tandempower

Could sanity truly prevail in the Hyperloop developments? When it was announced that Hyperloop would focus on single-passenger cars riding on sleds, I was disappointed but also assumed that it might be the only way to convince investors to invest in an eventually-lucrative sales model. I hoped that buses would fit on the sleds too, though, but I didn't expect it to be a priority, as this article about Elon Musk suggests it will be.

It sort of makes you wonder why Amtrak's autotrain has never partnered with bus carriers like Greyhound, or why CSX or other freight rail carriers don't carry buses along with shipping containers. Maybe it's because bus transit is not favored by business, despite them sharing the same first three letters.

So do you think that buses-on-rails and super-speed-sleds will become a thing soon? Do you think investors will trust regulators and everyone else involved to allow such developments to proceed smoothly? Or will the expectation of red tape and expensive political-economic quid-pro-quo cause it to fizzle? And of course the big question is, would more people take buses if they were going through tunnels at 500mph?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...deo/412625002/

Dahon.Steve

It wouldn't be profitable for Greyhound to put it buses on Amtrak since this would not speed up the trip because both travel at close to the same speed. For example, the Acela Express takes 4 hours to go from New York to Boston but Greyhound takes another 30 minutes longer so not much time savings. Also, take a look below on how long it takes to load cars and motorcycles on Amtrak!

I don't know how Greyhound is able to survive charging between $9 - $57 USD to go from New York City to Boston! I guess the competition from the China buses made them drop the fare to rock bottom prices. There's no way they can charge those prices and pay Amtrak to carry them too!

tandempower

Bus travel should basically cost what it would cost people to ride-share 30 people in the same rental van plus driver pay. Buses cost too much because they are funded by subsidies and ticket sales instead of there being a competitive market the way there is to sell private motor-vehicles like light cars and trucks.

Basically the vehicle industry charges too much to make bigger vehicles despite the fact that steel can be melted down for less than 1000kwh per ton. It all goes into business and personnel costs.

Mobile 155

I almost hate to get into this but it seems as if Transportation development and logistics were not one of your specialties. Business and personnel are only part of the cost. Specifications, safety, R and D, equipment longevity tooling, fueling and financing are just the tip of why a bus costs what it costs. What it costs to make steel is one least important factors in making larger vehicles.

Still go ahead and pontificate on what things should cost, it is interesting. Did you bother looking up what sized pods a hyperlink would take? How the tubes had to be designed, How often they had to run to make a profit? Did you even see the size of the tube that Musk was speculating on?

Mobile 155

while this isn't dealing with Hyperloop it might help to understand why transit costs are more than Business and Personnel costs. I also believe Musk's startup estimates are way low for the cost of the tubes and construction needed for a north south hyperloop.

https://www4.uwm.edu/cuts/utp/cost.pdf

I also would like to add that every transportation administrator should have the current copy of the FTA guidelines.

https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/...price-analysis

Machka 

Not in the US.

Europe has fast trains ... the US hasn't even got that far in mass transportation.

CliffordK

There is no sense transporting a bus by rail.

Park the buses at both ends. Transport people in ordinary train cars, let them get on at one end, off at the other end and board the bus if they wish.

Probably the same reason people board airplanes rather than driving buses onto airplanes.

That doesn't mean that this hyperloop mass transit couldn't be optimized to move people, including moving special people pods.

Mobile 155

I tend to agree at least from what I am reading about the progress so far. Musk and his partner with Virgin air are used car salesmen and they make promises that someone else has to fulfill. A 20 year return on investment sounds a bit long for a private party investment and expecting 7.5 million passengers to pay that back at 20 bucks a head is very optimistic. But some of the other offerings are talking freight as being the first target with almost immediate profits because of cost saving with fewer trucks and drivers of trucks on the road.

I don't see them coming in on budget or at least Musk's budget anyway. And I am pretty sure it will cost a lot more that 20 bucks a passenger if they ever do make it a passenger system. Still they haven't decided on air lift or maglift so with everyone working on different platforms I am not ready to hold my breath. It is also limited by the point A to point B model. I am not sure as a passenger service that will work well for making a profit. If you don't want to go to point B there is no getting off at point A.5.

tandempower

Right, that's what I said. It's personnel costs and other business costs that drive up the price tag and weigh it down. If people across the board worked for less, the additional steel costs wouldn't make much of a difference for larger vehicles. We just have very savvy business planners who know how to structure pricing and markets in ways that maximize sales of personal motor-vehicles by limiting competition between transit and private driving. That's why it is always more convenient to get a car than relying on transit in most areas.

No, I didn't see the size of the tube. And, to be honest, I think drilling tunnels through the ground isn't a great idea, but I understand why this route has to be taken to undermine what would otherwise be a massive regulatory hurdle dealing with everyone who has power to thwart the project on the surface. Maybe once they start drilling the tunnels, people on the surface will realize that it is better to put the tubes on pylons and spare the underground geology. Of course I was also hoping that once people realized how horrible fracking is, they would embrace conservation and solar/wind power, but many people just don't care what goes on underground.

tandempower

The hyperloop idea actually emerged as a response to moves in California to build a high-speed rail system that Musk noted was actually not even very advanced compared to other systems globally. Musk proposed the Hyperloop idea as a radical advance in high-speed rail, and he did so within the context of putting the US on the global transit map as a leader, so basically you're just dismissing Musk as working on the wrong continent.

Mobile 155

I will not even try to get into the physics of the power it takes to move bigger heavier objects because that will take up too much space. But here is one of the shorter charts of a test bed hyperloop from Hyperloop one. Remember they haven't even determined how the thing will work yet and they will have to start working on standards sooner or later if it will ever pass safety inspections. As far as everyone working for less. Do you really want someone making minimum wages designing and building a transportation system that will shoot you down a tube towards your destination at 250 to 700 mph with another pod minutes behind you? This in more like ballistics than transportation. For me it would seem you would want to get the best people on the job and the best people tend to want more for their labor. The system isn't being designed for our most needy passengers it is designed for the median passenger and I am pretty sure they want the best educated engineers and scientists building these things. Paying for a skill level is just how things work.

HYPERLOOP TUBE ARCHITECTURE ? RBSystems

Mobile 155

It looks like if they ever got one working Dubai or Abu Daubi will see one first. But there is still a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here.

https://www.techradar.com/news/hyperloop

Rollfast

Amtrak IS a bus route over most of the old 'Pioneer' route!

Saale

Musk left the Hyperloop concept to a more idealistic beardy Branson (hard to imagine being even more idealistic than Musk) for a good reason, after some unsuccessful trials by some of his Silicon Valley friends he knew it was a complete technological dead end.

tandempower

Heavier object have more momentum to keep them moving without adding additional power, which is why rail is more efficient than rolling tires on pavement.

Paying for skill is like having a pyramid-shaped distribution of income. You may pay more for people higher in the pyramid, regardless, but you can make the pyramid lower overall and less steep by reforming consumer/lifestyle habits across the board. LCF is just the most obvious example because the cost of riding a bike or taking transit is so low compared with driving. So if significantly more people would give up driving, it would make the economy as a whole much more cost-efficient and competitive globally. Many people don't want this because they prefer there to be massive flows of easy money that can be redistributed in whatever direction they can move it, but it's not sustainable economically. Anyway, this is getting too far into P&R territory so I wonder why you always raise P&R topics in LCF but never post anything in P&R.

tandempower

Once successful, they will probably add tubes to the system, each with dedicated end-points. I would be surprised if the focus stays on boring tunnels underground. I think once people realize that the ridiculous cost of boring underground could be lowered by simply getting surface-authorities to cooperate, there will be pressure for them to cooperate. It's ridiculous to go on building massive highways to connect other highways so everyone can drive everywhere on multilane highways when high-speed tubes could carry the same amount of human traffic faster and with a smaller footprint on so many levels.

Machka 

Yes ... perhaps there, maybe in places like Japan or China. But certainly not the US. The US has a long, long way to go to catch up to other countries.

himespau 

So, to make public transit cheaper, we need to pay cheaper wages to the designers and drivers. To get that to work, we need deflation. Got it...

tandempower

Obviously the problem is there's always smoke and mirrors to influence investors, but saying diminishing hope for better transit in the US is smoke and mirrors to reinforce the idea of inelastic automotive demand in the US, which is what the world banks on to keep its pension funds growing.

tandempower

Yes, and public transit is naturally more efficient, so in the absence of having to fund ubiquitous driving, public transit has a natural economic advantage over the personal automobile.

What it comes down to is this: there is not enough money to pay everyone involved in transit to drive a car, but that's the way the economy is set up. So as long as everyone gets paid a driving wage, transit investments will be too high to make transit work. But if many people were willing to make the LCF sacrifice, then it would become affordable to make these investments in public transit sufficient to cover the costs.

But as long as automotive interests can discourage transit by advertising expensive projects that will eventually fail due to high-costs, the money that does get invested will just funnel back into the automotive economy, which is good for automotive business-as-usual.

I-Like-To-Bike

Perhaps in response to your non-stop P&R ranting on this list

badger1

This, +1000.

Mobile 155

It was one of the reasons I said I almost hate to start in this. I didn't think it would be about the ability of building a hyperloop or the problems they have encountered attempting it. Somehow I felt we would get into social justice and wages. I think Hyperlink may be worth looking at. I am just becoming less sure it will solve anything.

badger1

Mobile 155

Yes, but if you remember your Newton's laws you know that getting a lighter object up to speed takes less force than it does a heavier one. A=F/M. the object of the Hyperloop is to get it up to speed quickly and create a vacuum to lower friction. Building a larger tube with a large object to shoot down the tube requires more force to start it and more to stop it. And they haven't agreed on a full vacuum yet.

Rail and tires are designed for different transportation needs.

Wishing will not change math.