One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite.
If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distance traveled (KMs consumed) went up. Total commuting time can even increase as transport gets faster/cheaper.
If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings.
That creates some strangeness in transport. You can't really solve transport the way people want, which is to make getting where they're going better/faster. If you could get there faster, more people would be going there (congestion) or maybe you would be living farther away.
This definitely doesn't mean it's not worth innovating, just that predicting how this will play out can be unintuitive.
Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts
1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place.
2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living raise up of these hubs, you end up with both more expensive workforce, and less flexibility, and some people just decide to leave. The only winners in this scenario are current landlords.
Right now SF is experiencing scenario #2.
Basically once you have super fast transportation, it relieves pressure to housing prices on the work hubs/city centers, and the values of homes where the high speed train/hyperloop/whatever stops increase to match the new accessibility.
Real Scenarios: You can comfortably live in Baltimore or Philadelphia (2hrs of driving currently) and be able to work in NYC if this commute was cut to 40mins or less.
It is a win win scenario, as all these cities become part of one single hub.
One feature of classical mechanics is that the world must abide by it. With transportation, the vehicle must start and stop at a speed of zero. The energy required to accelerate the vehicle to its top speed and then decelerate it to back to zero increases quadratically as the top speed increases.
Another feature of classical mechanics is, of course, that Aristotelian concept of kenophobia, or horror vacui, or resintenza del vacuo, or natura abhorret vaccum, or nature abhors a vacuum. Of course we now know we can produce vacuums these days... but it's not easy to make one. The largest is in Sandusky, OH, and it's 122 feet high and 100 feet wide. It takes 8-12 hours to achieve vacuum conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Power_Facility
> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings.
And that's a good thing, because it increases the amount of demand available to businesses. The more potential customers you have, the more product you can make to sell to that market, and the more product you can make, the better your economies of scale.
The large population of New York is what allows it to offer so many niche and specialty stores, which would otherwise struggle to stay in business.
I live in London, and this is a pet peeve of mine. Central London traffic moves slowly above ground and the trains are usually full. So of course we need more trains? Billions gets poured into it.
But like you I don't think it will help.
Instead I wish government here would stop all expansion of Central London lines. Very publicly. And instead focus on picking, say, a dozen towns near the motorways and rail lines surrounding London, and expanding the connections between them and further out. Especially towns where there'd be little resistance to high density development.
Instead we get high speed links to other cities so people can travel from even further out to the centre of London in less time.
E.g. I live in a suburb where better train connections along the edge of London + further out could easily make it a viable commuter destination for 4-5m people where it's now viable for about 2m. In some cases the rail is already there, but there just aren't any direct trains. There are many similar opportunities. Developing satellites like this would be so much better than the relentless focus on the centre.
And there are many hubs like London around the world where we're just shooting ourselves in the foot by seeing congestion and thinking the problem is lack of roads, rather than seeing congestion and thinking it reflects a lack of alternative destinations.
Almost infinite but still very much finite. If you could get anywhere in the world in seconds, Star Trek transporter style, then demand would level off. The number of people in the world is finite. Once everyone can get where they need to be as easy as sending a text message, we will have different problems to solve.
Transpo wonks call this "induced demand" - the component of transportation demand caused by people reacting to the availability of transportation. Every infrastructure improvement induces a certain amount of demand, including incremental ones like adding lanes to roads. It's the reason new lane additions always seem to reach a point of being congested, faster than anticipated.
In this way transportation spending is both the purported cure and the cause of congestion, and fits the definition of an addiction. See my comment from a few days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850885
One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite.
It seems this is also true for cars and trucks. No matter how many roads we build, there is congestion. I think automated cars are going to show that one of the limiting factors to how much our society uses such transportation is the supply of piloting labor.
Also to chime in: It's not literally infinite. It's just much higher than the current economy can supply.
How is demand infinte? Demand is a function of price. We could fly to London from NYC on supersonic jets for decades, but we decided that it's too expensive. How is transportation different from any other service industry?
Right, but that can't be done by fixed infrastructure like rails. What happens to area as radius goes up? What happens to population density and demand?
The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle right now to get basic funding for proven conventional public transit services which would dramatically make life better for everyone. Musk dropping the promise of Hyperloop (with no interest on following up on the idea) has provided ammo for transit cynics and opponents of public transit to seed doubt, delay and derail the public transit conversation by inquiring why investment in conventional tech is necessary when Hyperloop is surely on the horizon. Even keen pro public transit futurists may find that they're accidentally injuring progress in public transport doing the same thing.
The Boring Company's "cars in tunnels (maybe on sleds?) idea", which Musk is following up on, is even more dangerous and has worse impacts on cities. For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels. This is precisely the wrong solution at a time when municipal governments are more interested in reducing car use, because they understand very well the benefits in pivoting toward creating denser, more walkable, cities and are currently engaged in making this shift.
The problem with the Hyper-loop and Elon Musk in general, isn't that Elon Musk is wrong or that the Hyper-loop won't work. The problem is that he engages in a nepotistic political-industrial complex. That is, he subsidizes his risk for the benefit of the shareholders and himself at the expense of the taxpayer. The same tax payers who are often in a state of financial uncertainty and destitution of education. The same tax payers who know if they get sick, they won't be able to pay for it.
The result of this political-industrial complex, at least in this case, is a large benefit to the upper class (not that I'm a classist) who can afford a foray into the city for brunch at the cost of the livelihood of everyone less financially fortunate and vigilant. It is often the case, and continues to be so, that the political-industrial complex taxes everyone for the benefit of the wealthiest.
> The problem ... isn't ... that the Hyper-loop won't work.
Actually, that is the problem. The thermal expansion problem has not yet been solved, or even seriously addressed. Hyperloop proponents are completely ignoring it, giddily betting that a solution will somehow magically present itself because technological optimism always wins. Well, no, it doesn't. The only thing that always wins is the laws of physics.
I suppose you can make some variant of this argument about the modern economy, but I don't see why you're singling out Musk for this. Is it because transport infrastructure tends to be subsidized? If so, could we not make the same argument for roads, trains & such?
Huh? Transportation technology massively benefits the poor more than it does the rich.
The biggest expense that the working class pay is rent.
If you can cut long distance commute times in half, then that means that someone who works in the city is able to save 50% or more on rent by living outside the extremely expensive city.
Transportation and housing (2 sides of the same coin) is arguably the single most important issue facing the working class.
> The same tax payers who know if they get sick, they won't be able to pay for it.
You've made a grave mistake in your appeal.
The top 40% of income tax payers are paying more than 100% of the total income tax base. The people that specifically do pay a massive share of the tax base, can overwhelmingly afford great health coverage. They're why we still have the health system we have, precisely because the system works well for them (short wait times, great coverage, and they can afford the cost of the insurance, most of which is paid for by their employers as part of their total compensation).
The bottom 25% have their health needs paid for by that top 40% income block, via Medicaid and other assistance programs. It's in fact the slightly sub middle block of 35% that are struggling greatly with health costs, and they barely pay any income taxes (they do pay FICA related taxes, which they get back in theory via late life entitlement programs).
Here's the actual fact of the matter: if your premise is the tax payers are getting ripped off, what you're talking about is the top 1/3 of US income earners getting ripped off. That top 1/3 is extraordinarily well off, in fact they're among the best off people on the planet in nearly every possible regard (average income, median income, net wealth, unemployment, health coverage, education, etc), and they pay modest tax rates compared to most developed nations.
Excuse me, but I'm willing to pay for the kind of advances to society Musk is attempting. Musk using tax credits is not why we don't have a good healthcare or education system. Blame defense spending an lobbying for that one. But don't try this false dichotomy crap, where our choices are either 'food and healthcare' or 'subsidizing earnest technological advancements'
Hyperloop is such a bad idea on so many levels. Mass transportation is the future: trains, suburban trains and metros. Not cars or "mini metros for cars".
Super fast trains are already there. Europe lives in the future compared to the USA.
You merely present an opinion without an argument. You need to actually argue why trains are better than "mini metros for cars". You might be correct, but just stating your opinion is not constructive.
It definitely seems problematic to put your entire foundation of travel in the hands of government or companies, though. They especially do not represent the concerns of all people. A car on the other hand is complete freedom. I would have expected to hear that driverless cars are the future since it's not contingent on an non-existent infrastructure, rather on the roads that already exist.
Such a negative, do-nothing article. "taking every billionaire’s quirky visions at face value". Elon Musk is a bit different than every billionaire. Re-usable orbital class boosters and the Model S is what gives Elon the street cred others don't have. "so-called Boring Company" WTF? The New Yorker was always a purveyor of a certain type of elitism, but since the Trump election they have really upped the intensity. Not sure if I'll renew my subscription I've had for decades when it expires.
Obviously, Musk is killing it with Tesla and SpaceX. There is no doubt about that. He will be remembered in the history books for this.
But is he really serious about this Boring company stuff? The whole thing sounds ludicrous. Even if he reduces cost 10x, they are still crazy expensive and have a lot sorts of strange complications. I don't get it.
I was thinking the same thing. Armchair critic that has nothing better to do than criticize people who are actually trying to innovate and improve society.
"Musk’s visions are valuable because they show that even people far outside the field of urban planning can be frustrated with the world others have built for us. They, too, should have a say."
That is a good point. Taking Musk and the HyperLoop seriously is a mistake---unless something has changed that hasn't percolate down to me, it has major problems and probably wouldn't solve the problem it purports to solve in the same way the Concord never revolutionized air travel---but it is a valid criticism of the state of things.
On the other hand, if you take it seriously, it distracts attention from actual solutions.
Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.
The article has a taste of criticism but offers no points of criticism. Sort of a passive-aggressive play on words, which is ok just for a read, but not something that I expect from New Yorker.
Comparing Hyperloop to Concorde and it's eventual demise does seem valid at a cursory level. What's key to understand is that Concorde's failure can mostly be attributed to a combination of design, safety and maintenance factors (sonic boom being the foremost). In addition, what plagued the Concorde was the upkeep and maintenance of the aircrafts, and of course the spiraling fuel costs. Are there such equivalents in the Hyperloop world. If so, can they be resolved.
Yes, that's a classic style for negative reviews. The reviewer implies all sorts of bad, but makes no disputable arguments. And yes, that's not what you'd expect from NY Times (except for some book and theater reviews). But this is the New Yorker, and pretty typical for them.
Japan's maglev project is much more impressive than Hyperloop. Japan is building a maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka. 438km in 67 minutes. The first 42km section is already running. The trainsets work. Tourists can ride it.
This was a disappointing "article" which conflated The Boring Company (intracity tunnels) and the hyperloop (usually conceptualized aboveground) and never really made a concrete point, just provided FUD about anything that smells like a Concord or SciFi.
The general idea that the hyperloop is more of a North Star than a proposal stands, but that was always its stated nature.
This is written by someone who's never lived in LA. "Trains that run on the tracks" is a joke in a region with virtually zero effective public transport.
How about improving public transport by investing in existing technologies that work for other cities? I'd consider that a more sensible approach than pouring public funds into an experimental technology which may or may not solve LA's transportation woes in 20 years.
Could someone tell me how these tunnels will be cooled and vented?
Sure, put a car on an electric sled. But the people want A/C (or heat), and lights, the wheels provide friction. If the car was running beforehand then the engine block is cooling off. Even if it's an electric car, the brakes, tires, and skin will be hot, dumping heat into the well-insulated tunnel.
This is a well-known problem in London, where decades of heat have built up in the Underground. Putting new cooling in is expensive, because they require expensive surface access.
If the goal is to have multiple layers of tunnels under a city, then how are they all cooled? How much surface access does each one need?
The same question applies to a hyperloop tunnel.
There must also be vents, for people to breath of course, and also for smoke and evacuation management in case of fire. How many are needed?
Some hypnotized people think that a Hyperloop in tunnel under the Baltic sea between Stockholm and Helsinki is a good idea - two sparsely populated capital cities of two small countries.
Even if it's only there to siphon of some taxpayer's money to someone or another, I just can't fathom how things like this can be allowed to go on. Even if the entire population will spend half of their income on tickets, it will not be economically viable.
We live in a time when journalism is not about promoting good or truth. But about finding flaws in the most sensationalistic way. Was it ever different ? ...
I feel like one could have written this article back in the days of Tesla and Edison. The problem Geoff bemoans - that it's not good city planning, may even be true. That is rarely the only reason why things happen or not happen though, and that's been true as long as people have had cities.
While wanting "whatever is really the best, boring or not, gets done" is a great ideal, it's simply unrealistic for how the world works, and as any city planner who plans on a 50 year timeline will tell you - that isn't going to change without more fundamental changes in what drives people.
Instead, yes, PR, coolness/desire, and will play a significant part in what actually ends up being done. Saying we'd be better off if that wasn't true is not a particularly interesting insight. The more interesting insight would be giving some mechanism for convincing people to achieve that.
Because this article doesnt' do anything real on that front.
I don't know. Since I see "hyperloop" as more akin to a pipe-dream, dangling this "cool" idea in front of people is destructive if a) it never gets done (probably because it's not cost-feasible, not from alack of imagination on the part of the public) and thus b) money to fund systems that actually do work and need funding (Amtrak) get short shrift.
For fun, let's say we'd sat Geoff down 20 years ago and asked him to rate the following futures in units of 'preposterousness': "Geoff, how preposterous is it to believe that in 20 years..."
1. We live in a world of self-driving, all electric automobiles, the safest and fastest ever built in mass production.
2. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth.
3. We travel from city to city in vacuum tubes that enable 700+ mph speeds on land.
4. The mind-numbing gridlock of urban auto traffic is relieved by tunnels that whiz cars across town at speeds exceeding 120 MPH.
I'm pretty sure he'd scoff at all of it. I would have, too, but then I'd be pretty giddy that even one of them had materialized.
Future-proof public transportation needs to steer away from the word "mass" as much as possible.
Mass transit, of any kind, is doomed by increasing security risks and vulnerabilities. Its strict timetables and geographic scopes are incompatible with a world that is now connected, 24/7 and mostly wants to move away from big urban centers.
We need more shared or individual transportation instead. Cars, planes and pods that are efficient and low cost. That's the only way humanity can scale and better adapt to the planet while freeing people that want to desperately break away from 9 to 5, rush hour and suburbs.
Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing terms around for effect here?
Then, the author continues with more material errors. The hyperloop/tunnel combo apparently "requires a hard reboot" of the modern city. No it does not. The whole point is that it is tunnels underneath the modern city.
Finally, it starts mentioning ambitious projects that didn't work, such as the Concorde. Yes, people have tried things that failed before. And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!
As far as I was able to read, not a single mention that Musk has been able to take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring them to completion. Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.
It seems the author's point is "Let's never fund anything else speculative ever again". What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to my eyeballs right now? The inter-what? Who ever funded that waste of money? Why didn't they just fund the post office a little more?
The fact that we've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail, saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality, knee-jerk thinking like this, either.
> Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing terms around for effect here?
There's not really any such thing as a vacuum in a macroscopic sense, only how little air pressure you have. Hyperloop is a vactrain--it's using the same basic principle of "get rid of the air to eliminate air resistance"; it just avoids the name to make it not sound like a repackaging of a 100-year old failed concept.
> And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!
Tunnels are where you start measuring costs in hundreds of millions of dollars per mile--Japan's new, mostly underground maglev Shinkansen is costing $200m / km. Urban tunnels are expensive, because you often can't cut-and-cover (certainly not for long, linear corridors), which means expensive underground TBMs. You also have to avoid a maze of underground tunnels, wires, and pipes. Outside urban areas, land is quite cheap. It's just slow acquisition process because everyone wants to milk you for more money.
> Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.
Civil engineers have looked at Elon Musk's Hyperloop proposal. They've generally agreed that it is about as attached to reality as Donald Trump's campaign promises.
>Musk has been able to take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring them to completion
Such as? SpaceX and their reusable rockets might be the closest thing I guess. Tesla and his solar company use pretty conventional technology, on the other hand. He is willing to invest a lot of money, that's true. But when talking about the Hyperloop, it's hardly just his money that's at stake if government is supposed to be involved.
>What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to my eyeballs right now?
A network that evolved from humble origins decades ago. Maybe if Musk financed a hyperloop prototype in the desert for a decade and showed its economic viability, then you can make that comparison. But who knows, maybe that's what he plans to do with the government approval he's supposedly gotten - good for him then, hopefully it works.
> The whole point is that it is tunnels underneath the modern city.
And I suspect part of the point the author is making is that this is the problem. Look at the East Side Access project in New York. Building a tunnel underneath a modern city is an extremely difficult project - and largely for political and legal reasons, not technological ones. Hyperloop wouldn't solve a single one of those problems.
We have enough transportation problems with known solutions that are underfunded. Why would we spend government money on a risky Hyperloop bet rather than invest in technology we already know works well? The article isn't really about the technology being used in Hyperloop (hence, I suspect, the inaccuracies you point out. I don't see how the detract from the point being made, though), it's about our desire to always chase the new shiny thing at any cost rather than spend money on the boring, functional stuff.
Maybe we have lost sight of the marvels we can achieve with grand projects. Or maybe people are arguing we should fix the sewers before we make our gleaming tower in the sky.
I'm a fan of the hyperloop concept and I hope it gets implemented. However, the Concorde example is useful to think about to me. Perhaps the reason we don't have better city-to-city transportation when there are options available and even implemented in other countries is actually that we lack the true will to build them.
This article does make the common mistake of suggesting the Hyerloop competes with intra-city subway systems though. I find the "just fix the subways" response to the Hyperloop disingenuous.
[+] [-] dalbasal|8 years ago|reply
If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distance traveled (KMs consumed) went up. Total commuting time can even increase as transport gets faster/cheaper.
If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings.
That creates some strangeness in transport. You can't really solve transport the way people want, which is to make getting where they're going better/faster. If you could get there faster, more people would be going there (congestion) or maybe you would be living farther away.
This definitely doesn't mean it's not worth innovating, just that predicting how this will play out can be unintuitive.
[+] [-] ardit33|8 years ago|reply
1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place.
2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living raise up of these hubs, you end up with both more expensive workforce, and less flexibility, and some people just decide to leave. The only winners in this scenario are current landlords.
Right now SF is experiencing scenario #2.
Basically once you have super fast transportation, it relieves pressure to housing prices on the work hubs/city centers, and the values of homes where the high speed train/hyperloop/whatever stops increase to match the new accessibility.
Real Scenarios: You can comfortably live in Baltimore or Philadelphia (2hrs of driving currently) and be able to work in NYC if this commute was cut to 40mins or less.
It is a win win scenario, as all these cities become part of one single hub.
[+] [-] jonstewart|8 years ago|reply
Another feature of classical mechanics is, of course, that Aristotelian concept of kenophobia, or horror vacui, or resintenza del vacuo, or natura abhorret vaccum, or nature abhors a vacuum. Of course we now know we can produce vacuums these days... but it's not easy to make one. The largest is in Sandusky, OH, and it's 122 feet high and 100 feet wide. It takes 8-12 hours to achieve vacuum conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Power_Facility
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
And that's a good thing, because it increases the amount of demand available to businesses. The more potential customers you have, the more product you can make to sell to that market, and the more product you can make, the better your economies of scale.
The large population of New York is what allows it to offer so many niche and specialty stores, which would otherwise struggle to stay in business.
[+] [-] vidarh|8 years ago|reply
But like you I don't think it will help.
Instead I wish government here would stop all expansion of Central London lines. Very publicly. And instead focus on picking, say, a dozen towns near the motorways and rail lines surrounding London, and expanding the connections between them and further out. Especially towns where there'd be little resistance to high density development.
Instead we get high speed links to other cities so people can travel from even further out to the centre of London in less time.
E.g. I live in a suburb where better train connections along the edge of London + further out could easily make it a viable commuter destination for 4-5m people where it's now viable for about 2m. In some cases the rail is already there, but there just aren't any direct trains. There are many similar opportunities. Developing satellites like this would be so much better than the relentless focus on the centre.
And there are many hubs like London around the world where we're just shooting ourselves in the foot by seeing congestion and thinking the problem is lack of roads, rather than seeing congestion and thinking it reflects a lack of alternative destinations.
[+] [-] chongli|8 years ago|reply
Almost infinite but still very much finite. If you could get anywhere in the world in seconds, Star Trek transporter style, then demand would level off. The number of people in the world is finite. Once everyone can get where they need to be as easy as sending a text message, we will have different problems to solve.
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
I doubt you would because the cost of the trip would make that the most expensive food you ever ate.
[+] [-] rdiddly|8 years ago|reply
In this way transportation spending is both the purported cure and the cause of congestion, and fits the definition of an addiction. See my comment from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850885
[+] [-] stcredzero|8 years ago|reply
It seems this is also true for cars and trucks. No matter how many roads we build, there is congestion. I think automated cars are going to show that one of the limiting factors to how much our society uses such transportation is the supply of piloting labor.
Also to chime in: It's not literally infinite. It's just much higher than the current economy can supply.
[+] [-] KKKKkkkk1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicallee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|8 years ago|reply
The Boring Company's "cars in tunnels (maybe on sleds?) idea", which Musk is following up on, is even more dangerous and has worse impacts on cities. For one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the new traffic induced by the tunnels. This is precisely the wrong solution at a time when municipal governments are more interested in reducing car use, because they understand very well the benefits in pivoting toward creating denser, more walkable, cities and are currently engaged in making this shift.
[+] [-] ethn|8 years ago|reply
The result of this political-industrial complex, at least in this case, is a large benefit to the upper class (not that I'm a classist) who can afford a foray into the city for brunch at the cost of the livelihood of everyone less financially fortunate and vigilant. It is often the case, and continues to be so, that the political-industrial complex taxes everyone for the benefit of the wealthiest.
[+] [-] lisper|8 years ago|reply
Actually, that is the problem. The thermal expansion problem has not yet been solved, or even seriously addressed. Hyperloop proponents are completely ignoring it, giddily betting that a solution will somehow magically present itself because technological optimism always wins. Well, no, it doesn't. The only thing that always wins is the laws of physics.
[+] [-] dalbasal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stale2002|8 years ago|reply
The biggest expense that the working class pay is rent.
If you can cut long distance commute times in half, then that means that someone who works in the city is able to save 50% or more on rent by living outside the extremely expensive city.
Transportation and housing (2 sides of the same coin) is arguably the single most important issue facing the working class.
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
You've made a grave mistake in your appeal.
The top 40% of income tax payers are paying more than 100% of the total income tax base. The people that specifically do pay a massive share of the tax base, can overwhelmingly afford great health coverage. They're why we still have the health system we have, precisely because the system works well for them (short wait times, great coverage, and they can afford the cost of the insurance, most of which is paid for by their employers as part of their total compensation).
The bottom 25% have their health needs paid for by that top 40% income block, via Medicaid and other assistance programs. It's in fact the slightly sub middle block of 35% that are struggling greatly with health costs, and they barely pay any income taxes (they do pay FICA related taxes, which they get back in theory via late life entitlement programs).
Here's the actual fact of the matter: if your premise is the tax payers are getting ripped off, what you're talking about is the top 1/3 of US income earners getting ripped off. That top 1/3 is extraordinarily well off, in fact they're among the best off people on the planet in nearly every possible regard (average income, median income, net wealth, unemployment, health coverage, education, etc), and they pay modest tax rates compared to most developed nations.
[+] [-] methodin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kakarot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialist|8 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-Am...
Hate the game, not the player.
[+] [-] kome|8 years ago|reply
Super fast trains are already there. Europe lives in the future compared to the USA.
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|8 years ago|reply
Europe is the size of a postage stamp compared to the USA (or even worse, Canada).
Oregon is larger than the UK. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger than all of Western Europe.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|8 years ago|reply
Existing lines and infrastructure? Perhaps. But we too have existing lines and infrastructure (train stations on those lines).
Or is it perhaps that building and maintaining miles and miles of rails, vs. tubes, is just way, way more cost effective?
[+] [-] nawitus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njarboe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwaltrip|8 years ago|reply
But is he really serious about this Boring company stuff? The whole thing sounds ludicrous. Even if he reduces cost 10x, they are still crazy expensive and have a lot sorts of strange complications. I don't get it.
[+] [-] sixQuarks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
That is a good point. Taking Musk and the HyperLoop seriously is a mistake---unless something has changed that hasn't percolate down to me, it has major problems and probably wouldn't solve the problem it purports to solve in the same way the Concord never revolutionized air travel---but it is a valid criticism of the state of things.
On the other hand, if you take it seriously, it distracts attention from actual solutions.
[+] [-] kfk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rattray|8 years ago|reply
The general idea that the hyperloop is more of a North Star than a proposal stands, but that was always its stated nature.
[+] [-] mark212|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m-s|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eesmith|8 years ago|reply
Sure, put a car on an electric sled. But the people want A/C (or heat), and lights, the wheels provide friction. If the car was running beforehand then the engine block is cooling off. Even if it's an electric car, the brakes, tires, and skin will be hot, dumping heat into the well-insulated tunnel.
This is a well-known problem in London, where decades of heat have built up in the Underground. Putting new cooling in is expensive, because they require expensive surface access.
If the goal is to have multiple layers of tunnels under a city, then how are they all cooled? How much surface access does each one need?
The same question applies to a hyperloop tunnel.
There must also be vents, for people to breath of course, and also for smoke and evacuation management in case of fire. How many are needed?
[+] [-] kpil|8 years ago|reply
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-hyperlo...
Even if it's only there to siphon of some taxpayer's money to someone or another, I just can't fathom how things like this can be allowed to go on. Even if the entire population will spend half of their income on tickets, it will not be economically viable.
[+] [-] albertTJames|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DannyBee|8 years ago|reply
While wanting "whatever is really the best, boring or not, gets done" is a great ideal, it's simply unrealistic for how the world works, and as any city planner who plans on a 50 year timeline will tell you - that isn't going to change without more fundamental changes in what drives people.
Instead, yes, PR, coolness/desire, and will play a significant part in what actually ends up being done. Saying we'd be better off if that wasn't true is not a particularly interesting insight. The more interesting insight would be giving some mechanism for convincing people to achieve that. Because this article doesnt' do anything real on that front.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|8 years ago|reply
1. We live in a world of self-driving, all electric automobiles, the safest and fastest ever built in mass production.
2. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth.
3. We travel from city to city in vacuum tubes that enable 700+ mph speeds on land.
4. The mind-numbing gridlock of urban auto traffic is relieved by tunnels that whiz cars across town at speeds exceeding 120 MPH.
I'm pretty sure he'd scoff at all of it. I would have, too, but then I'd be pretty giddy that even one of them had materialized.
[+] [-] tehabe|8 years ago|reply
Imagine that Musk would build a autonomous tram or light rail system with an induction contact rail instead of an overhead line.
Most of the technology exist, it just need to be combined into one train.
[+] [-] ojosilva|8 years ago|reply
Mass transit, of any kind, is doomed by increasing security risks and vulnerabilities. Its strict timetables and geographic scopes are incompatible with a world that is now connected, 24/7 and mostly wants to move away from big urban centers.
We need more shared or individual transportation instead. Cars, planes and pods that are efficient and low cost. That's the only way humanity can scale and better adapt to the planet while freeing people that want to desperately break away from 9 to 5, rush hour and suburbs.
[+] [-] alexandros|8 years ago|reply
Then, the author continues with more material errors. The hyperloop/tunnel combo apparently "requires a hard reboot" of the modern city. No it does not. The whole point is that it is tunnels underneath the modern city.
Finally, it starts mentioning ambitious projects that didn't work, such as the Concorde. Yes, people have tried things that failed before. And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!
As far as I was able to read, not a single mention that Musk has been able to take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring them to completion. Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.
It seems the author's point is "Let's never fund anything else speculative ever again". What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to my eyeballs right now? The inter-what? Who ever funded that waste of money? Why didn't they just fund the post office a little more?
The fact that we've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail, saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality, knee-jerk thinking like this, either.
[+] [-] jcranmer|8 years ago|reply
There's not really any such thing as a vacuum in a macroscopic sense, only how little air pressure you have. Hyperloop is a vactrain--it's using the same basic principle of "get rid of the air to eliminate air resistance"; it just avoids the name to make it not sound like a repackaging of a 100-year old failed concept.
> And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!
Tunnels are where you start measuring costs in hundreds of millions of dollars per mile--Japan's new, mostly underground maglev Shinkansen is costing $200m / km. Urban tunnels are expensive, because you often can't cut-and-cover (certainly not for long, linear corridors), which means expensive underground TBMs. You also have to avoid a maze of underground tunnels, wires, and pipes. Outside urban areas, land is quite cheap. It's just slow acquisition process because everyone wants to milk you for more money.
> Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.
Civil engineers have looked at Elon Musk's Hyperloop proposal. They've generally agreed that it is about as attached to reality as Donald Trump's campaign promises.
[+] [-] Asdfbla|8 years ago|reply
Such as? SpaceX and their reusable rockets might be the closest thing I guess. Tesla and his solar company use pretty conventional technology, on the other hand. He is willing to invest a lot of money, that's true. But when talking about the Hyperloop, it's hardly just his money that's at stake if government is supposed to be involved.
>What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to my eyeballs right now?
A network that evolved from humble origins decades ago. Maybe if Musk financed a hyperloop prototype in the desert for a decade and showed its economic viability, then you can make that comparison. But who knows, maybe that's what he plans to do with the government approval he's supposedly gotten - good for him then, hopefully it works.
[+] [-] untog|8 years ago|reply
And I suspect part of the point the author is making is that this is the problem. Look at the East Side Access project in New York. Building a tunnel underneath a modern city is an extremely difficult project - and largely for political and legal reasons, not technological ones. Hyperloop wouldn't solve a single one of those problems.
We have enough transportation problems with known solutions that are underfunded. Why would we spend government money on a risky Hyperloop bet rather than invest in technology we already know works well? The article isn't really about the technology being used in Hyperloop (hence, I suspect, the inaccuracies you point out. I don't see how the detract from the point being made, though), it's about our desire to always chase the new shiny thing at any cost rather than spend money on the boring, functional stuff.
Maybe we have lost sight of the marvels we can achieve with grand projects. Or maybe people are arguing we should fix the sewers before we make our gleaming tower in the sky.
[+] [-] tommynicholas|8 years ago|reply
This article does make the common mistake of suggesting the Hyerloop competes with intra-city subway systems though. I find the "just fix the subways" response to the Hyperloop disingenuous.