-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
roblab
Active Member
Course, we could say the same thing about businesses and homes and freeways and airports. But we continue to travel and work and live above ground.
deonb
Active Member
Mmm. A hyperloop is supposed to be a"cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table".
They've just built the rail gun, which is the easiest of the three parts. Sure, it's a cool experiment... but it's not a hyperloop.
MassModel3
Member
Airports are federally regulated and pretty hard to get onto. Homes and business are, in fact, targets of crime -- frequently. Most freeways sit ON the ground for the majority of the roadway.
Elevated roadways typically are pretty beefy to handle all types of traffic, typically across multiple lanes. If the hyperloop is designed with extreme specs equivalent to the elevated roadways in a major metropolitan area, then yeah, that's pretty tough to easily take out. But somehow I don't think there will be 400 miles of highly reinforced elevated track infrastructure. Then again, maybe there will.
Elon was pitching the Hyperloop on the claim that it would be cheaper than typical elevated construction.
Which is not bloody likely.
It might be if the load bearing requirement is much less than for conventional train tracks, which seems likely.
MassModel3
Member
For some reason, the pictures are typically of elevated track (tube). But I bet the majority of it will, in fact, be on the ground directly. But who knows...
Last edited:
mikes_fsd
Banned
On ground means you need right-of-way (expensive and time consuming to get).
On pillars is cheaper (less land) and faster and as ecarfan pointed out - the pylons do not have to bear nowhere near the same load as for a train.
Actually, they have to bear pretty much the same load as for a train.
In California specifically, the required strength of the pylons is primarily determined by earthquake resistance, not by anything to do with what's riding on it.
There's a whole lot of ways in which the Hyperloop is a half-assed idea. I'm not saying it won't work on a *technical* level, I'm saying it'll be *more expensive and less efficient* than a comparable train line. (And that's if they solve the "vomit comit" problem, which hasn't been seriously addressed yet.) Elon notably did NOT put his money where his mouth was when it came to the Hyperloop, showing that he doesn't really believe that it'll be as cheap as he claims.
Maglev isn't economical. Monorails aren't economical. Pneumatics aren't economical. (Compared to wheels-on-two-rails.) They're all technically possible, they're just wastes of money. There are solid physics-based reasons for all of this. Elon never bothered to learn the reasons. Speeds vs. curve radii and slopes on train routes are driven by passenger comfort, not by any limitations of the train technology, and Elon thoughtlessly acted as if he could ignore the rules of passenger comfort (maybe he never bothered to look them up). And he quite wisely did not commit a single dollar of his own money to his back-of-the-napkin, poorly costed idea.
This will be an amusement park ride in the Valley, and odds are that's all it will be.
In California specifically, the required strength of the pylons is primarily determined by earthquake resistance, not by anything to do with what's riding on it.
There's a whole lot of ways in which the Hyperloop is a half-assed idea. I'm not saying it won't work on a *technical* level, I'm saying it'll be *more expensive and less efficient* than a comparable train line. (And that's if they solve the "vomit comit" problem, which hasn't been seriously addressed yet.) Elon notably did NOT put his money where his mouth was when it came to the Hyperloop, showing that he doesn't really believe that it'll be as cheap as he claims.
Maglev isn't economical. Monorails aren't economical. Pneumatics aren't economical. (Compared to wheels-on-two-rails.) They're all technically possible, they're just wastes of money. There are solid physics-based reasons for all of this. Elon never bothered to learn the reasons. Speeds vs. curve radii and slopes on train routes are driven by passenger comfort, not by any limitations of the train technology, and Elon thoughtlessly acted as if he could ignore the rules of passenger comfort (maybe he never bothered to look them up). And he quite wisely did not commit a single dollar of his own money to his back-of-the-napkin, poorly costed idea.
This will be an amusement park ride in the Valley, and odds are that's all it will be.
Last edited:
Bay Area Rapid Transit is a mag-lev train. For years, the tracks under the bay ran faster. I don't know if they still do that. It was because nobody could tell how fast the train was going. My father, a physicist who did a little bit of work on that system, had me sit up near the operator so I could see the speed on a brilliant 7-segment display; we talked about human factors. This isn't a human factor, it's an American factor. Other countries are neither afraid of or disturbed by high speed rail.
Go to France or Japan. Experience their high speed rail, you know, the ones from the early sixties that now can drive over 500 KPH. I've ridden the TGV. Other than taking really distorted photos of the French countryside, I had no disorientation problems, and it was smoother than a plane ride; I wish I could take the TGV in the USA; no more waiting to take off, waiting to land, weather delays, connecting flight issues. Line transit runs pretty close to on-time in comparison to flight. In contrast to riding the TGV, I've ridden Metropolitan Atlanta Rail Transit Authority, the Chicago Blue, Orange and Red lines, Minnesota Blue and Green Lines, and a short route in NY and NJ. Most metropolitan rail transit is bouncy, scrapes a lot, rattles, and sparks; the Minnesota lines was, however, superior. If those old systems indicate ride experience, or have safety problems like Seattle, then I'd share your concern. Regardless, I'd rather take a line transit any day.
According to this report, labor for BART is clearly the most expensive portion of the operating budget. That's everything from the janitor who wipes the scum off the cars and station benches to the nice person in the bulletproof glass who explains to you that the automated system can answer more questions and provide more value than they can. $500M a year, or about $147k a year per person (which is on the mark for a fully-burdened employee). Do I think that BART is profitable? Not when it spends tens of millions a year in debt services and hundreds of millions a year in labor.
I think a highly automated system is going to be very effective. Look at the raw revenue. If BART were to fire all those pension-hungry janitors and instead take bids from private companies to provide scheduled services, I think you'd see some significant cost reductions. Rather than a team of cleaners as employees per station, who maybe do their work, maybe just flit their time away on a mobile device, you hired one company that had a better labor solution for a lower price, well, you might have more motivated and efficient workers. I'll bet there's an entire layer of middle management that could be removed and nobody but nobody would see a difference in service quality.
If you look at the non-human operating cost, your claims about economy are off regarding a simple (60's-era) maglev system. If you consider that the Hyperloop is basically one very long, skinny solar plant, you will discover that the square footage of solar-irradiated land is perfect for making money. Up high, with no trees to shade it, what could be better? I've gone and looked into the costs just a little bit. Anyone planning on building the Hyperloop had better be smart about humans, about labor unions, and about how humans are used. Otherwise, you run the risk of being correct in your defeatist tone.
Minnesota's light rail operates at about 33% funding from fares. Perhaps your argument is that mass transit is not economical. I've done a financial "aftermath" review for Taxi 2000, a Personal Rail Transit vendor that was in Fridley, MN. Rails, tubes, monorails, that's not the cost. It's land (rights/leasing) and people. What is the basis of your economical claims?
Negative. It's steel wheels on tracks, with an electrified third rail for high-voltage DC to run the car traction motors.
I lived there for 30 years, rode it countless times, and my father worked for BART for a decade.
Here's a shot of a BART car on it's tracks:
@Vexar, I have ridden BART many times and it does not use Maglev technology. It's wheels on rails. Old school, and slow, but it does work.
Dang it. Sorry. My father worked on the maglev research at the time and it wasn't implemented. It was supposed to be maglev, if anyone cares. I shouldn't have mentioned maglev at all. TGV is wheels on rails.
deonb
Active Member
Air travel isn't economical compared to wheels-on-two-rails either, but it sure is popular. Something doesn't have to be the most economical option to be viable, it just needs to be better in some way.
Being able to load a car into a Hyperloop pod is the killer feature. I actually think it's the majority of what you need. Walk-on-passengers can be secondary, like walk-on passengers on a ferry.
deonb
Active Member
Is it planned?
It might become a "panama canal" limit on car width.
The initial Elon sketches shows a Model X in the pod. But yes, I'd imagine cars getting a 'panamic' style rating.
Actually, for some applications it is. And the killer app for air travel was, of course, overseas flights.
- - - Updated - - -
Sure. Google Vancouver Skytrain and Docklands Light Railway. We perfected the tech for automated railways in the *1970s*, and they've been running in revenue service since the *1980s*. High speed trains only have drivers because they run on track with old signalling. Full automation for railways is done, you don't get any more benefit from making some weird gadgetbahn.
We load cars in trains too, you know. It's very common, actually. Google Eurotunnel.
If you're going to support this sort of thing you really ought to do your research first. If you don't understand what the state-of-the-art is in existing railroads, and you don't understand what their successes are and what their problems are, you really can't claim that you've designed something which beats them.
I mean, honestly, your average electric train uses essentially the same tech as the Tesla Model S -- plus a passive stabilization system (the conical wheels) which allows it (if the tracks are engineered correctly) to run at 120mph+ around curves with dozens of cars carrying huge loads without tipping. Do you really think it's that easy to beat?
In terms of doing stuff to improve it, I've been suspicious for quite a while that railroad suspensions are due for a serious design overhaul. A lot of stuff has been tried but there hasn't been a single obviously-best design, and automobile suspensions seem to have made a number of advances which haven't been fully adopted.
Last edited:
Similar threads
