
Is Hyperloop the future of travel? - Elvie
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36307781
======
pi-err
There's a palpable excitement around Hyperloop and I can't wait to know if
this will reshape our world or not.

One of the largest problem I can see is not technical. The consensus is that a
"standard" Hyperloop track (between 2 cities, 300 to 800km apart) would have a
~1,500 passengers/hour max capacity. High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would
be around 10,000 passengers/hour.

Even if Hyperloop managed to get built at half the price of HSR (which would
already be a feat, there's zero chance they'll do it at 10% of HSR price),
this makes a very thin passenger flux to deliver reasonable amounts of
operational cash.

Where HSR can deliver $7M to $14M daily with $150 ticket price at peak time,
Hyperloop would max out at $2M daily with $300 tickets during peak hour. And
those prices would probably kill their market anyway.

And that's with an entirely new transport platform to fund with many unknowns
such as metal fatigue for pods in near-vacuum at those speeds, passenger
tolerance for accelerations and lateral movements etc.

Maybe the business plan for passenger planes and trains was also that hazy
back then?

~~~
S4M
> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour.

How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30
minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32
Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry
5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is
completely off (even taking into account the fact that Eurostar can go from
London, Paris and Brussels) and 1500 passengers/hour is comparable to the
number of passengers the Eurostar carries in an hour.

[0] [http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-
inf...](http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-
information/rtti#/dep/7015400/7015400)

~~~
hengheng
Europe's busiest express train line seems to be LGV Paris-Lyon, with a peak
scheduled capacity of 13 TGV trains per hour. Given that a TGV duplex fits 545
passengers, we are above 7000 per hour. Now couple two TGVs together, and
you'll be well above.

Weirdly enough, the only source I found was German wikipedia on the train
track (LGV Sud-Est[1]). Neither English nor French wikipedia have capacity
information, and neither of the respective articles on the train itself have
capacity information, even though the TGV duplex was introduced for this very
reason.

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-
Est](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est)

~~~
kuschku
In Germany there are some tracks with higher usages, but those are not the
same line – they just share part of the line (imagine on the track A -- B -- C
-- D, a train going from A to C, and from B to D, both every half hour –
between B and C now you have 15min frequencies).

But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France,
Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible.

Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway. And with the
cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many
decades.

~~~
Grishnakh
>Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway

So what? Airplanes also transport fewer people than a highway. How many people
travel _by air_ between LA and SF right now per hour? Probably no more than
the capacity of Hyperloop.

>But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France,
Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible.

What makes you think 10k people per hour actually want slow train service
between LA and SF, when they can just use their car, get there in about the
same time, and then not have to rent a car at their destination?

>And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway
for many decades.

You're placing passenger capacity above speed. The whole point of Hyperloop is
speed: it's faster than an airplane, without all the downsides of the airplane
(terrorism, TSA, crashing, etc.) HSR is not, it's slow (esp. the way they'll
build it in this country). Of course, Hyperloop doesn't have the advantage of
not having to rent a car like driving yourself does, but it makes up for it
with very high speed.

~~~
kuschku
> when they can just use their car, get there in about the same time

> HSR is not, it's slow

Have you ever seen an actual HSR system?

We’re talking about 220mph minimum. That’s quite a bit faster than per car.

And, due to TSA, it’s faster than an airplane, and without the annoying stuff.
And cheaper.

Hyperloops only differences over HSR is that it’s 15min faster, is a lot more
uncomfortable, a lot more expensive to build, a lot more expensive to use (due
to few people per capsule), etc.

~~~
Grishnakh
>Have you ever seen an actual HSR system? >We’re talking about 220mph minimum.
That’s quite a bit faster than per car.

Sorry, that's complete bullshit.

We're not talking about HSR in Japan, China, or Germany here. We're talking
about "HSR" in California, USA.

The California system will be very, very lucky if it manages to ever hit
200mph in a short stretch. Realistically, it might be about the speed of the
Amtrak Acela Express, which is basically no faster than any regular train,
except that it manages to hit 150mph once or twice, briefly.

You seem to be making the ridiculous assumption that HSR in America will
resemble HSR in other countries somehow, in both speed and cost. Nothing could
be farther from the truth. HSR here is a horribly expensive boondoggle. It'll
be worse than the F-35.

~~~
kuschku
I’ve only seen German and French HSR, but the one in the US can’t be that bad.

Worst case, you just let some Germans build it for you.

~~~
Grishnakh
>I’ve only seen German and French HSR, but the one in the US can’t be that
bad.

This is your problem then: you're speaking from ignorance. Yes, it really can
be that bad. Acela Express is a total joke compared to foreign HSR, and the
one in California isn't even built yet, the cost projections are insane, and
the proposed top speed is only 200mph.

>Worst case, you just let some Germans build it for you.

We can't do that. I'm not joking, I mean that literally. We simply cannot do
that, and will not do that. Sure, it'd make sense to just let a company that's
already an expert do that, but we won't. We'll do it with crappy domestic
companies (though perhaps getting the passenger cars made by Bombardier in
Canada) at an absolutely astronomical cost, because that's just how things are
done in this country now for anything that's government-funded. Just look at
the F-35 jet for proof.

------
shawabawa3
> Except it is really, really expensive.

> Mr Musk says the cost of building the route would be in the region of $6bn
> (£4.1bn), an estimate most agree is extremely conservative.

I'm pretty sure that should say "extremely optimistic". Musk's estimate of
$6bn is over 10x cheaper than the high speed train line cost for the same
route

~~~
Chathamization
If I remember right, part of the reason why Musk estimated that the hyperloop
would be so cheap was that he assumed it could be built on highway meridians
for free, and the tracks were to end end far outside the city centers. It also
had a fraction of passenger capacity and number of stations as high speed
rail.

It seems likely that for the same amount of service as high speed rail, the
hyperloop would be a lot more expensive.

~~~
misnome
Don't forget that the cost estimate included drilling holes in mountains for
magically minature amounts of money than current technology provides.

------
dredmorbius
No, it's not.

There's also the Vactrain concept. Several variants were pursued from 1914 on,
with Robert Salter of RAND writing a couple of proposals in the 1970s.

The idea's not new, has been seriously explored previously, and has been
rejected or failed on technical, cost, political, practical, and economic
grounds.

Some forms of local or highly-dedicated application, _possibly_. But for
general use, no.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain)

Salter, Robert M. (August 1972), The Very High Speed Transit System, RAND
Corporation

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html)

Salter, Robert M. (February 1978), Trans-Planetary Subway Systems: A
Burgeoning Capability, RAND Corporation

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html)

And, despite Musk's ability to prove me wrong, I'll stick with this projection
for now.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Musk plan:

1\. Announce Hyperloop to the world

2\. Let someone else build it with tubes

3\. Go to Mars

4\. Use everything people have built - and went bankrupt - in the thin
atmosphere on Mars with success without expensive tubes.

Now the SpaceX plans, the Mars plans and Hyperloop come together.

~~~
deftnerd
I wouldn't be surprised if his involvement in Solar City comes into the
picture somehow either.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
+100

------
pieter1976
Haven't really fast trains (sometimes maglev) inside evacuated tubes been
proposed over and over again. Trying to work out what is new here.

For example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain)

~~~
Retric
Vacuums get much more costly as you get ever lower pressure. Hyperloop is an
interesting cost / benefit between fast travel and lower construction and
maintenance costs which is why the speeds are relatively low. The vehicle is
also closer to an electric aircraft than an electric train. Note the big fan
on the front:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#/media/File:Hyperloo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#/media/File:Hyperloop_no_tube.png)

Another consideration is the faster you travel the straighter your path needs
to be. 4,000+MPH paths require incredibly strait designs.

~~~
kuschku
You realize that the fan concept, and the hovercraft concept both were
cancelled?

The new hyperloop concept is just a fan-less capsule hovering on a MagLev
track.

It’s just VacTrain over again, but more expensive and with lower capacities.

~~~
Retric
I don't think that qualifies as 'HyperLoop' even if they keep the name. It's
like building an airplane except you use it underwater, sorry that's a sub.

That said, it suggests that the HyperLoop concept is not viable which is not
that surprising IMO. However, it might also just be a case of lower R&D costs.

~~~
kuschku
Well, obviously they want to keep the hype alive. So it’s understandable that
they’d refuse to change the name.

Sadly, this also means we have a lot of people think this is something
revolutionary, although I guess that’s intentional.

It’s really annoying when you consider how the US refused a proposal from
japanese companies a few years ago to build a MagLev system between Boston,
NY, Washington, with capacities around 10k people per hour.

------
philwelch
I know Elon Musk has a lot of goodwill around here, but is no one else cynical
about the notion of a smart, ambitious automobile CEO coming up with some
plausible-seeming science-fictional FUD to torpedo a high speed rail project
that may very well compete with his interests?

~~~
mulmen
You're suggesting Musk is so concerned with the success of Tesla that he is
willing to torpedo alternate projects to drive up sales of his own product. If
that is true why did he release the patents for those products into the public
domain where someone could build a directly competing product?

~~~
rqebmm
Because electric cars need a critical mass in order for charging stations to
reach a critical mass in order for electric cars to become ubiquitous.

------
wimagguc
Fun fact, New York City's subway started out with a similar system (between
1870 and 1873, called the Beach Pneumatic Transit):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit)

~~~
grosun
& London's Crystal palace pneumatic railway predated that by 6 years
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_pneumatic_railw...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_pneumatic_railway)

Not a roaring success though!

------
JDDunn9
Related: [http://quora.com/Will-Hyperloop-One’s-Hyperloop-product-
work...](http://quora.com/Will-Hyperloop-One’s-Hyperloop-product-work-—-at-
scale-cost-effectively-safely)

I think the deal breaker is the high speeds, which require a much straighter
track and much larger turn radius (410ft for a train, ~4.6 mi. for HL). That
means a lot of tunneling through mountains and bulldozing expensive buildings.
Land is the biggest expense in these projects.

I'm more hopeful of NASA's current work trying to reduce the sonic boom on
airplanes. Flying high solves the air resistance problem, and going in a
straight line isn't a problem up there.

~~~
sunstone
The problem with flights is the time and trouble spent getting to and getting
through airports so the flight time has to be long enough to justify the
wasted time.

~~~
ianburrell
Hyperloop has same problem as flying with terminals being located away from
the city. With Hyperloop, the issue is that would require expensive right-of-
way or tunnels to bring it into the center of the city. Which is why the
initial proposal had end in San Fernando Valley, an hour from LA.

High speed rail has the big advantage that it can use existing tracks, at
slower speed, to reach the center city train stations.

------
pnut
My answer to the question, is 'NO'.

I love trains, and use them whenever possible.

However, with static start and endpoints, and existing low-cost air
infrastructure that is dynamically reroutable and equivalently fast, why spend
the hundreds of billions of dollars to recreate something so fragile and
limited?

Municipalities are wisely, generally in a 'wait and see' phase for the next
decade, as autonomous personal transport guarantees to spur the redesign and
redevelopment of entire cities and transportation infrastructure.

~~~
jerf
The autonomous transport you mention in the end is also an issue for Hyperloop
directly. Highways are "easy mode" for autonomous cars, so automated services
to move you between cities may be available substantially before they can
necessarily move you within the city. Sure, they'll be a lot slower than the
hyperloop, but they'll probably be a lot cheaper. Perhaps the hyperloop could
win the deploy-to-production race with _fully_ autonomous cars, but at this
point, I bet it can't win the race with autonomous cross-city quasi-personal
transport.

~~~
stcredzero
I wonder how the economics would work out for something the size of a bus, but
with much better aerodynamics? (Perhaps with laminar flow boundary devices?)

------
educar
Bay area's problems are best solved with having some kick ass public transport
which afaik nobody is working on. IMO, that is a real game changer as opposed
to hyperloop, electric cars :/ Most european countries have this already and
they are such great places to visit and live.

------
Animats
For a more advanced concept with a working prototype, see [1]. The Applied
Superconductivity Laboratory of Southwest Jiaotong University has a maglev
train in a glass tube about two meters in diameter. Their goal is 3000 KPH.

Here's a technical paper on the maglev system used.[2] They discovered a
problem with bumps in the magnetic field at rail joints, and figured out a way
to fix that.

Maybe that's the future. If you're going to have a maglev system, you may as
well go all the way and ditch the air turbine propulsion.

[1]
[http://english.swjtu.edu.cn/public/viewNews.aspx?ID=154](http://english.swjtu.edu.cn/public/viewNews.aspx?ID=154)
[2]
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40064-016-1965-3](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40064-016-1965-3)

------
tiatia
The German Transrapid gave very little advantage over regular trains and was
bound to fail from the beginning.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid)

The Hyperloop has the same problems (technology still developing, requires
new, incompatible infrastructure) but it has one big advantage:

In contrast to the Transrapid, it can compete with planes regarding to speed.

What both technologies share: They require electricity, which is good.
Electricity can be generated easily, possibly with thorium reactors in the
future. It is hard (but possible, e.g. reduction of CO2 to methanol) to create
combustible fuels for plane engines from electricity. Electric transport will
likely overtake all kind of combustion engines.

------
tehabe
I'm still wondering how a neighbourhood will react if you want to build two
massive tubes through it. I can't imagine people will like those tubes.

Yes, you could put them underground but this will increase your costs.

~~~
david927
Wasn't one of the ideas to put them through the existing highway
infrastructure, elevated in the meridian?

~~~
dredmorbius
Hyperlink turning radius (at top speed) is on the order of 100s of km, due to
g-forces. You don't have much routing flexibility.

Following the kinks of a 100 kph expressway is likely not feasible.

Alternatives are to slow down massively as you approach / traverse urban
areas, but this further increases trip time, changes acceleration and energy
needs, and reduces the already abysmally low net passenger throughput.

~~~
tehabe
Yeah, I'm still wondering for how long the Hyperloop can keep its high speed
before it has to break again. This is already a big issue with high speed
trains in Germany, so that some people say, why do we waste money on 300 kph
trains which have to break after six minutes anyway. The energy needed to
reach this speed is way too high and you don't save a lot of time either.

And with Hyperloop it will the same thing. It might work to go from LA to San
Francisco without too many stops but Think about Boston to Washington DC.

~~~
david927
Ah, but the Hyperloop will allow for small, individual cars of maybe 8 people
(I'm guessing). This means that you get in the car based on destination and it
uses switches so that there are no in-transit stops.

 _Following the kinks of a 100 kph expressway is likely not feasible._

Again, my understanding was that this was part of the original TDD (SF to LA)
and they found that it was, indeed, feasible.

------
Intermernet
Sydney is just about to roll out a new (mostly) sub-terrainian train system
[1] which would be an interesting demo for hyperloop tech, except for the
large numbers of stops being incorporated into the trip. Despite this problem,
the costings should be an example of how much it would cost to build new,
tunnel based, infrastructure through similar areas (admittedly, Sydney is
mostly soft sandstone).

[1]: [http://sydneymetro.info/](http://sydneymetro.info/)

~~~
shawabawa3
Hyperloop is designed to be above-ground, which is significantly cheaper.
Also, musk's original route plan has it stopping outside city-centers
(presumably to keep the cost-estimate down)

------
nhangen
I know it's a cynical point of view, but IMO these companies working on
Hyperloop is akin to Hooli building inside out compression. I don't think it's
going to work.

------
btcboss
I just think it is scary going that speed in a tube. To be a terrorist all you
would have to do is like stick a beer bottle in the tube and when a train
comes a 700mph shit going to start happening

------
ck2
Just imagine the TSA line for the hyperloop.

You'll have to arrive days ahead of time.

~~~
shawabawa3
Why? Wouldn't it be more like a train than a plane?

A terrorist would only be able to kill ~28 people at a time (1 pod), compared
to >200 for a plane

~~~
bluthru
Blowing up inside a tube would be a lot more expensive than blowing up a train
on the tracks.

But then again, someone could just plant a bomb on the outside of the tube so
I guess it's moot.

~~~
setpatchaddress
More to the point, you can't weaponize any fixed-track conveyance like a
train/monorail/HL system like you can a plane.

------
mtgx
Why not create hyperloops for ultra-fast (yet relatively cheap in volume)
trans-Atlantic merchandise shipping? Surely that would be a highly profitable
project from the start?

~~~
Alupis
> Why not create hyperloops for ultra-fast (yet relatively cheap in volume)
> trans-Atlantic merchandise shipping

1) There's very little merchandise that needs to be shipped trans-Atlantic
that quickly.

2) Shipping containers are huge and heavy. Transporting a cargo-ship's worth
requires a lot of energy, which translates into high expenses.

3) If shipping a cargo-ship's worth of containers, this will become an
impossibly long train, nearing 70 miles long (around 18,000 containers per
ship, and each container is about 20ft long)[1]

This has been the crux of the hyperloop since inception. The numbers really
don't add up to making it more economical than any already existing
alternative (even for transporting people). Shipping things via slow boat in a
container is surprisingly not very expensive (given you've filled a container
with goods, the goods value will greatly exceed your transport costs).

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21432226](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21432226)

~~~
gutnor
The original plan was to reuse existing infrastructure and have very few stops
outside city center. For that scenario the number were holding up.

Now the question is what problem is this solving: you have cheap novel
transport system for passenger between 2 points nobody is really interested
in.

And that's the wall all the project around hyperloop are hitting. Either you
need the government to step in to make it competitive for endpoint that people
are currently interested in. Or you keep the original design, but you need the
government to step in to ensure those uninteresting endpoints become
interesting.

------
grillvogel
why can't they just use existing shinkansen technology instead of reinventing
the wheel with this pie in the sky nonsense?

------
amelius
Also, will it render autonomous trucks obsolete? [1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11711657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11711657)

~~~
gambiting
How will the goods get from the source to the hyperloop stations? There's your
answer.

------
dimino
I think you know you've got a winning idea when the esteemed commenters on HN
all dismiss it out of hand.

I hope I can Hyperloop from NY to LA some day, and if we can leverage the
current high investment traffic to get that to happen, I'm all for it.

~~~
dang
> _I think you know you 've got a winning idea when the esteemed commenters on
> HN all dismiss it out of hand._

Please don't diss the community as a rhetorical device. There's no substance
in that, and since you're also an esteemed commenter on HN, it's false.

~~~
dimino
I understand what you're getting at, and you make a fair point, but you really
don't think there's a trend on HN where pretty much every idea is called
obvious or terrible by some of the most popular comments on a given
submission?

I was hoping to put some red ink on the trend and maybe curtail it slightly,
for what that's worth.

~~~
dang
> _you really don 't think there's a trend on HN_

It's really hard to assess that objectively because the cognitive biases
affecting such perceptions are so strong. Certainly we don't want HN to be
that way and try to nudge it in more fruitful directions. But the way to fight
an undesirable pattern on HN is not with another undesirable pattern.

~~~
dimino
I'll defer to you on identifying undesirable patterns from now on, sorry.

------
manigandham
This technology has been around for over a century. Remove wheel friction and
air pressure as the primary barriers to speed with the pinnacle being maglev
in a full vacuum (something that was proposed for 5000mph trains crossing the
ocean on the seabed at one point). The Hyperloop concept has relaxed these
constraints by allowing for some atmosphere, which also greatly reduces the
top speed, but fundamentally it's the same thing. And it's all perfectly
possible given enough engineering.

The only real problem is the financial viability of such a project.

Air travel is already very streamlined and inexpensive for crossing big
distances and has the advantage of not requiring the infrastructure and real
estate that a train needs. Just the land rights alone will quickly balloon the
cost into 100s of billions for any sizable project between two major cities
that people want to travel between - and until that gets figured out, this
will never happen.

The recent news around a startup raising 80M is meaningless because they will
waste all that money chasing tech without realizing that they will never be
able to successfully lay track anywhere.

~~~
kbenson
> Air travel is already very streamlined and inexpensive for crossing big
> distances and has the advantage of not requiring the infrastructure and real
> estate that a train needs.

Hyperloop is very specifically aimed at medium distance routes. SF to LA, for
example, where the plane has relatively little time cruising at altitude,
where it can fly efficiently. If a plane is spending most it's time flying
through denser aid, then it's not flying efficiently, and burns a lot of fuel
on a per-mile basis relative to a longer flight. Hyperloop is specced to be
more efficient than air travel at the distance it's proposed.

~~~
manigandham
Efficient != cheaper.

The only thing that matters is what people are willing to pay, and that's not
much for medium distance. And for the billions it costs to install the track
in the first place, you can buy several airlines and operate them for years.

~~~
curun1r
Cheaper != better.

It's important to look at the hyperloop in the context in which it was
proposed. This is California and environmental aspects need to be taken into
account. Airlines are a major source of CO2 and California wants a more
environmentally friendly solution. There is a proposed high-speed rail project
with a $10B initial estimate that's sure to at least double by the time the
project is complete. The high-speed rail project is only high-speed compared
to existing rail since the max speed will be around 200 mph.

It's into this environment that Musk proposed the Hyperloop. On paper, it's
better than the high-speed rail in every way. Cheaper, faster and with less
pollution. The "more airplanes" alternative may be cheaper and probably faster
(with the TSA is doing its best keep air travel slow) but fails horribly on
the CO2 emissions front.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's important to look at the hyperloop in the context in which it was
> proposed.

I don't think it really is, because the proposal was a comically unserious one
designed to generate interest in the underlying technology. The route proposed
in the paper as a supposed alternative to HSR which has termini outside of the
immediate area of the population centers which it notionally connects would
never be useful and will never get built.

OTOH, the interest the technology has drawn from that splashy initial PR
campaign means enough people are working to develop it that that, if anything
like it is viable, one or more commercially-viable variants will likely be
ready for Musk's Mars colonies.

> On paper, it's better than the high-speed rail in every way. Cheaper, faster
> and with less pollution.

Its only "cheaper" because the proposal both made unrealistic assumptions
about real estate costs _and_ avoided much of the real estate costs by not
terminating any place with useful transit access to the population centers at
either terminus.

Unlike HSR, which not only terminates near the population centers, but
includes as part of the same project improvements in the local connecting
transit systems.

The proposed Hyperloop route was the high-tech version of a bridge-to-nowhere.

~~~
stcredzero
_Its only "cheaper" because the proposal both made unrealistic assumptions
about real estate costs and avoided much of the real estate costs by not
terminating any place with useful transit access to the population centers at
either terminus._

It's supposed to be an alternative to a short airplane flight, so the latter
assumption isn't so bad.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > Its only "cheaper" because the proposal both made unrealistic assumptions
> about real estate costs and avoided much of the real estate costs by not
> terminating any place with useful transit access to the population centers
> at either terminus.

> It's supposed to be an alternative to a short airplane flight, so the latter
> assumption isn't so bad.

It was pitched as an alternative to the actual HSR proposal, which both
connects the population centers _and_ includes connecting improvements on both
ends to regional transit. So, yes, as an alternative to HSR, it was comically
unserious.

(Even as an alternative to air travel, its _still_ comically unserious for the
same reason -- while the major airports are farther from the population
centers than the proposed HSR termini are, they are _much closer_ than the
termini for hyperloop that were proposed, and _do_ have significant transit
connections into the population center and the surrounding region, so
terminating in place without either that proximity to where people would want
to come from and go and without including the cost of transit improvements to
make the termini useful in the cost of the proposal is ludicrous.)

