So, the cynical take: of course he's going to back a high-speed transportation option that still assumes cars and driving everywhere, rather than one that potentially obviates the need for them by taking people directly from high-density center to high-density center.
So lets compare hyperloop with what you CAN do, which is fly or drive.
Note that the Northeast Corridor, the only thing approaching high speed rail in the US, is very profitable. Unfortunately Amtrak then has to take that surplus to subsidize unprofitable routes elsewhere.
But of course that's a complex issue, some say that the local service degraded as more resources were diverted to the TGV lines. I can't really imagine that having the center of Marseille 3 hours away from the center of Paris can be a net negative overall. It beats the plane every time, that's for sure.
The high speed train stops right in the city center.
So unless one of your endpoints is close to one of the airports it's 3 hours for both of them.
Also in my experience the TGV is much more comfortable than similarly priced airplane tickets. You can look at the landscape (unless you're traveling by night), you have more room, you can walk around etc...
This is IMO the biggest issue w/ Hyperloop - budget and/or politics will kill it well before engineering challenges.
We have the Acela which isn't quite high speed rail (it is higher speed rail - up to 150mph in some areas but a lower speed limits in others). The Acela is very popular and actually profitable. The Acela has the potential to improve speeds by improving tracks to be able to accommodate higher speeds safely in places as well as removing the remaining grade crossings and probably more infrastructure to ease some congestion. High speed rail has huge potential in some areas. Hopefully this potential can be realized!
https://bikeeastbay.org/rail/fra.html
And for various reasons rail construction in the US costs about 5 times as much as it does in France. And because it costs more we do less of it. The figures below are for subways but I believe long distance rail sees the same effect.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
Obviously you can't always go completely straight when you're building on the ground.
Edit: the closest comparison distance-wise is probably Barcelona to Madrid; 2:45, average 227kph.
The japanese shinkansen takes 2 hours and 22 minutes to go from Tokyo to Osaka (515 km).
Paris - Stuttgart - Nuremberg (580km) takes 6h51 including one hour between connections in Stuttgart.
Berlin - Stuttgart (591km) has a 5h34 direct connection.
Frankfurt - Bern - Milano (~700km) takes 7h47 including 30 minutes in Bern
OTOH, Frankfurt - Cologne (for which a dedicated high speed rail route was built nearly 20 years ago) is about 200km in 1h04.
The wait times are not the big problem - the problem is the time needed to decelerate and accelerate the train at each stop. E.g. a freight train of 1.200 tons needs 1km from 100 km/h to 0, and a high-speed passenger train, e.g. ICE 3, needs 3.3km from 330 km/h to 0.
New York to Los Angeles is about 4,000 km. London to Moscow is only 2,500 km.
Edit: the point here is that Europeans, in general, have no conception of the distances involved in the U.S. transportation network. Passenger rail (high speed or otherwise) works well for relatively short distances in relatively densely populated regions. The trouble is that we don't have very many of those regions.
Edit 2: so you're moderating down arithmetic now? Awesome.
I'm not sure what's worse, that you seriously think the longest high speed rail link in France is 106km, or that you think London to Moscow is reasonably compared to New York to Los Angeles. Why would you start from a city that's nowhere near the edge of the continent in question? The NYC->LA analog would be something like Lisbon to Moscow which, guess what! Is almost exactly the same distance.
There used to be a slow Quimper-Vintimille journey that was more than 1000 km, but it's been significantly shortened since then.
Your numbers show you have no conception of the distances involved in Europe. Thinking that the longest train link in France, a country that's 1000 km wide and 1000 km high, is 100 km long is completely ridiculous.
They do specifically mention "high speed" train lines.
Even if you somehow counted only >300km/h as high-speed, then the LGV Est is a bit more than 300 km long and rated at 320 km/h. I suspect a 100 km-long high-speed line would not even be competitive against cars, except maybe in dense urban areas where car traffic is often slow.
> So what?
Call me old fashioned, but I think it's worth responding to what's actually been said.
What did I fail to read, exactly? Is it that seszett didn't explicitly specify "high speed" in that one sentence? As I said in my reply, so what? The overall point, that the 106km figure is ridiculous, stands regardless.
http://www.renfe.com/viajeros/larga_distancia/productos/AVEF... (spanish)
Hyperloop is designed for medium distances transportation like between 300 and 1000. Over that, it probably make no sense against air travel.
So Europe is kind of the perfect place for hyperloop, and probably the reason why its traditional tech competitor, the high speed train, is successful. That's also the reason of my comment - if hyperloop can deliver cheaper, faster to build and plain faster connection for medium distance travel that could revolutionize transport in Europe even more than for the US.
EDIT: as another reader has noted, I missed the "106" km link. I suppose you mean 1060 or something ?
I'd say nobody has any conception of distances involved in the really big countries.
Well, you CAN build a high speed rail system, so the comparison between the hyperloop and the rail is pretty critical to deciding which one to build.
Doesn't exist in the US maybe. It exists just fine in Europe and Asia.
That doesn't make sense. You should compare other possible options as well.
Any reason they can't be installed trivially?
>An 'extra hour' is a very long time for someone to wait and I would be surprised if anyone would want to be stuck without access to one for that period of time.
How's that different from most long-way (Greyhound etc) bus rides with lots of hours (3-4) between stops? Don't know about how's that in the US in particular, but had such in most of Europe, Asia etc, and people are perfectly capable of "holding it".
Capsule size. The last I saw the pod designs, passengers are all reclined cockpit seats that aren't going to have a whole lot of elbow-room, let alone any chance to stand. "Holding it" is an option, but it caps trip time at an hour or so. Past that you're going to be hosing down an awful lot of capsules.
And of course it is different from a bus. If a women is pregnant or violently ill on a bus you can stop at any time. And in fact every Greyhound bus I've been on will stop at various gas stations for toilet/food/drink breaks.
It's worth mentioning because what good is the technology of hyperloop if the economics fail (because no one will use it).
- The Hyperloop paper doesn't mention how trains would cross San Francisco Bay, or include a cost estimate for doing so. A new bridge? A new tunnel? Both would add greatly to the $6 billion cost estimate.
- That $6 billion estimate also assumes that elevated concrete pylons can be built for much cheaper than any other project, with no mention of how.
- The proposed track doesn't go to downtown LA; it ends at Sylmar, which is still ~25 miles from downtown and even further from most of the LA area. A 30 minute ride becomes much less exciting when it takes another hour or more to reach your real destination.
- With the proposed 30-second headway, the system's capacity is only about 25% of a high-speed rail line, and 30 seconds still violates the crap out of typical safety standards (you can't run trains too close together without risking a collision if you can't brake quickly enough).
- There are no intermediate stations; this is obviously a problem for the Central Valley, but it makes life inconvenient for plenty of other people too. Eg. someone in San Jose (pop. ~1 million, greater than SF's) would need to spend an extra hour or more getting to San Francisco vs. a station in San Jose itself.