Item — HN Reader

I think this is a good thing. Let me explain.

1) You can think that there are hundreds of OTHER things worth pursuing, instead of spending time on a project that is very hard to complete, expensive, and benefits (initially) only a small fraction of the world's population. Myself, I'd rather improve public trasportation in both SF and LA, instead of focusing on the Hyperloop. But there are people willing to spend some time to tinker with the idea. Let them do it.

2) They might not be successful, but they are sparking a discussion on transportation, technology, and government. Having a discussion is healthy, and needed.

Good luck!

1 comments

It's more important then that. Hyperloop is our best bet to stop California from wasting 60 to 100 Billion (60,000-100,000 Million) dollars on a "High Speed" train that is going to be the 2nd slowest in the world.

It's so costly because the land in California is so expensive. The Hyperloop is going to avoid much of this by taking an indirect route and making up for it with the extra speed. Wait other couple of decades and you'll have more people to move out of the way of the Hyperloop too.

Maybe we should have a little better urban planning and start preparing for low-speed and high-speed maglevs now?

That's not actually true. Last estimates I saw said that the right of way was only costing a few (1-3 i think) billion of the total cost.

One of Elon's criticisms was that the CA HSR would need to acquire 1100 parcels of land.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/could-the-hyperloop...

Can you post where you got your numbers?

I'd love to but after quite a bit of searching I can't find them. I did see that Musk quoted 1 bil for right of way on the hyperloop, so my numbers must be off some. I'm pretty sure it still isn't the majority of the cost by any stretch. perhaps 10 bil out of the 70 proposed. If i find the article I'll update this post.

It's not just pushing people out of the way -- it's also the BANANA[1] that enables people with vaguely established interests to tie up projects in courts before they start, or even worse, in the middle of the project, which makes costs explode.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY#BANANA

Yes, but can we be assured that Hyperloop will involve the same level of payola and corporate/government corruption that building a bullet-train (which American's have someone been convinced is a necessity) would?