[ebikelaw]

China probably sees it as being in their long-term interest to prop up American hyperloop companies so that Americans don't come to their senses and build trains. The longer we're distracted by hyperloops, on-demand taxi services, and self-driving cars the deeper our technological hole becomes.

[lightrebar]

>so that Americans don't come to their senses and build trains

And how is that working out for California? Rail is by far the single most expensive form of transportation on a per-passenger basis.

[chipotle_coyote]

Given how many people ride BART, Caltrain, and VTA light rail in my area -- and how proximity to a transit station has become a major selling point for residential development, both old and new -- at least around here it seems to be working out just fine, thanks!

While I presume you're taking a dig at the high speed rail project, it's worth remembering that that's not the whole of what "train service" means. It's also worth remembering that as of yet we don't really have a baseline for how the cost of longer-run train service compares to hyperloop service; as fun as it is to blame HSR's travails solely on being a government project, the reality is that there are very, very few private projects that are conducted on such a massive scale that we can point to and say "look, that was so much more efficient." Last but not least, there are good arguments against using "cost per passenger mile" as the be-all-end-all metric for transit, which you can find pretty easily if you're so inclined.

[ebikelaw]

You have to be kidding, right? How much do you think it would cost, per mile, to build roads capable of moving 100k people per hour? That's a 100-lane freeway. California High Speed Rail is being built because of all the alternatives studied it was, by a large margin, the cheapest. Freeways and airports are much more costly for the same capacity.

[akozak]

This is where citing studies would be helpful instead of arguing on instinct. But also remember: with cars you push a lot of the costs to riders (vehicle capex, maintenance, fuel) and there is interoperability with "last mile" infrastructure (city roads). With trains you build the entire infrastructure for the long haul, and then still end up relying on other modes of transport at the end. Imagine if in building a new freeway you also needed to buy all the cars on top of it...

[khuey]

Even the most optimistic published ridership projection for CAHSR is 200k riders per day, not 100k per hour.

[chipotle_coyote]

Well, to be fair, the estimated average annual daily traffic for the most traveled LA freeways isn't anywhere near 100K per hour, either. It's around ~400K vehicles per day, and assuming 1.5 average riders per vehicle, that's 600K people. So if 200K riders per day is the most optimistic published ridership projection for CAHSR, it's not at all a bad number. (Acela's daily ridership appears to be closer to 30K, though, so I would be really surprised if the CA system is that high.)

[greglindahl]

In the Bay area, there's no space to expand the highways, but you can increase capacity on the rail lines. Caltrain can double capacity through electrification and level platform loading. Which one do you propose spending money on?

[EGreg]

I would say cars are!