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TransPod Hyperloop

While I doubt it's a viable alternative to HSR in the short-term future, I'd love to see the government support the development of this technology. It might be a game changer one day for transportation around the world, whether cross country or even in cities. The economic benefits of exporting innovative and desirable new products to other markets can be massive.
 
junctionist said:
I'd love to see the government support the development of this technology.
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As an engineer, no. It's throwing good money to the birds. The problem here is not the tech. The problem is cost feasibility. Musk and his ilk keep lying about how much this thing costs. And they use ridiculous assumptions (or outright lies) to get there. There's no way to get the cost lower, because Hyperloop involves more technology and more construction than high speed rail or plain maglev. So, even if you figure out all the tech, the construction costs will still be exorbitant. And after all that? 10% of the passenger capacity of high speed rail! We know all this. So why should government invest in developing technology that won't have a business case to come to fruition? This would be about as sound an investment as spending on R&D for personal jetpacks.

Others are starting to call them out on their rosy estimates too:

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013...op-really-cost-6-billion-critics-say-no/?_r=0
 
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muller877 said:
I think they are trying to argue that the land acquisition cost will offset the cost of the build. Of course they also assume they can dump all this dirt somewhere for free? Let's ignore any issues with the environment by infilling Lake Ontario.
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I don't think the Ontario Hyperloop is tunneled. I think they are assuming that overhead rights won't be expensive. They also seem to assume that building a 400 km elevated line is cheap, which I really don't get. It's not like we don't know how much building elevated rail lines cost.

They are slowly getting there though:

https://www.recode.net/2016/10/26/13425592/hyperloop-one-elon-musk-cost-leaked-documents

I think most of these teams lack a civil engineer to explain how expensive construction is. That's probably what is leading to such lowballing.
 
kEiThZ said:
As an engineer, no. It's throwing good money to the birds. The problem here is not the tech. The problem is cost feasibility. Musk and his ilk keep lying about how much this thing costs. And they use ridiculous assumptions (or outright lies) to get there. There's no way to get the cost lower, because Hyperloop involves more technology and more construction than high speed rail or plain maglev. So, even if you figure out all the tech, the construction costs will still be exorbitant. And after all that? 10% of the passenger capacity of high speed rail! We know all this. So why should government invest in developing technology that won't have a business case to come to fruition? This would be about as sound an investment as spending on R&D for personal jetpacks.

Others are starting to call them out on their rosy estimates too:

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013...op-really-cost-6-billion-critics-say-no/?_r=0
Click to expand...

If costs are the biggest issue, they'll probably fall as the technologies needed to make it a reality becomes more developed and mainstream. Of course it's expensive today since it's all new technology. But with further development, it might prove the way of the future.
 
junctionist said:
If costs are the biggest issue, they'll probably fall as the technologies needed to make it a reality becomes more developed and mainstream. Of course it's expensive today since it's all new technology. But with further development, it might prove the way of the future.
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Moore's law doesn't really apply to construction projects.
 
Johnny Au said:
It takes as much time to construct the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan as a few hundred kilometres of subway under Shanghai.
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Your point?

Yes. In country's with substantially stricter rules, construction does take longer.
 
What happens when these companies fail in making their proposal come true? Do they move on to another business? What about all the debt they'd have?
 
biospherian said:
What happens when these companies fail in making their proposal come true? Do they move on to another business? What about all the debt they'd have?
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Bankruptcy. Write-off.

That's why you'll notice that Hyperloop companies are struggling to get a major investor to back a full scale operation. Whereas institutional investors may back high speed rail projects.
 
drum118 said:
Jetsons-Like Transit Pods Backed by Mayoral Hopeful Coleman Young Draw Ridicule
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Moronic? Sure.

But not really tied to Hyperloop.

The only thing that ticks me off about Hyperloop advocates is their incessant demand for public investment on technologies with a ridiculous TRL. For major transportation systems, anything less than TRL 8 should be cast aside. Governments really don't need to take on additional technological risk unless we are considering mass transit some kind of strategic sector (that's probably only true for the French, the Japanese and the Germans). Hyperloop is at TRL 5 if I'm being generous. And they require several billion to reach TRL 7 or more, with no guarantee that their cost projects will hold with maturity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

So now you know why you don't have major individual or institutional investors taking even a 1% stake in any of these Hyperloop companies and why they keep resorting to ridiculous hysterics against HSR to try and get Hyperloop funded with HSR dollars.
 
Since "they" seem incapable of finding the $$ to improve a 550 yard tunnel from Union Station to Queen's Quay to serve a huge new residential area with decent and connected transit I have STRONG doubts "they" will be any better at building a hyper-loop for 500 km from Montreal to Toronto.
 
cplchanb said:
That elevated section rendering will never fly in Toronto. Too many NIMBYs here against any form of elevated structure no matter how much sense it makes. They'll be fighting tooth and nail to have that section buried
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There's a reason we don't run elevated 4-meter diameter pipelines through the city. If we can bury storm sewer lines, this can go underground as well. There is no reason we should put up with massive aesthetic disruption from a private endeavor.

(And the render's implication that the pipe would be clear is ludicrous, if not intentionally deceptive.)
 
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