So, we have "light shed" on the current "debacle" and neither system gets built. That's a win? HSR was first commerically available in 1964. Yes, it got really expensive waiting 50 years. I imagine it'll be even more expensive in another 20-30. California is going to get even more crowded.
That's an argument in favor of a useful HSR system. But politics have resulted California's HSR system being deliberately pessimized; it may do more harm than good to the HSR cause, right?
“The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones.” -Chinese Proverb
I've lived in China for over 3 years, and spend countless hours riding the HSR system. HSR combines the speed of a plane, with the cost and convenience of a regular bus. Traveling through the countryside of China at 380km/h made me feel like I was in the future. Coming home and seeing the the sad state of our infrastructure was a harsh reality check.
Granted China has a massive manufacturing/mining complex and cheap labor. But if we hadn't squandered 5 Trillion on "War on Terror" and domestic spying, I'm sure we could kept our lead in infrastructure and still has some left over to boost education / R&D spending.
In the past 20 years China's moved their mountain. Hopefully the hyperloop will help us to catch up.
I've been on one of the Chinese high speed trains and they are really impressive. The most striking thing about them is how smooth they are -- very little vibration at all, and very quiet. Far more pleasant than air travel, conventional trains, or anything else I've been on.
Sadly, I think the first place a Hyperloop will be built is China. Chances are there are engineers there looking it over now, and figuring they can knock out a test system in a year or two.
You mean Chernobyl and nuclear, or Three Mile Island and nuclear? Both of those had already soundly killed the prospect for large-scale nuclear power in the US long before the earthquake in Japan.
Also frankly, nuclear is its whole own category of unviable for its own special reasons. Cars, buses, trains, planes and ships have all killed scores more people then nuclear power ever will.
I don't see Hyperloop's constituency; there really aren't that many people who want to commute to work in SF from LA and can pay the roundtrip Hyperloop cost who can't pay the $80 on Southwest from Burbank to SJC.
The problem with CAHSR isn't the "HSR" part, it's California's utterly dysfunctional political system, and going faster and putting the track up on pylons isn't going to cut through that morass without a stronger group of people standing up and saying YES, WE NEED THIS.
It seems to me that to really force the issue, you'd need to be talking an order of magnitude difference in cost. For $20 r/t, ears would perk up -- even people who aren't making a $1/yr salary could conceivably afford that. But $120?
you speak as though it needs to be run as a charity to be a game changer. I only mention that price point because that is just underneath the cost of flying, and that's how economics works. The operator will likely want to make as much profit as it can, while still sucking customers away from the airports. In the beginning, the operator will likely charge MORE than the airplanes, because the customer will be liable to be ok with a "novelty" premium, and it's in the interest of the operator to amortize the costs as quickly as possible to secure itself against (unforseeable) price competitions or unpredicted costs.
At the price point I suggest, the operator is STILL effectively going to be making 150% margins, so there is a lot of room to lower the cost, but that just isn't going to happen unless there is a competitive pressure to keep lowering the price.
If that's not "social justice" enough for you, then consider that at least the thing is going to be run nearly 100% if not better than 100% renewable.
You have to get the thing built before you can start charging a premium for it. Without a strong constituency, you can't get a giant infrastructure project off the ground. If your constituency is people like me, who can afford to fly, you've already lost the game.
Don't forget about time... if this is faster than air travel, that alone could be wroth something. The fact that the cost might be equivalent to air-travel and be significantly faster would be the game-changer.
If I could take one of these from SF to LA in a weekend to take my kids to Disneyland, that would be awesome. As it is now, that's a multi-hour process on each side of the trip. Reducing that to 30min (+ some logistics time) would be wonderful. Especially if they can reduce the amount of time required at the terminals.
The total price of flying may be higher than you think. Don't forget to include:
* transporting you to and from the airport
* getting to the airport ~1h before your flight
* flight time of ~1:30 vs :30 on the Hyperloop
If the Hyperloop works as Musk imagines, then it'll be more like hopping on the subway: go to the station in the middle of town, wait maybe 10min at most, ride, get off in the middle of town.
On the other hand I sure don't wanna be crammed in that recliner looking at a ceiling five inches away from my feet for a half hour. Room to stand up and stretch please.
> If the Hyperloop works as Musk imagines, then it'll be more like hopping on the subway: go to the station in the middle of town, wait maybe 10min at most, ride, get off in the middle of town.
Well, except that the termini aren't even close to the "middle of town" (at least, not of the cities motivating the plan). There way out on the fringes of the metro region, and unlike CA HSR, none of the costs of improving connecting systems are part of the plan.
The low cost estimate is due in large part because it gets you from the place people aren't to the place people don't want to be. (On either end)
Which is one (of the many) reasons its not a serious alternative to HSR -- even if the technology was ready, what Musk is proposing fails to do the hard part of transportation improvement: connecting the places people are with the places they want to get.
> It's mind boggling to me that the California HSR isn't being built from DC to Boston instead.
Upgraded high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor (where the US's only existing HSR is located) is being planned. [1] California HSR being built in California doesn't preclude HSR from being built/upgraded in other parts of the US.
There are actually some serious efforts in place to get sanity back into urban planning, but (predictably I suppose) this is regarded as an attack on freedom and the lawsuits have already begun to fly.
Uhm, LA alone has more people than DC and Boston combined. Plus another 9 million living in the Bay Area. This is far and away the most obvious candidate for direct HSR in all of North America.
The core cities on the DC BAL PHL NYC BOS route total 11.5 million, while LA + SF is only 4.5 million. Thats arguably the more important figure because the relative advsntage of rail diminishes if you have to drive in from the suburbs. Also, four of those five cities have well developed public transit systems centered around the rail station. Metro area total for the five cities is not including any other regions in the path is almost 40m versus about 20m for SF and LA.
> arguably the more important figure because the relative advsntage of rail diminishes if you have to drive in from the suburbs.
A major premise of the California HSR plan is that it isn't just about the main HSR lines, but upgrades, improvements, and new lines for connecting conventional regional and commuter rail, light rail, and other public transit.
Unless you'd like to go from Boston to DC without making four stops along the way. In California you have two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country separated by 400 miles of nothing (with apologies to the Central Valley). HSR wins big when it goes fast without stopping, which is exactly the case out here.
NYC CSA is bigger than LA CSA, and DC CSA is bigger than "Bay Area" CSA. It seems weird, then, to argue it makes more sense to connect LA and SF just because in the northeast you can also hit two additional CSA's (Philadelphia and Boston, which are each about the size of the Bay Area), while you're at it.
Perhaps, but with New York and Philly in between, you're hitting four major population centers:
Boston (4.5M metro area)
New York (8-20M depending on how far you stretch the metro area)
Philadelphia (6M metro area)
Washington D.C. (5.7M metro area)
