Comment by forgotusername6
3 years ago
Hyperloop is still cool because you could have really fast transit over large areas. Mass transit across cities is still quite slow. High speed trains are fine but just not fast enough. Imagine a large city where you could get from one side to the other in only a few minutes.
Musk coined Hyperloop as a distraction to high speed rail. He wanted people to buy Teslas instead of thinking about high speed rail in California. A lot of people fell for his con.
It is a shame that other partial vacuum systems are not being developed. They seem like a useful concept, fast, less air resistance means less energy use. Surely a technology you'd want to have in a future city.
On concept level they kinda make sense. But the trade-offs are just too stupid. Basically it is equivalent of building tunnel around all of the roads. The energy investment in that sort of infrastructure is unfeasible. And then partial vacuum, that needs more infra and energy to be spend.
And then the safety, on ground level open air is great, you can exit at any point to any direction. But tunnels especially small ones... That would be nightmare in best case and death trap in the worst.
why does it need to be a vacuum system? Couldn't a similar device be a pod-like maglev device that floats above a magnetic track and maybe can temporarily hover albeit more slowly via some drone-like propeller on the bottom when 'off track', or for final-mile portions, could even turn into a car when not in maglev mode.
I gather that you never used public transport in Tokyo.
If you chose to build a train with only two stops, yes you could get from one side to the other in only a few minutes. That would have its downsides, like the station not being near your destination, which is why it's rarely done. You would also need a very straight track, which means lots of space for points (places where trains separate from the route onto platforms). This constraint is also shared by Hyperloop.