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Wow!! Is this really the future of transportation!?
You sit inside a tube that travels at 4,000 mph and get from NYC to LA in 45 minutes. The infrastructure would costs only 10% of the cost of high speed rail, and only 25% of the cost of building new freeways.
But the claim that it would be only one-tenth the cost of HSR to build seems pretty ridiculous.
It cost much more to build a tunnel suspended 10-20 feet in the air than it is to lay some tracks on level ground.
The hyperloop may be technically possible to build, but the real issue will be the cost.
In reality it would cost several times as much as HSR.
It took us around 150 years to get from the first steam engines to high speed rail. It took us nearly 80 years to get from the Wright Bros. to commercial jet aviation. It took us 100 years to get from the telegraph to the smart phone.
The basic tech is proven - office buildings and banks have been using vacuum tubes for 100 years. High speed passenger service is not proven and where it will be proven is in applications like linking a major airport to a nearby major rail station (think JFK to Penn Station or Dulles to Union Station) not in some giant intercity segment.
Wow!! Is this really the future of transportation!?
You sit inside a tube that travels at 4,000 mph and get from NYC to LA in 45 minutes. The infrastructure would costs only 10% of the cost of high speed rail, and only 25% of the cost of building new freeways.
What do you guys think?!!?
Pneumatic Tube technology has been around since the 1860's, and futurists in the pre-flight like Bellamy ("Looking Backward") in 1887 projected that this would be used for transportation purposes in our era.
I guess it is certainly possible. They are going to have to show how it runs on a smaller scale before doing a transcontinental tube however.
...where it will be proven is in applications like linking a major airport to a nearby major rail station (think JFK to Penn Station or Dulles to Union Station) not in some giant intercity segment.
Funny you mention JFK to Penn... NYC actually had pneumatic trains over 100 years ago! Same idea, it was just way ahead of its time. It ran exactly like the tubes at the bank.
It took us around 150 years to get from the first steam engines to high speed rail.
151 years!
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom and, on 21 February 1804.
New York Central’s Xplorer, was a lightweight, streamlined trainset that reportedly ran at 120 MPH - in 1955.
. . .
In October 1964, just in time for the Olympic Games, the first modern high-speed rail, the Tokaido Shinkansen, was opened between Tokyo and Osaka, running sustained at 101 mph, with a top speed of 130 mph.
. . .
In 1981, the French TGV High-Speed line between Paris and Lyon, with new multi-engined trains, ran at 260 km/h (162 mph).
{minor quibble flag : "officially" HSR refers to 150+ mph trains, but I will grant "higher speed rail" standing to any train running 90+ mph. }
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