some of the largest cities in the country. Also: moving people by plane is probably more efficient than by high speed rail.
  - HCIdivision17 12y ago
    Freight boast some positively incredible efficiencies, so I'm assuming high speed rail simply loses it by holding the pedal to the metal the whole way, so to speak? It's a cool comparison to me: you can either slam the accelerator/brakes for the duration of a trip or you can fight about 7 miles of head. Both are so extreme I don't really have much of an intuition on it, but I think it'd be fun to find out.
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    The total population of all of those cities barely exceeds the number of people who fly between LA and SF each year. Really. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+population+of+chicago%2C+minneapolis%2C+detroit%2C+columbus%2C+louisville%2C+milwaukee%2C+oklahoma+city%2C+nashville%2C+memphis%2C+indianopolis http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+population+of+chi...
    - tptacek 12y ago
      That is a weird apples-oranges comparison, because the total population of those cities is also a multiple of the combined population of LA and SF. CHI-MSP is the 6th busiest route in the US (LA-SF is the 2nd). Do you think the combined air passenger stats for the cities I just listed would be lower than that of LA-SF?
melling 12y ago
I would suggest China. They have already demonstrated their affinity for HSR by laying 10,000 miles of track. A couple weeks ago they opened 32 routes in one day. http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscles-by-rolling-out-32-new-routes-in-one-day/ http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscle... If the idea is to develop and prove the technology, China can accomplish this in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Building the second one is always less of a risk. The distance between Shanghai and Beijing is 800 miles, so the 1hr travel time should be very appealing.

by trose 12y ago

grecy 12y ago

I think you also need the population density and a population that wants/needs to travel from A to B regularly to make it viable. Musk proposed LA->San Fran as a commuter route - i.e. people would take it both ways 5 days a week. How many people want/need to zip across the midwest both ways 5 days a week?

rpedela 12y ago
Chicago to/from any city is great for freight and possibly commuters.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  But the hyperloop isn't really targeted at freight, and would probably be a poor fit except for the most express of express freight. For general freight, Chicago already has plenty of railroad lines.
nedwin 12y ago
Also commuters with the capacity to pay for expensive tickets - this thing isn't going to be cheap, at least not initially.
ulfw 12y ago
So yea, he 'designed' it basically for himself (SpaceX in LA, Tesla in the Bay). Who else would do this commute daily (because it will certainly prohibitively expensive for just daily commuting)?
- goatforce5 12y ago
  People are using the Eurostar train to commute between France and London, apparently: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f26fe984-943a-11dc-9aaf-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3MN53iXN6 http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f26fe984-943a-11dc-9aaf-00007...
  - ulfw 12y ago
    Well yea... "Also, the cost of Eurostar itself is not inconsiderable. There is a frequent traveller service that provides benefits, although not on price and there is no equivalent of a season ticket. Return tickets start at £59". Frankly I've rarely seen tickets under 150-200$. Doing this DAILY for a commute would add up, unless you're ridiculously wealthy (which I then suggest just getting a second home at your place of work for during the week).
ChuckMcM 12y ago
And while I could see that as a neat trick (I think Elon was going more for the comparison to the High Speed Rail boondoggle) it would be much more interesting if it could do something like Reno/SF or maybe Boise/SF so that folks could live in a nice place and work in a trendy place. But the whole notion of 'tasked' cities (living cities vs working cities) is still not well developed.
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  This is, perhaps, the most obvious Jetsons-suburb style future we can attain. It's so alluring and outlandish. I tend to work in plants, but I end up commuting just to stay away from the soul crushing industry. (Or soul-crushing industry, depending...) To be able to live in a nice garden village and then take a 40 minute ride out of state to my plant would be an utter joy.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
TrevorJ 12y ago
That's a chicken and the egg sort of question. We've developed pretty separate east and west coast economies and cultures since the travel times preclude much else. If they didn't I think we would see a lot of demand come from it that we don't see the need for yet.

rpedela 12y ago

I doubt hail storms would be a problem, but tornadoes are another story. Maybe instead of the tube and pylons being exposed, they were covered in such a way that a tornado would go over top rather than through it.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

This is something the midwest desperately needs. Unfortunately, we tried high speed trains during the stimulus, but the GOP governors of Wisconsin and Indiana didn't want to play ball with Obama's policies. Imagine a fast line or a hyperloop between Chicago > Des Moines/Indianapolis/Madison/Cleveland/Memphis, etc. We've got the flat land, maybe the money, but we don't have the political will. On a more positive note, the 300 mile Chicago > Columbus line is funded and happening: http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-columbus-and-chicago-chug-forward/ http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-col... >The high-speed train would make the Chicago-to-Columbus travel time three hours and 45 minutes, compared to an almost six-hour drive. Not bad. No hyperloop, but if this is the begining of high-speed rail in America, it will be a game changer. Shame guys like Musk can't figure out ways to make traditional high-speed rail cheaper. I suspect that's just too unsexy of a problem for him.

tptacek 12y ago
That 3:45 travel time seems pretty unlikely. According to the feasibility study, it's based on the idea that trains with a 130MPH maximum speed will run at an average of 110MPH. The Acela Express maxes out at 150MPH, but averages only ~80MPH --- and that doesn't factor in service outages and other transient delays, which are common. An HSR line between Chicago and Columbus would probably in the best case be competitive with driving. Which is itself an achievement, one supposes, given how much worse trains are than driving currently.
- fragmede 12y ago
  The Acela shares track with commuter and freight trains, as well as running on regular tracks, as opposed to tracks designed for HSR which is why it averages only a paltry 80 MPH. In comparison, the TGV in France averages 157 MPH (its top speed is 357 MPH), and Japanese bullet trains average somewhere in the neighborhood of 162 MPH. The 'thelantern' link provided above doesn't go into detail if the plan involves laying all-new tracks to properly support HSR, or if existing tracks to be re-used. Even then, parity with driving is an achievement. Drivers in traffic have this annoying habit of texting or worse while driving, even when illegal. I can put up with sitting next to someone texting on the train since they're not doing so while weaving in and out of traffic.

jakozaur 12y ago

As much as I love California, countries/regions need to compete to be the first place where Hyperloop will be built. Maybe it will be in USA (California, Texas, East Coast), maybe somewhere in Asia (China) or Europe. Building innovating infrastructure requires huge resources: land, money and political will. I'm not optimistic that there is some place where government would take a leap of faith, but that would require a lot of convincing in many places even to get one committed state.

dogprez 12y ago

Musk's businesses are split between LA and SF. He and his employees travel back and forth and he wants to use it.

hyperbovine 12y ago

You said it yourself, nobody lives in the midwest. By contrast, LA-SF is the second on third busiest passenger air route in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air_routes#United_States_.282013.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air...). Moving all those people by plane is hugely expensive and inefficient, and the 5 cannot handle any more car traffic. By some accounts, this is the biggest unsolved public transportation problem in America.

tptacek 12y ago
That is news to the residents of Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Milwaukee, Louisville, OKC, Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, and Indianapolis, which are some of the largest cities in the country. Also: moving people by plane is probably more efficient than by high speed rail.
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  Freight boast some positively incredible efficiencies, so I'm assuming high speed rail simply loses it by holding the pedal to the metal the whole way, so to speak? It's a cool comparison to me: you can either slam the accelerator/brakes for the duration of a trip or you can fight about 7 miles of head. Both are so extreme I don't really have much of an intuition on it, but I think it'd be fun to find out.
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  The total population of all of those cities barely exceeds the number of people who fly between LA and SF each year. Really. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+population+of+chicago%2C+minneapolis%2C+detroit%2C+columbus%2C+louisville%2C+milwaukee%2C+oklahoma+city%2C+nashville%2C+memphis%2C+indianopolis http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+population+of+chi...
  - tptacek 12y ago
    That is a weird apples-oranges comparison, because the total population of those cities is also a multiple of the combined population of LA and SF. CHI-MSP is the 6th busiest route in the US (LA-SF is the 2nd). Do you think the combined air passenger stats for the cities I just listed would be lower than that of LA-SF?

melling 12y ago

I would suggest China. They have already demonstrated their affinity for HSR by laying 10,000 miles of track. A couple weeks ago they opened 32 routes in one day. http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscles-by-rolling-out-32-new-routes-in-one-day/ http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscle... If the idea is to develop and prove the technology, China can accomplish this in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Building the second one is always less of a risk. The distance between Shanghai and Beijing is 800 miles, so the 1hr travel time should be very appealing.