Note that the UK's new high speed rail (HS2) is budgeted at £33bn ($51bn) and likely to exceed that[0]. Being mostly straight, and across land already approved for rail use, it seems like an ideal candidate for a hyperloop alternative.
At 120 miles long[1] compared to the SF<->LA ~350 miles, a UK hyperloop would be even cheaper, especially since the major cost is the tube itself. A back of the envelope calculation[2] gives a cost of about £1.9bn ($2.9bn) which is suspiciously, almost absurdly, cheap.
If anyone can find any flaws in this argument (specifically related to e.g. UK-specific issues/laws that I may be unaware of) I'd be very interested to hear them!
The two biggest budgeted costs in the latest report I can find (£16B) are stations (£1.7B) and tunnels (£1.4B). (Also noteworthy is that almost £10B of the overall £16B figure is for risk provision.) More directly comparable is the £1B figure for land acquisition: that isn't going to fall by much.
At 120 miles long[1] compared to the SF<->LA ~350 miles, a UK hyperloop would be even cheaper, especially since the major cost is the tube itself. A back of the envelope calculation[2] gives a cost of about £1.9bn ($2.9bn) which is suspiciously, almost absurdly, cheap.
If anyone can find any flaws in this argument (specifically related to e.g. UK-specific issues/laws that I may be unaware of) I'd be very interested to hear them!
[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-hs2s... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HS2 [2] using average cost values from the pdf, not accounting for differences in pylon height/amount of tunnel required etc.