Hyperloop - The Technology That May/May Not Be Coming

[Michael Hardner]

Remember Elon Musk's open source transportation dream ?

 

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/10/the-kink-in-elon-musks-hyperloop.html

 

It is having big problems.  There seems to be a problem in leadership there, as the executives don't have that magical inspiration element....

[Moonlight Graham]

i want this.  Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal loop.  Calgary - Edmonton loop etc

[TimG]

39 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:

i want this.  Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal loop.  Calgary - Edmonton loop etc

Why? Fixed track people transportation does not integrate with the cities we have because once you get off the track you often need a car to get where you need to go.

 

[Moonlight Graham]

1 minute ago, TimG said:

Why? Fixed track people transportation does not integrate with the cities we have because once you get off the track you often need a car to get where you need to go.

 

Much different than a plane?  I like taking the train.  It's far cheaper than a plane.  But I want it faster.

[TimG]

2 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Much different than a plane?  I like taking the train.  It's far cheaper than a plane.  But I want it faster.

Cheaper? I don't think so. Building rails or loops is expensive. In this country, the approvals required for any long, linear project mean projects take forever even when the business case is clear. The business case is next to non-existent with something like the hyperloop which *might* be incrementally better than the current options. 

If you live in Brampton and need to attend a meeting in Nepean you would likely find the plane would be faster. Even for downtown to downtown commutes the faster speed of the plane makes it preferable for anything but the shortest trips.

[Michael Hardner]

1 hour ago, Moonlight Graham said:

i want this.  Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal loop.  Calgary - Edmonton loop etc

I think the article says Toronto to Montreal in 35 minutes.  And low cost too.

 

But that's Musk's model, not the reality.

[Moonlight Graham]

52 minutes ago, TimG said:

Cheaper? I don't think so.

A train ticket is usually at least half the price than a plane ticket for the same trip. At least in my neck of the woods.

Obviously a plane will be faster than a train or a hyperloop.  It has no friction other than the air.

I have no idea the cost of a hyperloop, or the speed really.  Me want go fast cheap.

[Moonlight Graham]

12 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

I think the article says Toronto to Montreal in 35 minutes.  And low cost too.

But that's Musk's model, not the reality.

ya, all those Tesla cars you see on the road these days...

[Bonam]

57 minutes ago, TimG said:

Cheaper? I don't think so. Building rails or loops is expensive. In this country, the approvals required for any long, linear project mean projects take forever even when the business case is clear. The business case is next to non-existent with something like the hyperloop which *might* be incrementally better than the current options. 

If you live in Brampton and need to attend a meeting in Nepean you would likely find the plane would be faster. Even for downtown to downtown commutes the faster speed of the plane makes it preferable for anything but the shortest trips.

Any plane flight takes essentially all day. You have to be at the airport ~ 2 hours before your departure time, and you usually need to figure out some non-driving way to get there so add at least an extra hour of commute. Then it takes about an hour to get off the plane, pick up any checked bags, and get out of the airport. So you're looking at ~4 hours + the duration of your flight. Plus, you spend a ton of money and are crammed in in extreme discomfort and treated with disrespect. Honestly, anything that's within about a 10 hour driving distance (~1000-1300 km) makes much more sense to drive than to fly, for me at least.

Also, if you look at the hyperloop concept, it is intended to be both faster than (in terms of actual moving speed, and certainly in terms of the time you have to dedicate to the trip) and cheaper than airplanes. Whether that can be achieved in practice is of course a different question.

[TimG]

1 hour ago, Bonam said:

So you're looking at ~4 hours + the duration of your flight. Plus, you spend a ton of money and are crammed in in extreme discomfort and treated with disrespect. Honestly, anything that's within about a 10 hour driving distance (~1000-1300 km) makes much more sense to drive than to fly, for me at least.

Also, if you look at the hyperloop concept, it is intended to be both faster than (in terms of actual moving speed, and certainly in terms of the time you have to dedicate to the trip) and cheaper than airplanes. Whether that can be achieved in practice is of course a different question.

A lot of people commute by plane. They have the system timed so an Ottawa/Toronto trip is not much more than 2 hours.

It is the 'in practice' that I am skeptical of. With a FIFO track the maximum speed is determined by the loading/unloading times. I could see how one could optimize the throughput assuming a steady stream of people lining up and waiting for the next pod. But that assumes you have people waiting in lines. How long would these lines be? What kind of security checks would they have to go through? What happens if there is a medical emergency? Does the entire system shutdown until it is dealt with? 

I see hyperloops as a very brittle solution that may sound good on paper but performs poorly when faced with real world complications.  

[Bonam]

18 minutes ago, TimG said:

A lot of people commute by plane. They have the system timed so an Ottawa/Toronto trip is not much more than 2 hours.

I'll believe it when I see it. All I know is I've never flown anywhere where the flight didn't essentially take the whole day, from an early morning wake up to get ready to go to the airport to late evening when you're finally settled in at your final destination and starting to recover from the ordeal. 

Quote

 

It is the 'in practice' that I am skeptical of. With a FIFO track the maximum speed is determined by the loading/unloading times. I could see how one could optimize the throughput assuming a steady stream of people lining up and waiting for the next pod. But that assumes you have people waiting in lines. How long would these lines be? What kind of security checks would they have to go through? What happens if there is a medical emergency? Does the entire system shutdown until it is dealt with? 

I see hyperloops as a very brittle solution that may sound good on paper but performs poorly when faced with real world complications.  

 

Air travel also deals very poorly with real world complications. A medical emergency? Everyone on the flight is delayed by probably a full day. As for long lines... ever been to an airport? I think you underestimate the antipathy that a lot of people feel for air travel these days, and the ease with which any reasonable alternative could gain market share.

I don't know if hyperloop is necessarily that alternative, or some other form of very high speed rail, or something else entirely, but build a system that lets people get from one major city to another at a speed comparable to air travel and it will certainly get used. 

Edited October 29, 2016 by Bonam

[TimG]

21 minutes ago, Bonam said:

I'll believe it when I see it. All I know is I've never flown anywhere where the flight didn't essentially take the whole day, from an early morning wake up to get ready to go to the airport to late evening when you're finally settled in at your final destination and starting to recover from the ordeal. 

Air travel also deals very poorly with real world complications. A medical emergency? Everyone on the flight is delayed by probably a full day. As for long lines... ever been to an airport? I think you underestimate the antipathy that a lot of people feel for air travel these days, and the ease with which any reasonable alternative could gain market share. 

First, for proper comparisons you have to start counting at the point when someone enters the airport/station to the point where they leave at the other end. The time to get to/from final destination is the same for both. And I do know people who regularly do the ottawa/toronto trip in 2 hours.

Air travel complications (outside of large weather events) usually affect only a single plane. With hyperloop a single complication takes down the network. It is a different order of magnitude.

I realize that air travel sucks but it will be hard for any fixed linked mode to compete with air travel over medium to long distances simply because aircraft are more flexible. Even in Europe where trains are plentiful they are not convenient for trips longer than 3-4 hours. Europeans head to the airports as much as North Americans when they need to cover distances of 1000 km or more.

Edited October 29, 2016 by TimG

[Bonam]

1 minute ago, TimG said:

I realize that air travel sucks but it will be hard for any fixed linked mode to compete with air travel over medium to long distances simply because aircraft are more flexible. Even in Europe where trains are plentiful they are not convenient for trips longer than 3-4 hours. Europeans head to the airports as much as North Americans when they need to cover distances of 1000 km or more.

If we had a transit system that could link the West Coast Megalopolis and the East Coast Megalopolis each into effectively one city with reasonable commute times across it that would be plenty of a market niche for a hyperloop or similar system even if it didn't serve coast-to-coast trips or international trips. That said, I'm sure we'll see a Bahrain/Qatar/UAE system, or perhaps something in China, long before anything is done in NA. 

Quote

Air travel complications (outside of large weather events) usually affect only a single plane. With hyperloop a single complication takes down the network. It is a different order of magnitude.

Don't see why that would necessarily be a feature of the hyperloop. Is the whole rail network shut down every time there's a problem with one train? 

[The_Squid]

28 minutes ago, Bonam said:

All I know is I've never flown anywhere where the flight didn't essentially take the whole day, from an early morning wake up to get ready to go to the airport to late evening when you're finally settled in at your final destination and starting to recover from the ordeal. 

Float planes.  No airports...  get there 20 minutes prior....   pretty cheap.  I like the flight from Victoria to Seattle.  (International flights do require more than 20 minutes though).  

There are several floatplane flights from the Island.  

[TimG]

26 minutes ago, Bonam said:

Don't see why that would necessarily be a feature of the hyperloop. Is the whole rail network shut down every time there's a problem with one train? 

In this case, I was calling a single line between two points with a steady stream of pods the 'network'. i.e. if a pod has issues then every car behind it will be delayed. How long the delay depends on how quickly the problematic pod can be shunted onto a side rail.  The same issue exists with trains (Via rail is notorious for delays on the route between Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal).

A single aircraft can be delayed without automatically affecting all other flights though an airport. That is a huge difference.

Obviously, it will come down to a question of economics, however, I find it hard to believe that any long, linear, carefully engineered structure will be cheaper to build than high speed rail tracks. Given that high speed rail is uneconomic in many places because of the cost of building the tracks it is reasonable to assume the same problems will limit any hyperloop development.

Edited October 29, 2016 by TimG

[-1=e^ipi]

Phillip Mason did a debunking video of the hyperloop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk

[TimG]

7 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

Phillip Mason did a debunking video of the hyperloop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk

Yikes. The engineering problems are orders of magnitude worse than I thought. The thing would be a deathtrap that could kill everyone currently using it if there was any sort of breach in the tube. 

Edited October 30, 2016 by TimG

[Wilber]

I think I'll pass.

[Moonlight Graham]

On 2016-10-29 at 4:42 PM, Bonam said:

I'll believe it when I see it. All I know is I've never flown anywhere where the flight didn't essentially take the whole day, from an early morning wake up to get ready to go to the airport to late evening when you're finally settled in at your final destination and starting to recover from the ordeal.

Tim's right.  You're probably going to far places usually.  For an hour flight within country in Canada, you can just take a carry-on so don't have to check baggage or wait for it after the flight and don't have to go through customs.  I think it's more than an hour extra, at least for most people.  But it's still shorter than driving and the actual time sitting cramped is minimal.

[Bonam]

18 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Tim's right.  You're probably going to far places usually.  For an hour flight within country in Canada, you can just take a carry-on so don't have to check baggage or wait for it after the flight and don't have to go through customs.  I think it's more than an hour extra, at least for most people.  But it's still shorter than driving and the actual time sitting cramped is minimal.

I'm not a plane commuter so I don't fly on a regular basis. When I fly, it's for travel or very occasionally for a business trip. Overall, no more than 3-4 times per year on average. I think this is probably true for most people, they fly a few times a year but not more regularly than that. And whether the flight itself has been 1-2 hours or 4-5 hours or 14 hours, the overall process has always taken essentially all day in that you couldn't really do anything else productive that same day. Anyway, enough about my hate-on for flying, it's a bit off topic other than to illustrate that myself, and presumably other people with not too dissimilar experiences, would be up for trying an alternative. 

Edited October 31, 2016 by Bonam

[-1=e^ipi]

I'd like to retract my previous claim about Philip Mason's debunking. I was tricked by his sophistry. Here is a debunking of Mason's claims:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx52A-v65Q8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJa9tQyMXDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh0uwJoNnhc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDuXH2CJC10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPAzZX7Pp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhOVq1W1IUQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhgJJbEXR5Y