Posted here because I though it would make an interesting topic for discussion among creative designers (and archinect's news page doesn't see much discussion).
What's your take - Is this a feasible idea? Physics, economics, culture and the future of society are all on the table for discussion.
California's high-speed rail train is and has been a political hot potato in California. The other thing is that airlines will lobby against the faster method shown above more vigorously than they would for a European style high-speed rail train, which would theoretically make the trip in 2 hours and 30 minutes, and from CBD to CBD, thus avoiding the CBD to airport treks in both cities. However, among the most important features of the proffered high-speed rail plan, whose state is in a state of flux, it seems, is that it stops in several towns in the Central Valley such as Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield, giving them an economic boost associated with having the rail connect them quickly to SF and LA. Simply stated, they just don't want the creme de la creme in these space capsules going exclusively between SF and LA. That's a little too Jetsonian, in that it's analogous to the no-longer Concorde versus the 747, and the price premium that went along with that. They want a system suitable for the general population.
The concept, while massively hyped in the media without so much as the pretense of fact-checking, has been widely panned by almost everybody who knows anything about how major transportation projects actually get built. Here is one of the more comprehensive critiques of the scheme.
In short:
1) Musk's Hyperloop doesn't go from Los Angeles to San Francisco; it goes from Sylmar to somewhere on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. It takes an hour to get from downtown LA to Sylmar on Metrolink, and up to another hour to get into downtown SF on BART. There go whatever time savings you had.
2) Nothing is said about the station facilities, nor the cost to build a bridge or tunnel across the San Francisco Bay and an active seismic fault, nor the cost to get it up the 2600-foot elevation gain through Grapevine Canyon, across the San Andreas Fault, and over Tejon Pass.
3) The issues of land acquisition for right-of-way and the inevitable legal battles are unaccounted for in Musk's proposal. If building an elevated viaduct was so cheap and easy, don't you think they'd be building one for the high-speed rail line?
4) Hyperloop carries a tiny fraction of the passengers as a high-speed train and doesn't serve any intermediate stops like Bakersfield or Fresno. Therefore, it will never get the political support it would need.
In a nutshell: the Hyperloop as planned will cost more than high-speed rail, take longer to get from downtown LA to downtown SF than high-speed rail, isn't as useful to nearly as many people as high-speed rail, and uses unproven technology that requires an entirely new infrastructure to support, unlike high-speed rail.
It seems like every few months the media trots out, with great fanfare, some pie-in-the-sky proposal that will supposedly revolutionize mass transit. (Remember that Chinese mega-bus contraption that was designed to straddle highway traffic? Neither does anybody else.) The problems facing mass transit and high-speed rail have very little to do with technical shortcomings; proven technology has existed in one form or another for over a century. The problems aren't even financial; we have the money. The problems we have are purely a matter of political priorities.
I hadn't considered the socio-political implications as I got stuck on the economics, which seemed wildly optimistic. So I ran some numbers to try to determine real ticket cost.
Construction cost is projected at about 1/5 of the nearly $100m/mi. cost of the proposed high speed train from San Francisco to Anaheim. Even at that low cost amortization is $636m/yr. At the projected ridership of 7.4m/yr, ticket cost is $86. Cheap.
But that's a ridiculously low price. New, untested tech always comes at a higher price, Municipal projects are notoriously expensive due to overruns, graft and corruption, etc. The GAO (LOL) calculates the cost of building high-speed rail at $50m/mi. Using that number the amortized cost is $1.5b/yr. and tickets are now $203. Not so cheap.
But wait - what about operations and maintenance? That's usually calculated per passenger mile, 2.6b using the numbers above. At $.30 that's another $777m/yr. The ticket price is now $308.
For comparison, a flight takes 80 minutes and costs $118.
There are major environmental benefits if this thing can actually be solar powered. I'm a proponent of $10/gallon gas. Not for Goldman/Exxon profits but for taxes to fund efficient public transit. I don't see anything like this happening until then.
I don't have any commentary on Hyperloop, but I know David is knowledgeable enough about mass transit that I trust his opinions. I just wanted to share this nugget from We Are City's most recent briefing regarding mass transit and why it's important:
(There is a ) video of New York City subway "hat dancers:" highly proficient performers who practice their art 45 seconds at a time in between subway stops, and then hold out the same hat they just tricked for donations.
Indianapolis doesn’t need better transit just to have mass transit.We need better transit because we need hat dancers, or least the thing that hat dancers represent: the practice of living a little closer together.
Next time someone trots out the cliche of how sports stadiums "build community" and have all these other intangible benefits to cities I think I'll mention how mass transit has all those benefits AND helps people move around easily.
Detroit is proposing a new hockey stadium to promote tourism. They'd be better off legalizing prostitution and promoting brothels. It wouldn't require any taxpayer funding and the profits would be spread among a number of pimps instead of single developer. And prostitution has a much larger share of the economy than hockey.
Public transportation? A century ago Henry Ford bought up and closed down street car companies across the country. Isn't capitalism great?
Just heard something about this possibly being a red herring intended to sabotage the proposed HSR (high speed rail) system. Interesting to note that the guy who proposed the idea has no desire or intent to follow it through.
we have a severe bike and pedestrian (and in many places -urban public transit) infrastructure problem in this country - not a "get to other cities faster" problem.
This project (meaning HSR), more so than the linked proposal, is concerning because all these mammoth projects seem to have major issues with cost control. The "Big Dig," placing Boston's Central Artery under the ground, and placing a park type urban space above it, was budgeted to cost $2.8 billion. It ultimately cost ~$14 billion. That's some 5 times the initial cost estimate.
For CA, the length of the proposed project is astounding. So many variables could come into play. You know, it's CA after all, and if they were to find some rare butterfly habitat along the proposed route, more than one group would get wigged out over it. Starts and stops increase project costs. We all know that. Then, you just don't know what they'll run into when excavating for the portions that would cross mountain passes, which is absolutely inevitable. Cost containment is probably the single biggest concern.
This project is all about the general population, meaning regular folks. Anybody who is a business person or a professional and needs to go between LA and SF just catches a flight, takes a taxi to the airport (and would avoid public transit options), and gets it all reimbursed or billed to a client. The HSR model was developed because it was the Central Valley that pushed for it, and I can't say I blame them. I'm sure the envisioned stations in places like Fresno, Bakersfield, and the California desert town(s) about 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles would become serious activity nodes around which commerce, housing, and transit would be organized.
The other problem is that if you postpone it, it becomes more expensive and more complicated. That's what happened in LA in delaying to install a good network of subterranean or elevated rail lines, like they have in NYC. They quote what it would have cost to put up the Bay Area's BART today, and the number ($) is mind boggling.
I understand the concerns of the HSR crowd, i.e. a bird in the hand in terms of the funding and political hurdles that have been overcome in CA to attain HSR, but putting all that aside for a moment, this is a really exciting new technology that is being proposed. Musk has a history of bucking naysayers and introducing fabulously designed new technologies into the marketplace. While there are clearly vested interests in existing technologies, I personally think we should do everything possible to encourage this type of innovation and forward thinking. Goodness knows we've put countless hurdles in the face of innovation for the past 100 years; perhaps it's time that we collectively drop the negativity and cynicism.
"Negativity and cynicism" is one thing, but calling out bullshit is another. Nobody is questioning Musk's technical expertise or engineering credentials; he obviously knows his stuff, and if he wants to build a prototype somewhere out in the desert on his own dime, more power to him. But you'll have to forgive transit advocates for being skeptical whenever an automotive manufacturer -- even one that makes electric cars -- promises to "save" mass transit with some amazing new technology. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.
How many "G's" are involved for the ride? That is what kind of G force are you going to have placed on your body and how may "Gs"" is it going to cost?
oh bye the way Subway Pole Dancing has been happening for years...and years. Problem is it is mostly old fat men.
0-800 in 5 minutes comes out to .12 G. For comparison 0-60 in 10 seconds is about .27 G.
What bothers me is the 28-person capsule 30 seconds behind you. If your capsule so much as hiccups you'll be getting a high-G rectal exam: 800 mph is almost 1200 feet per second.
Each loading platform will have to have at least ten tracks as there is no way 28 people are going to get loaded and strapped in less than 5 minutes unless they are trained acrobats.
I didn't see any provision for luggage ... maybe it could delivered via railgun.
L.A. to S.F. in 30 Minutes
This is getting a lot of press:
L.A. to S.F. in 30 Minutes: Tesla's Hyperloop
Posted here because I though it would make an interesting topic for discussion among creative designers (and archinect's news page doesn't see much discussion).
What's your take - Is this a feasible idea? Physics, economics, culture and the future of society are all on the table for discussion.
California's high-speed rail train is and has been a political hot potato in California. The other thing is that airlines will lobby against the faster method shown above more vigorously than they would for a European style high-speed rail train, which would theoretically make the trip in 2 hours and 30 minutes, and from CBD to CBD, thus avoiding the CBD to airport treks in both cities. However, among the most important features of the proffered high-speed rail plan, whose state is in a state of flux, it seems, is that it stops in several towns in the Central Valley such as Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield, giving them an economic boost associated with having the rail connect them quickly to SF and LA. Simply stated, they just don't want the creme de la creme in these space capsules going exclusively between SF and LA. That's a little too Jetsonian, in that it's analogous to the no-longer Concorde versus the 747, and the price premium that went along with that. They want a system suitable for the general population.
The concept, while massively hyped in the media without so much as the pretense of fact-checking, has been widely panned by almost everybody who knows anything about how major transportation projects actually get built. Here is one of the more comprehensive critiques of the scheme.
In short:
1) Musk's Hyperloop doesn't go from Los Angeles to San Francisco; it goes from Sylmar to somewhere on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. It takes an hour to get from downtown LA to Sylmar on Metrolink, and up to another hour to get into downtown SF on BART. There go whatever time savings you had.
2) Nothing is said about the station facilities, nor the cost to build a bridge or tunnel across the San Francisco Bay and an active seismic fault, nor the cost to get it up the 2600-foot elevation gain through Grapevine Canyon, across the San Andreas Fault, and over Tejon Pass.
3) The issues of land acquisition for right-of-way and the inevitable legal battles are unaccounted for in Musk's proposal. If building an elevated viaduct was so cheap and easy, don't you think they'd be building one for the high-speed rail line?
4) Hyperloop carries a tiny fraction of the passengers as a high-speed train and doesn't serve any intermediate stops like Bakersfield or Fresno. Therefore, it will never get the political support it would need.
In a nutshell: the Hyperloop as planned will cost more than high-speed rail, take longer to get from downtown LA to downtown SF than high-speed rail, isn't as useful to nearly as many people as high-speed rail, and uses unproven technology that requires an entirely new infrastructure to support, unlike high-speed rail.
It seems like every few months the media trots out, with great fanfare, some pie-in-the-sky proposal that will supposedly revolutionize mass transit. (Remember that Chinese mega-bus contraption that was designed to straddle highway traffic? Neither does anybody else.) The problems facing mass transit and high-speed rail have very little to do with technical shortcomings; proven technology has existed in one form or another for over a century. The problems aren't even financial; we have the money. The problems we have are purely a matter of political priorities.
i really, really want this to happen. i think the fact that you can transport people in their cars is a huge deal.
ob - interesting comments.
I hadn't considered the socio-political implications as I got stuck on the economics, which seemed wildly optimistic. So I ran some numbers to try to determine real ticket cost.
Construction cost is projected at about 1/5 of the nearly $100m/mi. cost of the proposed high speed train from San Francisco to Anaheim. Even at that low cost amortization is $636m/yr. At the projected ridership of 7.4m/yr, ticket cost is $86. Cheap.
But that's a ridiculously low price. New, untested tech always comes at a higher price, Municipal projects are notoriously expensive due to overruns, graft and corruption, etc. The GAO (LOL) calculates the cost of building high-speed rail at $50m/mi. Using that number the amortized cost is $1.5b/yr. and tickets are now $203. Not so cheap.
But wait - what about operations and maintenance? That's usually calculated per passenger mile, 2.6b using the numbers above. At $.30 that's another $777m/yr. The ticket price is now $308.
For comparison, a flight takes 80 minutes and costs $118.
There are major environmental benefits if this thing can actually be solar powered. I'm a proponent of $10/gallon gas. Not for Goldman/Exxon profits but for taxes to fund efficient public transit. I don't see anything like this happening until then.
Hyperloop Alpha
David - great link.
I don't have any commentary on Hyperloop, but I know David is knowledgeable enough about mass transit that I trust his opinions. I just wanted to share this nugget from We Are City's most recent briefing regarding mass transit and why it's important:
(There is a ) video of New York City subway "hat dancers:" highly proficient performers who practice their art 45 seconds at a time in between subway stops, and then hold out the same hat they just tricked for donations.
Indianapolis doesn’t need better transit just to have mass transit.We need better transit because we need hat dancers, or least the thing that hat dancers represent: the practice of living a little closer together.
Next time someone trots out the cliche of how sports stadiums "build community" and have all these other intangible benefits to cities I think I'll mention how mass transit has all those benefits AND helps people move around easily.
How about subway pole dancing?
Detroit is proposing a new hockey stadium to promote tourism. They'd be better off legalizing prostitution and promoting brothels. It wouldn't require any taxpayer funding and the profits would be spread among a number of pimps instead of single developer. And prostitution has a much larger share of the economy than hockey.
Public transportation? A century ago Henry Ford bought up and closed down street car companies across the country. Isn't capitalism great?
Just heard something about this possibly being a red herring intended to sabotage the proposed HSR (high speed rail) system. Interesting to note that the guy who proposed the idea has no desire or intent to follow it through.
we have a severe bike and pedestrian (and in many places -urban public transit) infrastructure problem in this country - not a "get to other cities faster" problem.
This project (meaning HSR), more so than the linked proposal, is concerning because all these mammoth projects seem to have major issues with cost control. The "Big Dig," placing Boston's Central Artery under the ground, and placing a park type urban space above it, was budgeted to cost $2.8 billion. It ultimately cost ~$14 billion. That's some 5 times the initial cost estimate.
For CA, the length of the proposed project is astounding. So many variables could come into play. You know, it's CA after all, and if they were to find some rare butterfly habitat along the proposed route, more than one group would get wigged out over it. Starts and stops increase project costs. We all know that. Then, you just don't know what they'll run into when excavating for the portions that would cross mountain passes, which is absolutely inevitable. Cost containment is probably the single biggest concern.
This project is all about the general population, meaning regular folks. Anybody who is a business person or a professional and needs to go between LA and SF just catches a flight, takes a taxi to the airport (and would avoid public transit options), and gets it all reimbursed or billed to a client. The HSR model was developed because it was the Central Valley that pushed for it, and I can't say I blame them. I'm sure the envisioned stations in places like Fresno, Bakersfield, and the California desert town(s) about 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles would become serious activity nodes around which commerce, housing, and transit would be organized.
The other problem is that if you postpone it, it becomes more expensive and more complicated. That's what happened in LA in delaying to install a good network of subterranean or elevated rail lines, like they have in NYC. They quote what it would have cost to put up the Bay Area's BART today, and the number ($) is mind boggling.
Money talks and bullshit walks.
I understand the concerns of the HSR crowd, i.e. a bird in the hand in terms of the funding and political hurdles that have been overcome in CA to attain HSR, but putting all that aside for a moment, this is a really exciting new technology that is being proposed. Musk has a history of bucking naysayers and introducing fabulously designed new technologies into the marketplace. While there are clearly vested interests in existing technologies, I personally think we should do everything possible to encourage this type of innovation and forward thinking. Goodness knows we've put countless hurdles in the face of innovation for the past 100 years; perhaps it's time that we collectively drop the negativity and cynicism.
"Negativity and cynicism" is one thing, but calling out bullshit is another. Nobody is questioning Musk's technical expertise or engineering credentials; he obviously knows his stuff, and if he wants to build a prototype somewhere out in the desert on his own dime, more power to him. But you'll have to forgive transit advocates for being skeptical whenever an automotive manufacturer -- even one that makes electric cars -- promises to "save" mass transit with some amazing new technology. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.
How many "G's" are involved for the ride? That is what kind of G force are you going to have placed on your body and how may "Gs"" is it going to cost?
oh bye the way Subway Pole Dancing has been happening for years...and years. Problem is it is mostly old fat men.
0-800 in 5 minutes comes out to .12 G. For comparison 0-60 in 10 seconds is about .27 G.
What bothers me is the 28-person capsule 30 seconds behind you. If your capsule so much as hiccups you'll be getting a high-G rectal exam: 800 mph is almost 1200 feet per second.
Each loading platform will have to have at least ten tracks as there is no way 28 people are going to get loaded and strapped in less than 5 minutes unless they are trained acrobats.
I didn't see any provision for luggage ... maybe it could delivered via railgun.
LA to SF in 30 minutes? It's looking more like 30 years...
In today's paper:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0817-bullet-ruling-20130817,0,4946222.story
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