Hyperloop: where first?
 

What cities would you like to see connected by Elon Musk's Hyperloop supersonic tube transit? Do you think it could be more effective to begin with a shorter-distance tube to begin with to save on costs and build up credibility for the technology?

There seem to be a number of well respected experts that don't buy into the economic or technical viability of the concept. It doesn't look like something that's quite ready to be tried in my opinion. Too many unknowns. If the ticket price can't be contained then it will be a huge flop and won't pay for the construction.

So the best location *might be* "somewhere else".

Another pipedream on LCF forum:rolleyes:

:lol:

Good one.

More like a nightmare, IMO.

Los Angeles
San Diego
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Dallas
Houston
New Orleans
Clearwater/Tampa
Miami
Orlando
Atlanta
Washington DC
New York
Chicago
Seattle
Portland
San Francisco
Los Angeles

Many of these locations could have problems with weather especially the ones near coast lines where big storms sometimes visit. Snow usually isn't a problem. Earthquakes are unpredictable in the medium term. So just build the line on solid ground away from fault lines if possible.

Some of these on my list are business hubs as well as vacation destinations. That would get more passengers.

It would be ideal if there were parallel tubes between some of these locations to go coast to coast non-stop. There would need to be a direct route between New York and Los Angeles. That would make an ideal starting point for such a line.

The first thing that occurred to me about this speed of commuting was the prospect of intensifying job-competition as people from a much broader region would gain access to the same job-markets. I also realized simultaneously that widespread political opposition would emerge for this very reason. If there's one thing you can assume about 'the masses,' it's that they will rally to protect localities against less local competition. Anti-competitiveness is more or less akin to monogamy in terms of giving people a sense of security.

Despite this, I think it's important to go beyond the fear-of-social-change factor and think about the social-cultural value of creating a form of transit that is faster and more efficient than any existing mode. If people can commute 100 miles in 20 minutes through a tube, it sort of antiquates the prospect of spending two hours in a car to commute the same distance.

Ultimately this technology could propel culture in the direction of viewing different modes of transportation more in terms of choice than necessity. Instead of asking oneself, "how far can I reasonably drive for the sake of connecting where I live to where I can gainfully work," the question becomes what mode(s) of transportation one is willing to take and what the job opportunities within that range are.

I don't see why competition is consistently increased or decreased unless you specifically import people from economically depressed areas. The flow of people can go in both directions, such as between two cities.

If this mode of transportation is only suitable for going between cities though then I'm not sure what sort of real societal benefit there is to be found. It consumes more energy to travel a long distance than to travel a short distance so why not strive to design communities to be small and self reliant? I read once that before trains were developed, over 50% of the population had never traveled more than 20 miles from home. Now we live in a society where that would seem like closing ones self off from a world of rich experiences. But it is enlightening to think in these terms because in the context of society only a couple hundred years ago, that's how people lived from birth to death. Was it so bad?


Now we live in a world where billions of people feel that they need daily access to a much wider berth than that, with many flying in jet aircraft from continent to continent on a regular basis. And all this happens while they expend much less personal effort getting there than a person two hundred years ago would spend going a few miles into town.

This sums up what I believe will be the largest social/economic issue of the 21st century. Local or central? My thought is that a system like hyperloop will most benefit wealthier individuals and larger cities. (Much like jet travel.)

There is no solid ground away from fault lines on the west coast. San Diego to Vancouver, BC is pretty much all along San Andreas (& Co) and the Cascade fault line. That said, if BART could be built to withstand quakes, and it did come out of the Loma Prieta with only a one-hour stoppage for inspection twenty-five years ago, then I'm sure the hyperloop could also be constructed to deal with a bit of shaking. Now as to whether is should or will be constructed...

The whole premise of anti-competition is really fundamentally flawed because it's based on the assumption that there have to be a limited number of positions of relatively elite privilege as well as positions of relative suffering and deprivation to motivate economic competition. If people were content with forms of economic consumption that don't result in scarcity and resource-competition when broadly aspired to, why would it matter who does what job? All jobs would just be for the sake of maintaining an economy that provides the means for everyone to live.

Within the paradigm of competition for scarce positions of elite privilege and specialized skill positions, however, broader commuting means the ability to consolidate markets and positions across multiple localities. One insurance company, for example, could consolidate four offices in four different cities if employees from those four cities could all commute 100 miles or more to meet at the same office somewhere (or even by telecommuting, really). This doesn't bother me because I think ultimately it's better to have greater efficiency, less jobs, and figure out some other way to fulfill human needs - but for people who can't fathom fulfillment of human economic needs except by reducing unemployment levels, consolidation is a threatening prospect.



I would like to see cultural evolution where both things occur; more local independence and greater freedom to migrate around locally independent communities. These hyperloop tubes won't necessarily need to limit travel to and from smaller areas. Each 'tube launch' would just need to be planned with a certain destination along the tube. The thing goes so fast, you can probably shoot off more than one capsule per minute. I suppose it would be more efficient to shoot off the longest distance capsules in series so that the stopping and restarting of shorter trips doesn't clog up tube-traffic, but probably you could plan certain times of day when shorter trips are allowed.

True. The problem is abuse of these technologies in support of laziness and greed. You could also fly a thousand miles once every few years and then walk or bike the same distance over a period of months or years. There's nothing about using fast, mechanized transit that precludes slower, human-powered transit except the norms of culture and scheduling that evolve to push people into containing their travel within narrow windows that practically mandate using the fastest mode of transportation.


It would be nice to see economic reforms that make it possible for both local and central forms of travel to occur without mutual exclusion and waste. The problem is that for such reforms to occur, the currently wasteful and necessarily-exclusive trends have to be cut back and less exclusive forms grown to viably substantial levels.

This touches on a tangential subject that I ponder sometimes. I think your perception of the size of the world is influenced by the modes of transportation at your disposal. And this also defines what it takes to satisfy your need for discovery and adventure.

This weekend I accepted an invitation from my sister and nephew to go for a ride in the mountains (in her car). She picked me up early a.m. and we explored all day, including a 5 mile hike at a waterfall I had visited a few weeks ago when I took a one-week ride on my bicycle in that same area. I don't often even ride in a car, much less drive one. What a different way to experience the world! In a day, we effortlessly covered most of the distance that took me a week on the bike.

But there was also such a loss of what I think of as "intimacy" with the environment. Moving down the road at 60 mph you just don't "experience" the world around you on nearly the same level of detail. You don't notice interesting trees, flowers, streams, people's yards, wave hi to folks on the porch. You don't even perceive the hills that got your heart racing on the bike.

But it's not as though the sense of adventure is just absent. It's still there. But in a car you're kind of like a junkie. To get a good fix, you need to bring the widely spread out famous tourists stops to your finger tips. Whereas me, on my bicycle might visit such a place once a day, in a car you might go to five well known beautiful nature stops in a day.

On my bike of course, I'm more experiencing the world the whole time. I make enjoyable discoveries all day, such as a shady spot to eat lunch under a tree next to a church. It's not a landmark. It's nothing to write home about. But it's a discovery nonetheless and satisfies my need for adventure.

The same thing happens when I compare walking to riding the bike. The world gets smaller. I notice things that I don't on a bicycle ride. I go places and stop where I would not on the bike. I think thoughts that I would not think too - it's a different mental state. I don't have my guard up. When walking the world gets smaller. There's tons of interesting things to see and discover and do and enjoy in a 15 mile radius. But on a bicycle you want to go further. The local environment is not so rich. In a car you want to go further still. There's not enough to see just 50 miles from home. And with affordable access to aircraft, a few hundred miles just won't cut it. So you open a vein and pour in the petrol.

You might like to see it. Most people including myself probably would. But unless somebody discovers a high tech clean and affordable source of energy like antimatter or something, it won't matter what we would would like. We may have passed the golden age of convenient travel in the last century. Now, as our mushroomed world population tries to come to grips with what's sustainable for the planet and the life on it, we may all be facing the hard realities of physics :bang:

Amazing post. I can't imagine anyone who has experienced bike touring and car touring wouldn't recognize their own experiences in what you've written here.

Bike touring or long-distance hiking are examples of low-energy trans-local living that don't require more resources than staying local. The hyperloop tube may also be very energy efficient, as much or more than public transit and buses. I'm not really sure how to estimate the amount of energy required to keep the inner pressure of the tube at the correct level.

I'm not a person who dreams of miraculous sources of abundant energy because even something like antimatter or fusion power would have negative consequences. What I'm really referring to are reforms that moderate the use of high-energy technologies to sustainable levels and supplement them with abundant use of low-energy technologies like walking, biking, consolidated transit and industry, etc. Things can be done much more efficiently and there's no reason to give up the gains of technological innovation if it can be used in a way that conserves nature and resources instead of accelerating their eradication.

I went to a part of my city where I once lived, but haven't visited in a few years. It was an exciting feeling to see the changes--like visiting a foreign city.



People have observed that travel can be broad or it can be deep. Jet flights to exotic locations is broad. Bike trips in your home region give you a deep and intimate experience.

Well put. Something like hyperloop may in fact be efficient and affordable in terms of energy consumption. At this point though I'd say that asking "where first" puts the cart before the horse. There are a number of critics of the hyperloop idea. It is not proven to be what you imagine. If somebody proposed building one of these in my part of the country I'd say the feasibility questions need a whole lot more attention first.

Of course there's nothing but critics when it comes to any new idea. So I'm not saying that it shouldn't be studied and evaluated. I'm just saying that process has barely begun and it's not time yet to get real concerned about how it might playout in a specfic area.

I actually agree with you that working out the idea conceptually before moving forward with material investments is wise, but there's also the problem of this economic culture that likes to milk theory for contracts and jobs without any real concern for getting the project off the ground. For this reason, I tend to prefer 'feasibility studies' that essentially initiate a project and get it as far as possible in practice in order to do preliminary testing of whatever can be tested so that the refinement process can occur.

Maybe some theme park like Disney would be a good initial test site. I just don't know if the distance between theme parks in one area of a city would be long enough to sufficiently test the hyperloop's speed capacity. Another good testing ground might be to offer up the median of some long highway and allow a prototype to be built there. As long as major safety concerns can be mitigated, a version of the hyperloop could be set up to do test runs without passengers.

The reason I think you're right about nothing happening with this idea any time soon is that existing big businesses like the airline industries would probably find ways of obstructing the onset of a new form of competition. It's sad to say, but almost nothing innovative can really get off the ground in 'the free market' due to anti-competitive business interests. It's too bad Ayn Rand isn't around to comment on the kind of resistance someone like Elon Musk faces when pursuing innovative projects.