[manigandham]

What does "better" mean?

Outside of governmental regulations, the market is what determines progress and there isn't much push by consumers for environmental impacts. They just want cheap and reliable transit. Price also wins over speed (and it's been show things like wifi have a greater effect on travel comfort than speed).

Unless you cut down the travel time significantly, it just doesn't matter. And at those speeds there are more engineering, operational and logistical costs that increase the ticket price so the value is reduced further. I also don't see how the engineering for a pioneering vactrain concept will somehow be cheaper than existing understood infrastructure.

Unless you can charge $50 and get from LA to SF in 30 mins while building the entire thing for just a few billion, this won't work.

[curun1r]

> the market is what determines progress and there isn't much push by consumers for environmental impacts.

That's only because externalities haven't been included in the pricing. What about the $14t that it will take to relocate people displaced by rising oceans? The repair costs from the increasingly-common severe weather events? There are real costs of climate change that aren't being accounted for and will have to be paid by future generations.

[manigandham]

Sure, by future generations. Do you think we're suddenly going to start pricing in the externalities of the whole world for train tickets?

The market won't do this, it's human behavior.