[pwinnski]

Transporting goods via a purpose-dedicated system via fixed points without using highways would be great. And it is! America's use of trains to move goods around this country is amazing.

Come to think of it, moving people efficiently is a largely-solved problem given sufficient population density. Hyperloop is just dumb.

[asdfk-12]

If you are referring to urban areas - what about the crippled subway system and insane traffic congestion in NYC?

[jcranmer]

NYC has 5 4-track trunks moving 10-car trains through its densest core. If that's insufficient, then the only thing that's going to improve throughput is getting everybody out and having them walk. And there are places (hi Times Square!) where that is insufficient to move the demand.

NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it.

[mschuster91]

> NYC has a throughput problem. High speed doesn't improve throughput, it worsens it.

With ultra-dense city cores the only way to fix them is proper city planning - meaning: tearing down skyscrapers outright or converting them from offices into affordable housing to reduce the hordes of low-income staff travelling for hours just to get to work.

The "free market" has failed here because stuff still works (=people get to work and make money) but the cost is put onto society as a whole (congestion, smog, life quality degradation, hours upon hours wasted being in transit).

[tptacek]

In what major city have skyscrapers been torn down outright to lessen congestion?