[soyiuz]

Hyperloop sounds like a bunch of hype. High speed trains are a thing already, as are MagLev trains, as are trains that go through tunnels, called the subway. The lack of their success in the US market has little to do with the technology itself and more to do with politics.

The addition of vacuum tunnels does little to alleviate the administrative / financial challenges of our struggling train systems. Vacuum has few practical upsides and a lot of downsides such as safety, reliability, and cost. It boggles the mind as to how investors are falling for this idea.

But perhaps marketing and branding are where Musk/Bronson's talents lie when it comes to high-speed rail? Please tell me otherwise, as I would love to see better rail infrastructure in the US.

[briefcomment]

One way to overcome politics is to make something sound so cool that the public is generally on board with it.

[dave5104]

I have little faith in something being cool preventing people from being up in arms about infrastructure builds in their backyard.

[handmodel]

100% - thousands of points of local veto

[handmodel]

I feel like this doesn't quite work. The vast majority of people may be for trains but there are so many points of local veto. If a train/hyperloop needs to cut through a neighborhood in order to avoid taking a 5 mile detour the 20 people effected are going to use everything in their power to stop it - who can blame them.

Even road expansion is slow and costly and hard to navigate.

[sandworm101]

>>> ...sound so cool that the public is generally on board with it.

Simpsons. Monorail. The song is what sold me on the idea.

[hammock]

Like.. war?

[InvisibleCities]

The point of Hyperloop is to provide a shiny new technology that municipalities can use as an excuse for not investing in public transportation, ensuring that America switches to electric cars instead trains/buses/trams/bikes/etc as ICE automobiles are phased out over the next 20 years.

[nickik]

As in the US the majority of people don't demand public transport, I don't see why municipalities would need an excuse. Outside of nerd circles the hyperloop is rally not even very well known so I don't even understand how that would make sense.

And 'the point' of Hyperloop certainty never was that, that is just conspiracy nonsense by people who are bitter that most people don't share their opinion. The most you could say is that 'hyperloop has been abused by XY people to avoid investing in public transport' but I have not seen a single piece of evidence for that.

Are you really so cynical that every new technology that you don't like, is instantly put to 'ah this is a conspiracy to prevent adoption of what I like'.

[Meandering]

I tend to agree. There are a lot of different aspects of market economics and environmental issues at play.

The hyperloop, as a concept alone, has value if the marginal cost over conventional methods is supplemented by the increased efficiency in transportation. It will only make sense where predictable constant travel occurs (i.e. NY to DC). The is the same for trains or any other communal means of transport. I primarily don't think it should be a passenger driven technology. The issue with passengers is they don't travel consistently for 24hrs a day.

I honestly think a vacuum train for commercial logistics has far more economic viability. A tube from LA to KC,KS or one from KC to the east coast would drop transportation time and labor cost significantly. This is obviously a huge endeavor but, something along this line would allow product to ship half way or completely across the country in less than an hour[1] with availability 24hrs a day. This would be a huge boost in productivity and resource availability.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain.

[BurningFrog]

Replacing truck or rail transport with a vacuum tube cargo network does sound like it could be reaL useful!

Building the tubes is a big cost, but they should be much less intrusive and politically problematic than roads or rail.

[peterwoerner]

I think the goal with the vacuum is to get to even higher speed rail which can compete with airplanes for speed and convenience. The thought being, rail has to be clearly better than flying for it work.

That said vacuum comes with many technical issues.

[timerol]

The Northeast Corridor is wildly profitable for Amtrak (based on operating costs), despite being significantly worse than flying, and often slower than driving. (It's faster than rush-hour driving, but that's about it.)

Making fast-enough rail that connects useful places, and upgrading the speed of existing rail that meets the same criteria, is a much better strategy IMO than trying to do "better than flying" rail based on unproven technology. Moonshots have their place, but America should try to catch up to the rest of the world in rail transport instead of pretending we're on the bleeding edge of innovation.

[dragontamer]

> The Northeast Corridor is wildly profitable for Amtrak (based on operating costs), despite being significantly worse than flying, and often slower than driving. (It's faster than rush-hour driving, but that's about it.)

Worse than flying?

I can take the train from Wash. DC to New York City Penn Station, visit my friends who live in the city by walking alone, and then come back home in time for dinner. (Broadway, Time Square, and Wall Street are all walking-distance from Penn Station)

The closest airport to NYC center is LaGuardia Airport, off of the island. Then you have to spend money on an Uber (or take the train!) into the city anyway. (Cheapest to Uber to the Purple line, then take the purple line into the city).

------------

The Train's competition is a Bus. There are PLENTY of cheap busses that travel the route.

--------

Even if you're off of Manhattan in say... Brooklyn. I'd rather be at Penn Station than LaGuardia Airport. Penn Station has a direct subway line to Brooklyn. Its non-obvious how I'd get from LaGuardia to Brooklyn unless my friends spend time to pick me up (or I take an expensive Uber)

[bigbubba]

The trains are also more comfortable than [coach] plane seats by a long mile, and you don't have to deal with TSA either. Showing up at the station the minute the train rolls out is/was very feasible, unlike with flying. When I lived in Philly I used Amtrak every chance I got, whether I was going north to NY, south to DC, or west to Harrisburg. It was great. Very comfortable and low stress. And I could generally get tickets on short notice for a price affordable to a student.

[dragontamer]

When I was a student, all I could afford was the $10 or $20 bus, which was uncomfortable as all heck.

Now that I'm an adult with some money, I'm willing to pay $80 on the train ticket. I agree with you, way more leg room, much less stress.

There's a train that departs every hour in the day (and every 2-hours during midnight hours). I don't even need to plan anything. Just walk up to the train station and go. If you do that with airplanes, your costs double or more.

-------

Once you account for the ~1 hour in airport security, you're basically at the same speed as a train anyway. Then the significantly inferior location of LaGuardia vs Penn Station comes into play (you really can get to far more locations from Penn Station than LaGuardia).

--------

> The trains are also more comfortable than [coach] plane seats by a long mile

I did take the higher-end Acela Express once, just to see what its about. The prices are way higher, but you get an entire table for you (and your family).

Its very expensive, but if I were ever going to take children to NYC, I'd probably consider it.

I found a review for the Acela, it matches my experience: https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/acela-business-class/

When I took the Acela Express, families were out playing board games during the train ride. Train-level comfort is far superior to plane comfort.

I'd say Coach Train seats are comparable to Airplane first-class. And first-class Train seats are... well.. you can see the Acela review for yourself.

[bigbubba]

Another factor to consider is that when trading an hour in line for TSA for an hour on the train, you can relax, take a nap or read a book, while in line for the TSA you have to stay awake and alert. The same applies for time spent in the airport terminal, I'm always afraid to doze off there, lest I miss my flight. And as you mention, missing a train is generally not a huge deal; I missed a few over the years and was always able to get onto the next train an hour of so later. This flexibility alone gives huge peace of mind.

At the time I think I was paying about $40 or so between Philly and Harrisburg, one or two times a month. Not as cheap as a bus, but well worth it I think.

[derg]

yep. trains are also more relaxing in ways that busses/planes can ever be for me. it feels like the one time my brain can truly shut up for a bit and i can just enjoy existing.

something about the smoothness of the rails (speaking from a similar position in the nec) as the world speeds by is incredibly calming to me.

[rockostrich]

> Broadway, Times Square, and Wall Street are all walking-distance from Penn Station

Wall Street is a 3+ mile walk from Penn Station. Sure, it's walkable just like everything in NYC is walkable, but I don't know why you wouldn't just pick another landmark in NYC like Central Park or Grand Central Terminal. Or just say that all are less than a 20 minutes subway ride away.

Also, saying there's a direct subway line to Brooklyn from Manhattan isn't saying much. Brooklyn is huge and to go anywhere besides downtown likely requires a transfer. I'm not arguing that flying is better between DC and NYC, but your arguments are making it seem like it's trivial to get anywhere from Penn Station and impossible to get anywhere from Laguardia.

[Zach_the_Lizard]

This. I live in Queens and it's not hard to get to Penn Station, but it's also not hard for me to get to LaGuardia, either.

I can get to LaGuardia in a little less time than it takes to get to Penn Station, especially if I don't go during peak rush hour. I have TSA Pre-check, so I typically don't have to deal with 1 hour+ security lines.

When I head to DC, I take the train simply because it's more comfortable, the trip is typically more consistent, and I don't have to worry about bringing "bad" items like a normal sized tube of toothpaste.

When I visit the DC suburbs and exurbs, as I have family and friends there, flying and particularly driving tend to ultimately come out ahead in terms of convenience and time.

Worth noting that more people live in Queens than Manhattan or Fairfax County, Virginia than DC.

Manhattan is definitely the center of the NY metro area, and virtually all business is conducted there, but that is much less true for DC. The DC suburbs actually have a ton of jobs.

It's an imperfect analogy, but the DC area is perhaps closer to the Bay Area in terms of having multiple employment centers. Maybe more extreme.

[dragontamer]

LaGuardia is in Queens. Of course its convenient for people who live there!

Hmm, I guess a lot of this comes down to where you're going, where you're coming from, and what you're planning to do.

My friends live in Brooklyn and Manhattan. They pay high rent prices by they sold their cars (100% car free). So if I visit NYC, I have to figure out transportation on my own to meet them at whatever location. (Broadway, or various talk-shows like Colbert etc. etc.), which are typically on Manhattan proper.

----

I'll say this: from the perspective of Wash DC -> NYC, I have the choice of either Planes or Trains. The Trains run along-side the Airports (in fact, there are more Train stops). Trains seem like the more convenient option.

From your perspective: NYC -> Wash DC, I think the airport makes more sense. There's less to do in Wash DC than NYC. Union Station is cool and all, but most of what to do in the area is in the suburbs, which inevitably means you need a car. If you're getting a car, might as well land at an airport.

The Wash DC -> NYC trip however is accomplished without ever renting a car, and just staying on the subway lines to get wherever you need.

[JPKab]

America lacks the population density, even in the northeastern corridor (which I have ridden by the way, DC to Boston) to make the investment make sense. By the way, the price was too high, and it kept having to slow down near every city.

Tokyo to Osaka, for instance, is a relatively short distance (300 miles), and both cities are larger than any city in the US, with Nagoya at the half-way point. The quantity of humans that can serve is an order of magnitude higher than in the same distance in the USA, even on the eastern seaboard.

It just doesn't work for us. The dramatically reduced costs of infrastructure for constructing mounted tubes on pylons, with each section being a fungible, mass produced item, makes rail obsolete. Understood that a lot of the tech is "unproven", but it's too promising to let curmudgeons focus on the stupid, expensive fool's errand of high-speed rail in the US because they are too unimaginative to see what's available to us in the future.

[soyiuz]

> The dramatically reduced costs of infrastructure for constructing mounted tubes on pylons, with each section being a fungible, mass produced item, makes rail obsolete.

This makes no sense. The "mounted tubes on pylons" contain rails inside and therefore are MORE not less expensive than just "rails mounted on pylons," which we already have. A more complex rail does not make simple rail obsolete. Nor does it beat it on fungibility, cost, or mass production. Where are you getting these "dramatically reduced costs"?

[djrogers]

> and both cities are larger than any city in the US,

While Tokyo is more populous (I assume that's what you mean by 'larger', if not Houston and LA have a few words for you) than any city here in the US, Osaka is not - however New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are far more spread out than could ever be possible in Japan.

[rsynnott]

> I think the goal with the vacuum is to get to even higher speed rail which can compete with airplanes for speed and convenience.

But... they already do, at least for short flights. LA to SF is about 600km, or a little under two hours by a 'normal' (ICE or similar) high speed system (1.5 hours by maglev). It's about 1 hour 20 minutes by plane, so by the time you check in, get through security, get on and off, get to and from the airport, the train definitely wins.

Something like this might theoretically compete with long distance flight, I suppose.

[flavor8]

We don't have a solution for flying without oil based fuels (yet). We might get there, but it makes sense to try to develop much faster ground based transportation in parallel. If they efficiently can hit 600mph without risk of obstruction on the tracks, it becomes a contender. Money will become available to develop the infrastructure if flying becomes prohibitively expensive due to carbon offsets and/or dwindling reserves. As a 25-50 year plan it's fine.

[nickik]

The original Hyperloop concept avoids the things you mentioned.

It does not use vacuum:

> The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly hard to maintain a near vacuum in a room, let alone 700 miles (round trip) of large tube with dozens of station gateways and thousands of pods entering and exiting every day. All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the whole system stops working.

> However, a low pressure (vs. almost no pressure) system set to a level wherestandard commercial pumps could easily overcome an air leak and the transport pods could handle variable air density would be inherently robust.

It does not use MagLev:

> A viable technical solution is magnetic levitation; however the cost associated with material and construction is prohibitive.

There are still challenges, but because of the Hype any company doing anything related just calls their system 'Hyperloop' as well.

> It boggles the mind as to how investors are falling for this idea. > But perhaps marketing and branding are where Musk/Bronson's talents lie when it comes to high-speed rail? Please tell me otherwise, as I would love to see better rail infrastructure in the US.

Musk has not asked a single investor for money for Hyperloop. He likely knows its currently not a great investment.

Bronson is a guy who jumps on anything related to Musk and makes a bad copy of it that gather lots of money and then doesn't do much with it.

[jcranmer]

> It does not use vacuum:

IIRC, the proposed pressure was less than 1 kPa. That would be less than the pressure at the Karman Line, the boundary of space.

[intotheabyss]

The proposed pressure was equivalent to 70k feet altitude, IIRC. So a pressure of about 3.5 kPa.

[nickik]

Many people compare it to scientific vacume chaimers that is why its worth pointing out.

[soyiuz]

Fair enough. I'll use "low pressure" and "low friction" next time.

[dangus]

While I agree with your overall point, and I also think that hyperloop deployment is unrealistic, I think part of the idea of the concept of hyperloop is to make high speed rail fast enough for the expansive sizes of America.

If you took a 300km/hr train from Orlando to New York City, you’d still be competing poorly with a $100 Spirit Airlines flight.

That’s almost 6 hours on the train compared to a 2 hour flight.

Even in China where they’ve got the best high speed rail system in the world, most of the major cities are concentrated on one cost with huge populations and you still have Chinese travelers choosing low cost airlines for many longer trips (air travel in China was exploding before Covid).

I think what America needs to do is not to focus on long distance rail (which is what the current Amtrak CEO is doing) and to expand intercity high speed rail lines between major cities. There should be high speed rail linking relatively close regions that have clusters of cities.

(And of course, all of this is a great argument for making airline tickets pay more for their climate externalities - trains should be more attractive to consumers on price because they’re the lowest carbon form of transport)

[NoSorryCannot]

Most of the spent flying short routes isn't spent in the air. The process of getting to and away from the gate is so unpleasant and inefficient that it makes me a little angry if I think about it too long.

And that's if everything goes well. Delays are frequent. Add on top of that the cramped cabin, luggage restrictions, and that they ask you to not get up or use the bathroom for so long while the plane is going up or coming down (most of the ride on these short hops).

And it's _expensive_.

Flying is awful and I hate it and will gladly choose the train if it's remotely competitive.

[dmos62]

I think you might be underestimating the comfort and convenience of train travel.

> That’s almost 6 hours on the train compared to a 2 hour flight.

A 2 hour flight also has you getting to the airport early-ish (~1h), going through check-in and/or security (0.75-2.0h, 1.5h average in my experience), waiting for luggage upon arrival and navigating the airport (~0.5h), getting to center city from the airport (~1h). So in addition to 2 hours in the air, there's an additional cost of 1h+1.5h+0.5h+1h=4h, so that's 6 hours in total, and that's best case scenario.

I'd choose train travel over plane travel always, provided the trip is not more than a couple thousand kilometers and it's an express. Trains are spacious (in comparison), and you don't experience intense pressure changes, or the bad air conditioning that you have in planes. Air travel tires me out for the rest of the day; after train travel I find myself energetic enough to do things the same day.

[jaclaz]

Yes.

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19560125

[Aerroon]

The train could offer a better service though. More leg room, proper internet connections, better food (the altitude won't make it bland) being able to move around etc. You could even make the train overnight and people could sleep in them.

The other thing is that the airport process isn't very friendly.

[creaghpatr]

I've taken the Shanghai/Beijing route and I can tell you there is plenty of demand at that price point. Great value and not much longer than the overall airport process.

[carabiner]

The mandatory "less space than a Nomad" comment. I suspect this will not age well.

[JPKab]

You're focused too much on the vacuum aspect of the tube, and not nearly enough on the fact that it's a tube, with enough self-support to be elevated on pylons and is an order of magnitude easier to build than pouring a foundation for maglev tracks.

High speed rail track is dramatically more difficult and expensive to build than a hyperloop tube system. This was, from the beginning, the huge differentiator between the two. Hyperloop tubes aren't comparable to road or rail bridges/tracks, but instead are comparable to constructing oil/gas/water pipelines. We know how much easier it is already to build those.

[soyiuz]

See my comment above. An elevated (or submerged) tube with rails (or a track) inside cannot be less expensive than those rails or track elevated (or submerged) alone. I get the pipeline metaphor, but a pipeline with infrastructure inside is just infrastructure + pipeline. So instead of a train system the proposal has always been to build a train system inside a pipeline, which has to be more expensive than either. We have no indication of cost savings here.

[sroussey]

I agree, though in city, it would be cheaper to use air rights than on the ground or underground.

[Schiendelman]

It never works that way - agencies have tried with elevated systems for a century. You have to buy the land.

[bigbubba]

Hyperloop tubes are pipe dreams, nobody has actually ever build one, so all the pros you cite are purely speculative.

[rini17]

Roads and rails can have small gaps to allow for stretching from temperature changes. Pipelines solve this with U-shaped segments. Hyperloop can't do either, requires something with airtight-enough seals or some expensive materials.

At such high speeds as proposed, any sagging is impermissible (again, unlike pipelines). Of course it's solved engineering problem but it markedly increases the construction price and complexity.

So, no, hyperloop is not really comparable to pipelines.

[jcranmer]

> Hyperloop tubes aren't comparable to road or rail bridges/tracks, but instead are comparable to constructing oil/gas/water pipelines.

How many pipelines are wide enough diameter to move an entire vehicle and designed to handle the stress of multi-ton vehicles as their dynamic loads? And how many of those are supported on pylons rather than being fully buried?