
The Race to Create Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Heats Up - josephscott
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-race-to-create-elon-musks-hyperloop-heats-up-1448899356?mod=e2tw
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titzer
I hate to be so negative. Elon is a really bright guy and electric cars are
fantastic; a real advancement away from fossil fuels. We need more of that!

But we don't need hyperloop. We need decent subways, lightrail, buses and
trams. And decently fast (200km/h) intercity trains. We don't lack the
technology or the engineering, we lack the political will. Pissing away
billions on more techno fantasy is just a distraction while the number of cars
and parking lots and freeways just keeps on growing, accreting ever more,
little by little, like it has for the past 60 years in the US. The layout of
and density of US cities is already profoundly inefficient due to streets,
parking lots, and freeways.

A lot of comments here seem to be betting big on self-driving cars, like
somehow magic chariots will appear from the sky and whisk us away to fairy
land where we never have to look at a stranger or sit in a seat next to
someone we don't know, or god, touch a railing! And they'll just as easily
disappear into the ether where they require neither maintenance nor upkeep,
storage, or cleaning. Apparently these self-driving cars will also run on
magic engines that are somehow going to be more efficient than electric light
rail or subway, or god forbid, a bike.

~~~
masklinn
> And decently fast (200km/h) intercity trains.

Surely you mean 200mph? 200km/h barely qualifies as high-speed rail on old
lines in europe, new lines require 250, 350 lines are being rolled out and
plans are being drawn for 400 lines in the UK and Russia.

~~~
Scarblac
Almost all Dutch intercity trains run 140km/h, and that's fast enough (it's
faster than cars, and goes city center to city center). Of course cities are
close together here, but we _are_ in Europe.

I'd certainly call 200km/h "decently fast".

~~~
masklinn
> Almost all Dutch intercity trains run 140km/h, and that's fast enough

When it's hard to find cities more than 100km apart, sure. And the US already
have passenger trains in that range.

> Of course cities are close together here, but we are in Europe.

I quoted what's considered high-speed rail in Europe, I'm sorry that offends
you.

> I'd certainly call 200km/h "decently fast".

Not when your cities are 500km apart or more.

~~~
ju-st
New high speed railways in Germany are built only for 250km/h:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendlingen%E2%80%93Ulm_high-
sp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendlingen%E2%80%93Ulm_high-
speed_railway)

~~~
masklinn
A specific 80km rail section with a long tunnelled ramp is only built for 250
(which does qualify as high-speed anyway). Germany also has 300km/h rail:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle_high-
spee...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle_high-
speed_railway)

~~~
titzer
The trains almost never go that fast, and even if they do, it's for short
periods of time. Average speed is the key thing.

Why are we only impressed by megafast trains? They aren't really cost
efficient and probably won't be built at all. The best train is the one that
exists! 200km/h is already probably reaching. Even 150km/h means you could go
Chicago to Cincinatti in 3 hours (vs 4.5 by car) or San Francisco to LA in
under 5 hours (vs 6 hours by car). At 5 hours, that beats the hassle of an
airplane, IMO.

~~~
masklinn
> The trains almost never go that fast

Sure they do. Worldwide, Acela is a peculiar exception, not a rule (and no if
you're going to put your train on old low-speed rails and give priority to
freight you definitely don't need high-speed trainsets, I'm not going to
disagree with that one, turns out only in the US do people do that, go figure)

> Average speed is the key thing.

And the average speed is higher if the train can reach a higher top speed. All
of the top average _service_ speeds are high-speed trains:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_veh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles#World_fastest_point-
to-point_average_speeds_in_commercial_operations)

> Why are we only impressed by megafast trains?

Because megaslow trains are pointless for long distances?

> They aren't really cost efficient and probably won't be built at all.

Considering the US's love for trains, I just assume you guys won't build any
either way, that's usually a pretty safe bet.

> Even 150km/h means you could go Chicago to Cincinatti in 3 hours (vs 4.5 by
> car) or San Francisco to LA in under 5 hours (vs 6 hours by car). At 5
> hours, that beats the hassle of an airplane, IMO.

When the flight is 1h15~1h30, you'll be a very small minority, the general
annoyance of transport and loss of the whole day means flight pretty much
always win. Lower that to ~2h30 city center to city center, however, and train
might become competitive, especially without security check and with better
cabin comfort.

~~~
titzer
Well, you specifically mentioned trains in Germany. I've ridden quite a few,
and I can tell you, they almost never go that fast, and not for long periods
of time. With all the stop and go, all the slow tracks, quiet areas, and
whatever else, the average speed isn't that high. So in general the US should
probably not focus on superfast trains, since they don't pan out usually, but
just getting some decent trains that are on-time and reasonably fast.

------
tptacek
Reminders about the initial criticisms of the Hyperloop plan, which I do not
see rebutted anywhere in this article:

* It's riotously expensive, far more so than the white paper indicates; simply building the elevated track overpasses at the costs listed in the white paper would imply a revolution in civil engineering.

* Door-to-door transit times are within the same ballpark as HSR, because it's not possible to terminate Hyperloop tracks downtown in LA or SF; ROW issues put them roughly an hour outside each city.

* Hyperloops will have approximately the same security concerns as airplanes --- they fail more dangerously than normal trains --- and so will have TSA-style security checks, further slowing travel.

* At the speeds Hyperloop advocates claim, there is virtually no tolerance for bends on tracks without inducing nausea.

------
grecy
Great! I can't wait to see the pieces of this puzzle that turn out to be much
harder than they first appear, and the pieces that turn out to be much easier.

No matter the final outcome, we'll learn tons, which is a win.

------
enraged_camel
I know Hyperloop has a ton of naysayers -- partly because the initial price
tag of $6 billion is most likely a severe underestimation -- but...

It has the potential to make a tremendous impact on society, much more so than
self-driving cars in my opinion. Just as a simple example, imagine what would
happen to the Bay Area housing market if people could live in a ~300 mile
radius and still get to work in downtown SF in less than 30 minutes.

~~~
lsc
I think the only game changing thing about the hyperloop is that it is getting
rich people excited about public transit. I mean, my guess is that we're never
going to get a SF <-> LA transit path that is faster than a airline with a
"skip the security" pass; I don't believe that the hyperloop as envisioned
will never be built.

I know that sounds trivial... but it's not. Public transit is a failure in
America in large part because wealthy people, even wealthy people who support
public transit in general, don't want public transit near them.

~~~
donkeyd
> even wealthy people who support public transit in general, don't want public
> transit near them.

This seems very odd to me. Here in the Netherlands, housing prices actually
increase when there's good public transport. In the north of Amsterdam a new
metro line is being built, which is already causing an increase in housing
prices there.

~~~
roel_v
Really? Have you ever tried to get from the train station of, say, Blaricum or
Bloemendaal to anywhere else there? 'Wealthy' people don't live in houses
whose prices are affected by availability of public transport, in the
Netherlands. (OTOH I wouldn't say that they 'don't want PT near them', but
then again that's not really true for other places either).

~~~
donkeyd
This is true, but we're talking SF & LA here, metropolitan areas. Blaricum is
better compared to something like the Hamptons. There is no public transport
because there's space to park cars, so public transportation is not necessary
and it's impractical since the population is spread out.

The Apollobuurt in Amsterdam is also full of rich people and yet there's a lot
of public transportation. The people living there are not against public
transportation though.

------
MrBuddyCasino
> "The pod has been pressurized to minimize the G forces effects on a
> passenger"

Anyone's got an idea what they meant with that?

~~~
nielsole
> Suprastudio’s students suggested pods pressurized like airplanes to reduce G
> forces

They even put it in there twice.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
They could put it in as many times as they like, it doesn't make any sense.

------
dmfdmf
Who is paying for this pipe dream?

~~~
maaarghk
Musk has played a blinder on this one cause no matter who does, his name will
be on it, haha.

------
lmm
With rail - particularly these days when it's practical to work on trains -
it's not really the speed, it's the capacity. And Hyperloop's capacity
advantage seems to come solely from the assumption that their cars will be
allowed to run as close as buses or trams or lorries.

We allow lorries to run at 56mph less than a meter nose-to-tail, with a human
at the controls. Yet we require signalling blocks that put miles of clear air
between two successive trains even when automatically operated. We could make
rail vastly more economic overnight if we simply allowed it to operate at the
same safety levels that we accept for road traffic.

~~~
jacquesm
The mass and stopping distance of trains is what dictates the length of the
space, so we are already operating at the 'same safety levels that we accept
for road traffic'.

It's all based on the friction between the vehicle and the surface, in road
vehicles that's typically asphalt and rubber and stopping distances are
relatively short because of reduced mass. In trains the materials are steel
and slightly harder steel and stopping distances are _much_ larger, especially
when the rails are wet.

A loaded freight train running 55 Mph will take more than a mile to come to a
full stop. A passenger train doing 100 Mph takes 750 meters to stop with
emergency brakes applied. This will lead to lots of people being wounded due
the fact that trains don't normally have seatbelts, unsecured overhead luggage
and people standing if the train is relatively full.

Trains also can't evade, they're tied to the rails.

~~~
lmm
It's not the same level. You're quite right that stopping distances are longer
but we don't require road traffic to be its full stopping distance apart (you
have to be much much closer before you'll get stopped for tailgating), and we
do see much higher accident rates for buses and other road traffic than for
trains as a result.

~~~
jacquesm
Exactly, buses and road traffic have higher accident rates than trains (and
aircraft) and this has everything to do with how those means of transportation
are being operated. Rail and aircraft operators are companies that take
responsibility for the lives of a large number of people and that typically
have a long term view, as in, they'd like to be in business in half a century
or more.

Tourbus operators (not the same as public transport) are responsible for a
large number of the road traffic accidents involving buses, public transport
involving buses is involved in accidents at a much lower rate. The reasons
are: tourbuses tend to go faster, drive _much_ longer distances (exhaustion),
drive routes that are less safe to begin with and so on.

The way the rail industry deals with a capacity problem on a line is not to
send more trains with a decreased train-to-train spacing but simply to send
longer trains.

You can't really make longer buses beyond a certain maximum length due to the
fact that the minimum turning radius of roads is a very small fraction of the
minimum turning radius of a train.

~~~
lmm
Thinking about it I guess the more relevant question is: can the "hyperloop"
stop faster than a train? If not, why should we let them run at anything like
the capacity Musk claims?

~~~
jacquesm
A train is not constrained in the same way that the hyperloop is. This is both
a good thing _and_ a bad thing depending on what happens. Presumably the
remaining air between two hyperloop capsules will be compressed prior to
impact reducing the deceleration to something more manageable.

------
dsfsdfd
Why do we insist on character worship. Hyperloop is not his idea - it's a
totally obvious idea that has popped up many times since the 1800s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Historical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Historical)
Compressing the air in front of the capsule is not some fantastic stroke of
genius - it's trivially obvious.

All he has done is drawn our attention to a really good idea.

------
negativity
The political implications tied to self-driving cars are all scary.

The political implications tied to self-driving trains are not.

The difference being the rails that bind and inhibit true autonomy.

An internet of two-ton things hurtling at 60+ MPH should not be an idea tossed
about dismissively. It should at least be locked into track systems, or loops
as training wheels, for baby's first sentient AI.

~~~
Tepix
You're talking about tracking the populace? What if you could use a self
driving car in an anonymous manner (paying cash)?

~~~
donkeyd
Or Bitcoin.

