[samcheng]

The world's busiest high-speed rail is the Japanese Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka. It was doing 23,000 passengers per hour way back in 1992.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

The newest trains have capacity for 1323 seated passengers each, plus plenty of room for standing passengers, and run 13 times an hour in each direction. These things do regularly fill to capacity, too; I've ridden them standing in the door vestibule.

https://www.japanrailpass24.com/about-japan/shinkansen/

I'm sure the Chinese system, such as the line between Shanghai and Nanjing, also has really high ridership, particularly during Chinese New Year.

To me, Hyperloop is a distraction from high speed rail... I'd love to be able to ride an efficient train from SF to LA.

[Grishnakh]

It's not a distraction, it's a better alternative. HSR is too slow and too expensive.

As for passenger capacity, who cares? This is not Japan, where density is very high and lots of people don't have cars. What's important is demand: how many passengers are actually flying between LA and SF right now? And how does that compare to the capacity of Hyperloop? Hyperloop is being positioned as an alternative to regional air travel (and maybe later for cross-continent air travel). I'm sorry, but I seriously doubt 23,000 passengers are flying in jets from LA to SF every hour right now.

[dragonwriter]

It's funny that hyperloop proponents both argue that it is better for HSRs role, but that it's main purpose is to replace airline flights.

HSRs main justification is reducing the increase in long-range intrastate auto trips.

Also, whether an air travel or auto trip replacement, the hyperloop paper relied for its low cost on a route that doesn't have the transit connections to either where people are from or where they are trying to go be useful, whereas HSR both connects population centers and includes investments in improving connecting regional transit around the termini (and other stations). Hyperloop aims for a much smaller goal than HSR, and even at that has an alignment which makes it useless for the goal.

[aptwebapps]

how many passengers are actually flying between LA and SF right now?

Good question. About 3.4 million per year (I think that's both ways based on other sources) according to this:

http://www.statista.com/statistics/536977/domestic-air-route...

[vladd]

Subway line 14 in Paris is fully automated, has trains arriving every 85 seconds during peak hours, and has an hourly capacity of 30'000 - 40'000 seats/hour.

https://www.systra.com/IMG/pdf/metro_meteor_en-3.pdf

[samcheng]

Subway is complementary to high speed rail (or hyperloop).

The trains travel (on average) about 1/10th the speed, and the distances covered are much smaller.

The Hong Kong MTR (the worst commuter crush I've personally experienced) handles an eye-popping 75,000 commuters per hour per direction: https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/operations/detail_worldc...

[lj3]

It's $130 one way. Surely, people don't use that to commute on a daily basis? A round trip flight is faster and cheaper ($80-$300 vs $260).

[jaredklewis]

Having done both, I'd say door to door total travel time of Tokyo -> Osaka is shorter by train. But I like to get to airports two hours early to deal with security non sense. YMMV.

Also, a standard Shinkansen seat is far more spacious and comfortable than any economy plane seat.