Elon Musk, billionaire and entrepreneur, is a man of many enterprises. Some, like online payment site PayPal or the solar panel giant SolarCity, sound like sensible, practical responses to modernity. Others, like his idea for a pan-American network of magnetically levitating trains, seem, at first glance, less so.
Musk first laid out proposals for his Hyperloop transport system in 2013, calling it a “cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table”. Passenger capsules would whizz back and forth between LA and San Francisco along two parallel tubes (the “loop” of the train’s name):
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Unfortunately, his original cost estimate of $6bn for a line between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area was deemed a massive underestimate by infrastructure experts and economists.
So far, so unfeasible, and after the initial proposals were first released in 2013, everything went quiet for a bit. As it turns out, Musk was rounding up a group of 100 part-time engineers to conduct further research in exchange for stock options, and in December, they finally released a document outlining their progress.
Musk later told the Texas Tribune that the test track would be privately funded. And, since he is a very rich man, it looks quite possible that the track will actually be built sometime in the not-too-distant future.
In summary, it might be time to start taking the Hyperloop seriously. In that spirit, here are some takeaways from the engineers’ 76-page briefing document .
It would be the fastest train in the world.
The current fastest train is the Japan’s maglev, which also operates using magnetic levitation technology but runs at a maximum speed of 602 kmh. The Hyperloop would double this speed by using the same magnet technology (which propels the train along as it floats above a magnetic rail) inside a vacuum, so friction would be reduced to a minimum.
As a result, the engineers’ calculations are based on the idea that passengers will move at 470mph.
I’m skeptical that any high speed train would be practical in CA. What happens when an earthquake hits a train traveling at 150 mph? Wouldn’t take much to shake it off the track, would it? The hyper tunnel would be even worse. One disaster and nobody would ride it ever again. The most feasible transport to me would be improved air transport. Planes are faster, have more flights, they are cheaper and airports are located more conveniently to popular destinations than the train.
The current proposed high speed train terminals are located way off the beaten path and close to nothing of significance, then passengers would have to take a bus to where their end destination was, now that adds a lot of travel time. Who would want that? The bullet train is real bad idea for CA. Waste of money and there’s no proof it would ever pay for itself, just the opposite, evidence says it would be a continual drain on tax dollars.
Pipe dream nonsense.