[anologwintermut]

The standard answer to articles that ask a question in the title is no. Or in this case nothing.

One of the reason's California's proposed high speed railway was so expensive was the politics involved in picking the route. It's also the same problem Amtrak has. The northeast corridor would make money, but the routs going west don't and are kept do to congressional pressure. The hyperloop's cost comparisons don't factor that in at all(nor should they). But building it in practice will be an issue.

The second part of the hyperloop's cost savings come from it being very light. We could simply build very light rail transport on the same pylons. Replace 1,500 KG of batteries with overhead electric wire and use the excess weight for a motor.

So the hyper-loops only real advantage is speed. Which is impressive, except for the fact that it requires you to build a tube with surface variances less than 5mm for several hundred miles, or the air barring will have problems. (or maybe not, perhaps you could have dynamic air barring and high precision topographic maps of the tunnel)

[anigbrowl]

The hyperloop's cost comparisons don't factor that in at all

The budget summary at the end suggested $2.5 billion for land acquisition etc, which made me think it's not a serious proposal.

[anologwintermut]

Even if $2.5 billion for land acquisition is realistic (if you build most of it next to I5 and need a 10ft wide swath of land, it might be), the route would never be approved by the california legislature. A large part of the problem with infrastructure costs is politics, not engineering.

[anigbrowl]

It'd be more likely to be approved with only 2 endpoints, since the logical thing then would be to make the route as short as possible. OTOH HSR's route through the Central Valley is partly dictated by the availability of funding from the federal government for development in that part of the state; if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

[Aloisius]

> if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

Actually, the only two cities it connects to in the Central Valley are among the largest population centers in California: Fresno (#5 largest city in CA) and Bakersfield (#9 largest city). By comparison, there aren't any large population centers southwest of San Jose until you're almost to LA with maybe the exception of Salinas.

Plus, if you want to swing up to Sacramento (#6 largest city) at a later point, then going inland makes more sense.

The whole thing built out with all phases connects 9 out of 10 of the largest cities in CA (Oakland is the only one left out).

[anigbrowl]

Oh I agree, but so far the people in the Central Valley don't, and think it's some sort of scheme to oppress them: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21582556-can-hug...

Wha tI mean is that most of the popular backing for HSR seems to be in SF, SJ and LA. The interior of CA is like this whole different country.

[tzs]

I see Merced on all the maps on the state's HSR site, and Modesto and Stockton on maps for later phases of the project. Where did you see it would only connect to Fresno and Bakersfield?

[Aloisius]

Woops. I didn't see Merced.

[anologwintermut]

Until all the cities on the proposed HSR route want in. Now, maybe it's cheap enough that's not a problem. Wanting to be part of a $6B project v.s. a $60B project, but I doubt it.

The first thing someone is going to try to do is get it to connect somewhere in the middle of no where to San Jose to inflate their real-estate prices.

[pbreit]

Why is that? Nearly all the land is already government-owned. And much of the rest would be rented, not acquired.

[anigbrowl]

Don't be naive. You start erecting structures all along the I-5, everyone whose lands borders is it is going to come up with a reason why it's negatively impacting them during the environmental impact review.

[ricardobeat]

But it being very light is a consequence of the design as a whole. Light rail is already as light as it can be given cost/materials.

We already have rail transport on pylons, usually an implementation of a monorail[1], but it only solves the right-of-way issue. Everything else (energy consumption, speed, efficiency, passenger flow, safety) is not much different from standard transportation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorail

[anologwintermut]

I disagree about the weight. If you took the proposed capsule, added wheels, replaced the 1,500kg batteries with a motor and powered the thing from a third rail, you'd get something rather light with enough power to move at i'd guess 200 or 300 mph(think what you could get out of a Tesla if it had extra motors instead of batteries). This and the route would get you most of the cost savings.

The speed is the huge benefit, but involves a technical challenge of rather unknown cost: how do you build a tube for hundreds of miles with a down smooth surface at the 5mm level.

[ricardobeat]

That's what high-speed rail is. Wheels can't get you to 300mph, so you need maglev. The added weight would mean massive pylons, huge energy consumption. There is nothing new about that. It's more expensive, slower and less secure. Can you imagine the result of the recent spanish crash if the rails were elevated?

There is no easy formula for magic fast, light, cheap rail transport. Sorry - there is, it's called the Hyperloop :) the greatest thing about it is that all of it's advantages come from it's well thought-out, integrated design, not any one technology we don't have today.

[anologwintermut]

High-speed rail trains hold way more than 20 people, so they weigh more. Plus in the US, high speed trains that run on "freight lines" (which include the Acela) have to be very heavy do to some idiotic crash worthiness requirments. https://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html

[cma]

Speed and energy usage. The idea as I understood it was to compete with commuter flights; if i understand your idea correctly you are proposing a slow, lightweight trolley on elevated rails?

[anologwintermut]

That was the hypothetical to break down where the cost savings come from. It would not be as fast, no, but you might be able to get up to high speed train speed's with it.

Energy savings are mostly moot if you power things from overhead wire/ third rail. Electricity is cheap(I'm actually curious why this isn't part of the proposal).

So it's benefit is speed. It's a very big benefit, but the tolerances for the air baring/tunnel wall it rides on are really really small.

[cma]

Grid power is in the proposal as a backup source for cloudy days. I think the main point of covering it with solar aside from his stake in the solar sector was to show that you could do so and still come out cheaper than the high-speed rail proposal.

I agree about the air bearing tolerances seeming like a big problem.