The Smog To Fog Challenge: Settling the High-Speed Rail vs. Hyperloop Debate

waderoush writes "Elon Musk thinks California should kill its $68 billion high-speed rail project and build his $7.5 billion Hyperloop instead. It's a false choice. We should pursue all promising new options for efficient mass transit, and let the chips fall where they may; if it turns out after a few years that Musk's system is truly faster and cheaper, there will still be time to pull the plug on high-speed rail. But why not make things interesting? Today Xconomy proposes a competition in the grand tradition of the Longitude Prize, the Orteig Prize, and the X Prizes: the $10 billion Smog to Fog Challenge. The money, to be donated by big corporations, would go to the first organization that delivers a live human from Los Angeles to San Francisco, over a fixed ground route, in 3 hours or less. Such a prize would incentivize both publicly and privately funded innovation in high-speed transit — and show that we haven't lost the will to think big."

Comments

300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the obsession with flinging your sack of water down a track at 300 miles per hour. In a world of diminishing cheap energy, why travel fast? You know, in many cities, the tram systems carried more people everyday than most cities now transport people in cars into the city from the suburbs.

Ding Ding!!

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[CRCulver]

What is the obsession with flinging your sack of water down a track at 300 miles per hour. In a world of diminishing cheap energy, why travel fast?

Indeed, in a world of increasing teleconferencing and telecommuting, you'd think the attraction of high-speed travel would be less pressing with each year that goes by.

I'm not saying that the human race is going to end up as a race of hermits plugged into virtual reality 24/7 and never leaving their homes like some science-fiction envisions, but at some point the amount of business travellers that these schemes depend on is going to fall low enough that it won't seem worthwhile.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Three hours? All that money to shave away 120 minutes?

If it weren't for CHP, I'd make it in five, every time, no problem...

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[DigiShaman]

Because at the end of the day, human beings are social creatures where a handshake in person still means something in business.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[xaxa]

Indeed, in a world of increasing teleconferencing and telecommuting, you'd think the attraction of high-speed travel would be less pressing with each year that goes by.

Since 1993, the number of journeys by rail has gone up in the UK every year except 2008.

Better teleconferencing and better journey times means more business happens, which more than compensates for the people who no longer need to travel. A manufacturer likes to have their suppliers nearby. The distance "nearby" increases with better railways, and the number of potential suppliers the manufacturer is aware of increases with better telecoms.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

Not to mention... airplanes. So many billions would probably pay for an extra/improved airport or two. Airplanes don't require any infrastructure in between, and you could link the airports to the city center with regular rail at a fraction of the cost. For that cost, you could even set up some kind of pre-screening on the train that links the city center to the airport so that the train can deliver the passengers on the secure side of the airport.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Because at the end of the day, human beings are social creatures where a handshake in person still means something in business.

In other words, let's use 10,000 year old primitive rules and notions to drive 21st century transportation expenditures.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[spire3661]

If you waste money to procure a handshake, you shouldnt be in business.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[CRCulver]

So many billions would probably pay for an extra/improved airport or two. Airplanes don't require any infrastructure in between, and you could link the airports to the city center with regular rail at a fraction of the cost.

Airplanes produce an enormous amount of CO2 compared to trains. One is not really saving money with that externality involved. In the long run, it would be prudent for the state to support rail travel and discourage air travel.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MITguy21]

Three hours? All that money to shave away 120 minutes?

If it weren't for CHP, I'd make it in five, every time, no problem...

Google Maps reports LA-->SF at 382 mi, 5 hours 35 minutes. To do this in 3 hours, on existing roads requires an average speed of 382/3 = 127 mph.

Tomorrow's NASCAR race at Michigan will be 500 miles and the winner's average speed is likely to be over 160 mph including pitstops and caution periods to clean up wrecks. A number of cars qualified (solo run) at over 200 mph. The Silver State Classic Challenge is held on closed public roads, http://www.sscc.us/history.aspx and the current record for 90 miles now stands at 207.7801 mph.

If there is really a $10 Billion prize, that should be enough to bribe the CHP to look the other way for one fast trip. Where are the rules for this contest...?

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[necro81]

What is the obsession with flinging your sack of water down a track at 300 miles per hour. In a world of diminishing cheap energy, why travel fast

Perhaps in a generation or two (or after a few energy crises) you could convince people to sacrifice a full day traveling from LA to SanFran, but for the moment, take it as a given that people want and, to a small extent, need to travel that distance in a short period of time. Given that, consider the available alternatives to Hyperloop or the proposed High Speed Rail: 1) traveling in a vehicle at 60 mph at several times the energy/passenger/distance cost, or 2) traveling in an aircraft at 600 mph (average speed, including TSA violations, perhaps 200 mph) at many times the energy cost. A third alternative, traveling at 80-120 mph on fairly conventional high speed rail at slightly less energy cost, I presently rate as not much of an alternative at all, because it simply doesn't exist.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[wiredlogic]

More likely the result of an increasing population and the London congestion charge.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I looked, California had lots of earthquakes. (not to mention huge fires and mudslides) Doing anything at very high speeds makes a disaster waiting to happen.

I don't think business travel will be the bulk of this, it will be tourists going from LA to SF and back. (or vice versa)

Cutting the 2 or 3 hours air passengers must arrive before a flight to 20 minutes would make things MUCH faster.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[DigiShaman]

Ah, but I am. People remember other people when introduced in person. It's an extrovert thing. I doubt you would understand.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[0123456]

Indeed, in a world of increasing teleconferencing and telecommuting, you'd think the attraction of high-speed travel would be less pressing with each year that goes by.

High-speed rail is extremely attractive as a jobs program for union workers.

That it's a stupid and expensive form of transport is irrelevant.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the escort service possibility.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MaWeiTao]

I'm sorry, but that's an idiotic attitude to hold. From a business perspective it's invaluable to meet in person. Telecommuting isn't all it's cracked up to be and often is detrimental to the workplace. But there are a multitude of reasons why people would want to physically travel somewhere. People move where the jobs and opportunities are. This often means separation from friends and family which in turn means that they're more likely to travel to see them. How about sightseeing and vacations? Who in their right mind wants to spend days on a trip that could potentially take hours? Imagine half of your vacation spend spent simply getting somewhere.

By your rationale we may as well go back to plying the seas in galleons. If 300mph is too wasteful, is 200mph acceptable? How about 100mph? Hell, I'm sure we'd attain incredible efficiency at 25mph; I mean, if it was good enough for steam locomotives it's good enough for us. But let's just take it to the next step and go back to the horse and wagon. That's pretty much the pinnacle of sustainability. Except that there's no way in hell it's sustainable with 6 billion humans on earth. So mass transit is essential and more efficient after all.

Why can't we strive for both efficiency and speed? If a 500mph Hyperloop is more energy efficient than air travel how is it not desirable? It seems like the best of both worlds to me, preserving speed but boosting efficiency. If nothing else, it gives us more options for power sources beyond fossil fuels.

It's a good thing the human race hasn't been so pessimistic and lacking ambition because otherwise most of us would probably still be in Europe trying to fend off the plague.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[RazzleFrog]

Goddam Ponch and Jon.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Zero__Kelvin]

I tried telecommuting to Disney World, but it just wasn't the same. Your assumption that the only reason people have to travel someplace is to show up for a job, let alone one that can be done with tele* is at best a grossly invalid assumption. Just limiting the scope to business use we have at a bare minimum off the top of my head: Sales people; Field Engineers; CEOs. The list of people who cannot properly do their job by telecommuting is pretty long.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to nickle and dime your employees on travel fees, I don't want to sign a deal with you for anything more than petty spending.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[tlambert]

Furthermore, for the 0.001% of people who truly need to be somewhere that fast, let them take their corporate jet to LA. Don't sink $70 billion to support a couple of hundred of sales people. Nobody else needs to get from LA to SF at 300 mph to see their relatives.

Dude, your virtual Disneyland still sucks; how long have you been working on it now? Even Euro Disney sucks less than your virtual Disneyland.

Fix that, and we don't even have to talk about how much your virtual Grand Canyon and Virtual Arches National Park and virtual Machu Picchu and virtual Angkor Watt and virtual Great Wall of China and virtual Tunguska site suck, because if you can make your virtual Disney unsuck, you can probably fix those other things. Eventually.

Until then, I'm throwing my sack of water in a tin can headed to the physical reality of those things.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[ShanghaiBill]

If it weren't for CHP, I'd make it in five, every time, no problem...

Google Maps reports LA-->SF at 382 mi, 5 hours 35 minutes. To do this in 3 hours, on existing roads requires an average speed of 382/3 = 127 mph.

Keep in mind that the SF-LA high speed rail is scheduled to be under construction for thirty years before it is operational. By that time we will almost certainly have self driving cars that can do 127mph safely. We could build streamlined self driving buses that could go from SF to LA in three hours on existing interstate highways for about 1% of the cost of the HS rail boondoggle.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[dkf]

In other words, let's use 10,000 year old primitive rules and notions to drive 21st century transportation expenditures.

Of course. We've not had telecommunications for nearly long enough (less than 140 years, with widespread telephone ownership for quite a lot less and videoconferencing for a lot less) for us to have evolved significantly to be happier using it than seeing people in person. Give it a few thousand years, say 100 generations, and I'm sure humanity will be far happier with telecoms.

Or all dead from some random passing apocalypse.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

Airplanes don't have to be carbon polluters. You could run them on biofuels or capture the carbon. Carbon offsets are fairly cheap - probably under a buck per passenger per typical flight.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Ichijo]

Keep in mind that the SF-LA high speed rail is scheduled to be under construction for thirty years before it is operational.

False. The Initial Operating Section (220 mph or 350 km/h from San Jose to Palmdale) is scheduled to be operational in 2022, just nine years from now.

You must be thinking of the full build-out, from San Diego and Anaheim to San Francisco and Sacramento.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Ichijo]

So many billions would probably pay for an extra/improved airport or two.

The alternative to building California's HSR is spending $38.6 to $41.0 billion on 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways, plus $119.0 to $145.5 billion building 4,295 to 4,652 new lane-miles of highway, all just to move the same number of people as $98.1 billion spent on HSR.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Because sometimes, it matters.

I can travel slowly or take one less day of vacation from work.

Simple as that.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[TheRaven64]

Has the speed of rail journeys increased at the same rate? And how much does the EuroStar contribute to that? Most of the time, I'd rather spend two hours travelling in comfort than one hour in cramped conditions - there are a few times when I'd really appreciate more speed, but most of the time I'd like to be on a mode of transport where I'm comfortable enough to work or relax. When I started here, I took a few first-class train trips back on the London to Swansea route, at off-peak times, so I got a 4-seat table to myself and could spread a laptop and some papers out and found it very productive time (no distractions). A half-hour train instead of the three-hour train just wouldn't be much more of an incentive.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[CRCulver]

Airplanes don't have to be carbon polluters. You could run them on biofuels

Even if you run them on biofuels, once you factor in the amount of carbon produced in the manufacture and transport of those biofuels, airplanes are still considerably greater carbon polluters than trains which draw on an electric grid.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[TheRaven64]

To put that in perspective, the InterCity 125 was a rail service introduced in 1976 in the UK with a top speed of 125mph. Sadly, we've neglected our rail infrastructure as a result of one of the stupidest privatisation plans in the history of the world and so they rarely hit over 100mph now. Meanwhile, the French TGV has, on some lines, an average speed of 173.6 mph, with top speeds of over 200mph. It recently lost the record for the fastest journey speed for a scheduled train to the Chinese.

Doing that journey in 3 hours wouldn't even be stretching modern technology. You do, however, hit diminishing returns quite quickly. At 125mph, it's about 3 hours. To get to 2 hours, you need to go up to 191mph. To get down to 1 hour, you're up at 382mph and the Hyperloop speed makes it just over half an hour. While there's an obvious advantage to half an hour over 3 hours, there's not much difference in convenience between a 2-hour and a 3-hour journey. Even getting a 3-hour trip down to 1.5 hours isn't something that many people would be willing to pay a significant premium for, especially when you have half an hour of much slower travelling to get you to the station at each end.

If California wants to spend a lot of money on their train system, they should consider improvements to the Caltrain. It's under 80 miles of track, but getting between San Jose to San Francisco on a Sunday is painful. Upgrading 80 miles of track to support even 150mph trains and replacing the archaic rolling stock would mean that most of the valley on the Caltrain would take less time than one side of San Francisco to the other on the BART (which could also benefit from some modernisation). And if you've ever driven from one side of SF to the other, then you'll see the attraction of public transport...

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd just spend it on beefing up security at airports (e.g. on that scale, $10b isn't *that* much money)

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[zippthorne]

Are there figures on passenger rail energy cost available?

I know freight does a lot better than aircraft, but buses and commuter rail tend to have a lot of starts and stops, can't get away with keeping the speed below 50mph or mile-long trains, and often are far from full, and there's not much you can do about the over-capacity - you must run at low-volume times or people won't have confidence they'll be able to make the return trip (or won't be able to make the original trip...) using the mass transit service.

Similarly, high speed rail, even on express trains, must have a lot of acceleration due to sharing the track with other, possibly slower, trains and also due to the design of some sections of track.

I'd like to see some numbers before declaring the aircraft hopelessly inefficient.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of that is due to the relentless fuel tax hikes, soaring insurance costs and general expenses of owning a vehicle, which puts it out of the affordability range for increasing numbers of people.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

and I bet that you guessed Twiggy's weight at 247 lbs. too.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[xaxa]

How much of that is due to the relentless fuel tax hikes, soaring insurance costs and general expenses of owning a vehicle, which puts it out of the affordability range for increasing numbers of people.

The cost of driving has reduced (increased less than inflation) in the UK. Most of the fuel duty increases which should have happened were 'postponed'.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

and when oil becomes very expensive, electric trains might become more economical than jet planes.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at 300 MPH, you're not. A trip to the Grand Canyon is a trip, an experience. Not an unconnected instance. You don't need to travel there at 300 MPH, and in fact if we all could, it would quickly cease to be a special trip.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

OK, so buy offsets or recapture enough carbon to make you happy. Then it will be, what, $2/head extra? Still much lower capital expense than a fixed, experimental, high-speed railway.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

Wanna bet on the airport paying for itself, while the rail line never even breaks even operationally, let alone pays for itself?

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Ichijo]

High speed rail lines always break even operationally.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[guruevi]

Telecommuting is nice but unless I see my waiter telecommuting, we have a long way to go in research, services, support, ... and when a waiter telecommutes, why not just automate the whole thing? And who will fix it when that breaks down?

There are plenty of reasons to have a hands-on person on the job. Less and less, that's true, I have single-handedly managed an entire datacenter before but still I needed to be there because even though buying a (non-autonomous) robot to pull wires was cost-effective, one to pull hard drives and machines isn't yet.

Besides the opportunity for cost-effective commuting between the two coasts thereby boosting your choice of higher-paying jobs, there is an entire swath of land in between there that is largely empty, very cost effective as far as living expenses and if I could get a NYC income while living in a a low-crime, cheap house and fields with horses for the kids in the mid-west... who wouldn't pay an hour commute for that.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing 127mph average speed (thus, far higher maximum speed) _safely_ is hard. The solution risk-taking human drivers choose now is to just not worry about it. Most of the time they get there quickly, once in a while they die messily. But making it _safe_ is a big ask. You need to either ensure that the braking systems can always be relied on 100% to prevent vehicles hitting one another or leaving the carriageway, or else ensure that the passenger compartment can protect humans during the impact from failing to do so. Doing either in an affordable (say, $25 000 today's money) vehicle would require significant breakthroughs.

So don't expect to see it in 30 years. Don't expect to see it in a lifetime.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of the 225.

The 125 did then and does now run at 125mph. But the 225 was designed to run at 225kph = ~140mph. The idea was to add an extra clear block to buy the 225 enough stopping distance and signal this with a flashing green "ok to 225" aspect. In the end it was decided that this was unsafe, above 125mph drivers should have in-cab signalling rather than try to make out coloured light signals by the side of the track. The only mainline railway in the UK with in-cab signalling is the Channel Tunnel Rail Link aka HS1.

So outside of HS1 all trains in the UK are now limited to 125mph. In third rail areas, electric trains are limited to 100mph because as you exceed 100mph the shoegear loses contact with the power rail, some of the trains purchased for use in third rail areas are upgradeable to 25kV overhead, and if they were upgraded would run at 125mph.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

Really? What is your source for this? We don't really have high-speed rail in the US, but our regular-speed rail is subsidized.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[jphamlore]

Major portions of the Caltrain track from San Francisco to San Jose are simply IMPOSSIBLE to "upgrade." The track is rolling right through rich small cities with not much room on either side. What is the upgrade, putting everything on massive concrete and steel supports or burying it? The first option would never be allowed because it would a horrendous eyesore and stupendously expensive, the second option would simply be impossibly expensive.

BART was the only chance, and when it wasn't extended many decades ago to encircle the Bay, the situation became irreparable.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone who sounds reasonable on this whole thing. Really I'm actually surprised by the slashdot crowd. I've been reading this site since I've been in high school (31 now) and always found this site to be informative. It was always a site for those who loved ttechnology and science.

Then suddenly elon musk proposes the hyper loop and mostly what I see from this crowd is criticism about how it won't work or how we don't need to travel that fast. Really? That's some real backwards thinking. The only thing I can think of is that either: the slashdot crowd now consists of people whose egos are so big they wont accept a good idea when they see it, and would rather use their knowledge to put an idea down, or that a lot if people are jealous of elon musks achievements and want to cut him down as much as possible to make themselves feel good.

  Elon Musk is a dreamer, but at least the things he's working on has the potential to improve mankind, AND he is actually trying to pursue them. We need more people like that. Just imagine what the world would be like today if everyone scoffed at all the great minds or dreamers of the past.

Sure he might so it for money or fame or attention or whatever, but does that really matter as long as we actually progress in how we think of transportation? Everyone needs an incentive and few people do things for free.

I only regret that I've never made an account so I can mod the parent up, but after reading all these pessimistic opinions in here I really feel compelled to make an account now.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Ichijo]

Our regular-speed rail is subsidized, but the closest thing we have to high speed rail, Amtrak's Acela Express, made a profit of about $41 per passenger in 2008.

The experience in other countries is the same. High speed rail subsidizes slower intercity lines.

Only Taiwan continued to lose money on HSR after their line became operational. But since then they refinanced the debt and the line is now making a profit.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[localman]

For several years I managed a team of software engineers split across two sites. We were all very comfortable with communicating electronically, be it email or chat. We all hung out in an irc channel as we worked. We shared wiki for documentation, a collaborative project list, we did conference calls as needed, and we sent out regular digests of what was going on with each team.

Yet there were still things that seemed to require working in person to go smoothly. It probably depends on the type of work - our software had to integrate with physical systems and workflows at a warehouse (one of the sites, the other was corporate hq) - but sometimes all the remote communication in the world did not provide enough clarity and you just had to be there. I was as surprised as anybody.

I eventually became disillusioned with the ideal of completely remote work and interaction. Issues came up with outside companies too. Without presence on site, poorer decisions would get made and things would progress more slowly. There's just so much more bandwidth interacting in person. Also, some of it might be related to the way we triage and prioritize - presence gives us urgency cues that telepresence does not. Yes, there are better and better ways to communicate, but until we can't tell the difference from being there... sometimes you benefit from being there.

And yes, I'd have loved to have made that trip in half the time.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

That's because it runs on the Northeast Corridor, which was profitable even without Acela. But even calling Acela "high speed" is a stretch.

But to my original point, it is highly unlikely that a CA rail line would ever pay off it's construction costs, whereas airports like LAX and SFO are quite financially sustainable. Throw a few more runways their way, and the runways would pay for themselves in a few years. In the article you linked it even says:

It’s certainly what Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris, means in a much-quoted line from The New York Times. “High-speed rail is good for society and it’s good for the environment, but it’s not a profitable business,” he said, and the Times added: “He reckons that only two routes in the world — between Tokyo and Osaka, and between Paris and Lyon, France — have broken even.”

Of course, the article also points out that the highway system is only profitable because of the fuel tax, so there you go!

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a little funny about your example is that above a particular level of manager, attractions (among other things) worldwide are managed out of the Glendale office at TWDC. Day to day is obviously handled on property. This lets you move from, e.g., MK to HKDL without having to actually pick up the family and move halfway across the world.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Ichijo]

airports like LAX and SFO are quite financially sustainable.

It's easy for them to be financially sustainable because they were built with public money. Only one airport in the USA was ever financed privately.

the highway system is only profitable because of the fuel tax

They aren't profitable. Even if gas tax funds "were fully devoted to highways, total user fee revenue accounted for only 65 percent of all funds set aside for highways in 2007."

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

It's easy for them to be financially sustainable because they were built with public money.

Those airports have no problem generating enough cash to finance their construction, operations, maintenance and improvements. I seriously doubt that a train line built between the two cities could even cover operations - much less construction, maintenance, or improvements.

They aren't profitable.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I mentioned highways as a counterpoint to my argument that the rail line would not be profitable. Highways - especially freeways - are an example of government-funded, government-financed infrastructure that people seem to be mostly happy about. Why raise the bar for rail?

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[PrimaryConsult]

Japan's HSR has done just fine despite having more earthquakes than California. Last I checked the number of fatalities on the HSR network for it's entire existence has been single digit.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[FatLittleMonkey]

Doing either in an affordable (say, $25 000 today's money) vehicle

TFA proposes a $10 billion prize to send a single human from LA to SF in 3 hours.

Posters are saying "$10m to pay to close the road for 4hours from 3am to 7am on a Sunday morning in summer. $2m to hire a suitable driver and navigator. $10m to run the support crew. $2m to buy a car capable of 200mph. Profit $9.976 billion."

People could also, I'm sure, come up with a $10-20m bespoke single-run one-passenger vehicle that uses the existing rail lines with a few million dollars in modification (special fittings to cover switches) and cover the same run inside of 3 hours.

The point being that the proposal is poorly thought out.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[dbIII]

That's because it runs on the Northeast Corridor, which was profitable even without Acela

That's a pointless argument since there's no point in building high speed rail at all between places where not many people go and because we're discussing a similar situation of a link between areas with a large population.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Midnight Thunder]

The true length of time of a trip should be measured door to door, as should the cost. For that reason, the length of time of the local transportation, getting you to your long distant transport, should be added to that. Additionally so should an processing time at each end.

In Europe, it has been shown that in certain cases the train is faster that the plane when considering these factors.

In terms of design many of the high speed trains have significant innovation when it comes to safety and performance. The two tat stand out are the TGV (bogies in between carriages) and the Shinkansen (all carriages drive the train).

You shouldn't count the train out yet. I realise it is popular, in the USA, to look down on the train, but if you look the train certainly has places where it works well and possibly better than the plane in terms of door to door. The same can be said of the aeroplane in other cases.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you had something other than a handshake to offer people would remember you far more often.

Being there in person is a thing of the past. Hanging onto the ways of the past makes you no better than the current media companies crying over the old ways not working anymore.

Get with the times or your door to door magazines sales will fall even further!

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MightyYar]

It is not really all that similar at all. The Northeast Corridor is full of people from one end to the other - almost a constant Metropolis - and the people are largely familiar with public transit. The Northeast Corridor was completely privately funded until Amtrak took over all passenger rail in the 70s. The region grew up around rail - my suburb is even centered around a train station, but the nearest highway is about 10 minutes away, and it doesn't even go toward the city center.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[dbIII]

Fair enough.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[the grace of R'hllor]

Given that you're more likely to meet a mate while traveling than you are while telecommuting, I doubt any genetic predisposition for non-live interaction will be selected for.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[spire3661]

Thank you for so eloquently proving my point. Invoking 'extrovert' means you are fueling your ego when you do business. Inefficient.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[JBaustian]

We already have a fast and efficient way to transport people from LA to SF -- it's called air travel. There may be more efficient ways to travel, but they're slower. And there are cheaper ways, but they're also slower. High-speed rail may be fast, but it will always require taxpayer subsidies to keep it running; so it's not an efficient use of limited public funds.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Shirley Marquez]

Air travel is a fast way to transport people from LA to SF. But it is not an efficient one.

Like rail, auto, truck, and bus transportation, air travel receives taxpayer subsidies. Airlines don't pay the full costs of airports or air traffic control. And nearly all of them have gone through bankruptcy reorganization and written off costs that way, which is another form of subsidy.

The environmental impact of air travel is also horrendous. Airplanes consume a LOT of energy, and throwing out pollution at high altitude is very damaging to the atmosphere.

The expensive part of building high speed rail is land acquisition. Musk believes that the Hyperloop could be built without much need to acquire land by building it on highway right of ways, and that's the main reason that his projected costs are dramatically lower. If he is correct that a useful high speed transit option can be built that way, and if the technology works, then the Hyperloop is something we should be building.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[MickLinux]

My thought was, "ten billion? All that money for corporations that enslave us, whose next move will be.e. To enslave us? Someone give Haliburton a call."

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[JBaustian]

With airline travel, the infrastructure already exists: the airfields, the traffic control, the hotels and car rentals and expressways. Yes, the public paid for them, but they are built and there is no annual appropriation to keep planes in the air. Ticket prices pay for landing slots and terminal rents.

Planes are more energy efficient than ever before -- airlines are scrapping perfectly good planes so they can replace them with newer more-efficient ones.

I am not opposed to investigating the Hyperloop idea; I am opposed to building the HSR (high-speed rail).

I have traveled from LA to SF many times -- actually, San Diego to the Bay Area, not San Francisco specifically. I always drove my own vehicle, so I'd have it available while there and not need to rent one. But I also stayed for a week at a time; if I was returning the same day or in a day or two, I probably would have flown. I would have traveled by train only if it was cheaper and reasonably quick. Likewise, I would travel by Hyperloop if it was cheaper than flying.

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[DigiShaman]

It's not ego. It's basic human nature and psychology. We are sacks of meat, and therefor we act like sacks of meat. Please step out of your fantasy land and into reality please.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Gen_Music]

Ticket prices pay for planes after govt fuel subsidies, CO2 tax subsidies and ATC subsidies. And since when has money been the only factor in the choices of this country? Should we all just have stuck to steam trains and never had planes because they represented too much initial expense?

In the UK, an entire train can be operated by one man. Fuel costs will be orders of magnitude lower than air and will be cleaner, and stations only need more staff if the tech actually picks up. $7.5bn is certainly better than 80bn too

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[angel'o'sphere]

As a westerner you can not do business with an asian via teleconferencing.
Trying so would be a desaster, so traveling and meeting them in person is the only efficient way to do business with a Chineese, Korean, Indian or most importantly: a Japaneese.

Re: 300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Gen_Music]

No national rail service in the UK travels inside the congestion zone. You must take a national rail into London then a local tube train into congestion zones. Why would the statistics rise injust a wholenational country just because of one zone in London?

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[Anonymous Coward]

NO one passed on the idea of using graphite (somehow) for the hyperloop? I see some far reference (pun) to this article? Just because it is new technologies I always support the idea of BUILDING IT. - djb

Re:300 MPH flesh sacks of water

[nobodie]

not just that we can do things just as fast without leaving our home, but that the basic idea that doing things fast and faster is broken. I lump it together (probably falsely) with walking across campus (which is full of trees and birds and squirrels) and seeing the students and faculty with their noses buried in their mobes completely oblivious to anything outside their circumscribed circles of electrons injected into their eyes. They look like mind-controlled zombies from the 50s, scurrying to their classes so they can sit in air-conditioning and ... stare at their mobe some more.

Slow down, watch the world, wait for things to come to fruition and ripeness.

No.

[Frosty Piss]

"conventional" high-speed rail is a proven concept in use today in many non-North American countries. Musk's idea, while based on things that are already being studies, contains a lot of unproven technology.

Even if we could do the necessary R&D in a *reasonable* amount of time, the 7+ billion price-tag is way too low.

It's a pipe dream - er, tube dream - to think this is a practical transportation solution right now or even in the near future.

Re:No.

[taiwanjohn]

contains a lot of unproven technology.

No, actually it doesn't. Obviously all this proven technology has never been combined in this particular way before, but there's nothing in the plan that's not available off the shelf today.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

High speed rail is a proven money hole that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Re:No.

[dan828]

Especially California's high speed plan, which, at this point, is just a pay off to special interests and unions. It's neither going to be "high speed" nor actually in the cities that it is supposedly to linking. Basically, we're going to pay 68 billion dollars for a regular train system that is going to be slower and less convenient than just about anything else available now.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually it doesn't. Obviously all this proven technology has never been combined in this particular way before, but there's nothing in the plan that's not available off the shelf today.

You know exactly what the Parent is saying, why waste your time being a tired pedantic?

Re:No.

[IICV]

Yes, the actual high speed rail technology is a concept that's been done before - however, stomping over all of that privately owned land between LA and SF is a political concept that's completely infeasible at this point in time.

Although Elon Musk is using a bunch of existing technology in new ways, his plan is politically feasible - and it's not like we would just start building the Hyperloop without doing a proof-of-concept first. If it turns out that the idea doesn't scale, we'd do something else.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

"conventional" high-speed rail is a proven concept in use today in many non-North American countries

Yes, it is quite "proven": proven to be an expensive, money-losing boondoggle in Europe. Something that allows the well-off to travel in comfort between city centers where ordinary people can't afford to live. For ordinary people, high speed rail requires feeder lines that make the whole trip slower than driving, and the tickets are more expensive than (the already expensive) gas or flying. Why would we possibly want this in the US?

The US has an active rail system bigger than European nations combined. It's primarily used for freight, which is the most efficient way of using a modern rail system. Europeans are misusing their rail system for inefficient passenger transport while putting a lot more freight on the roads.

Re:No.

[taiwanjohn]

Where to start...?

- Why should I accept what the Parent is saying if the Parent shows significant ignorance of the topic?
- Why should I give the Parent's armchair ramblings more credence than the 57-page write-up of one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs of recent years, which was produced with the help of some of the top engineers in the field?
- Why should I accept the Parent's arbitrary declaration that "the 7+ billion price-tag is way too low"?? (Would there be cost overruns? Almost certainly, but even at 2x the price, it's still a fraction of the projected cost of the proposed HSR line.)

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because unproven technology is a lot different than proven technology with novel application. With proven tech, you already know most of its characteristics which allows you to maintain and install that tech a lot more efficiently. Obviously, you still have to do studies to make sure that the tech that works in one application is still useful and safe in the desired application, but you're at least working from an advanced starting point.

Re:No.

[reub2000]

If the technology is all ready then why doesn't he build a test track out in the desert to prove it?

Re:No.

[bkmoore]

Yes, the actual high speed rail technology is a concept that's been done before - however, stomping over all of that privately owned land between LA and SF is a political concept that's completely infeasible at this point in time.....

It's called right of way. The government has used right of way before to build the highways (freeways in CA). The only difference is CA has become much more densely populated in the last 60 years, so more than just orange groves would be displaced.

Re:No.

[westlake]

It's neither going to be "high speed" nor actually in the cities that it is supposedly to linking.

To be fair, Musk's proposed Hyperloop isn't city center to city center either. The rental car or shuttle service is still required. I want to know more about many passengers the loop can carry and how much it would cost to ''terminate'' the route downtown.

It is the difference between practical and efficient mass transit and a $6 billion dollar thrill ride.

Re:No.

[ShanghaiBill]

If the technology is all ready then why doesn't he build a test track out in the desert to prove it?

Because he is busy running Tesla and SpaceX. He just proposed the idea, it is not his duty to "prove it". If it is a good idea, it should be adopted regardless of who proposed it.

Personally, I think neither HS-Rail nor Hyperloop should be built. They are both decades away, and by that time we will have self-driving electric cars. It would be far cheaper to build a streamlined self-driving bus that can do 120MPH on existing road infrastructure. It could go from LA to SF in about three hours. That is "good enough" and would be about 1% of the cost. The other 99% of the price tag for rail could be used to pay down our 14 trillion dollar debt.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best HSR of today can operate (not the speed test) around 300-350 km/hr (186-217 mph). Assuming that this is what CA wants to build for $68B.

Now the Hyperloop is going to go 3 times faster for 1/10 of the cost. Even if it goes over by 100% in cost, that is still a lot cheaper. Build it on pylons over the I-5 and you save all that land acquisition cost.

Cars are good for short distances. Planes are great for long distances (I can't drive from Chicago to Tokyo). Trains are good for the middle. I currently drive any trip at 300 miles or less since air travel is a pain in the ass. If I had a train option that went at least 2x a fast as a car (60-70mph) then I would definitely consider that.

Re:No.

[Ichijo]

It's neither going to be "high speed" nor actually in the cities that it is supposedly to linking.

The above statement is only partially true. In 2022, the Initial Operating Section will run at full speed (220 mph or 350 km/h) from San Jose to Palmdale, requiring a transfer to Caltrain in the north and Metrolink in the south.

Later in 2026 (Bay to Basin), the bookend from San Francisco to San Jose will run on electrified Caltrain tracks, eliminating a transfer at San Jose. And in 2029 (Phase 1 Blended), this bookend will run on dedicated HSR tracks.

The other bookend from Palmdale to Los Angeles will also be complete in 2029, eliminating the need to transfer to Metrolink.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a boondoggle. Ridership estimates are being grossly inflated and the final legs will likely never be completed due to objections of property owners. Even now the average Amtrak trip is less than half full and all are subsidized by taxpayers. The Los Angeles to New Orleans leg is subsidized by over $400 for every passenger. How bad must passenger rail be for many states to turn down billions from the federal government? California was once always at the top but now because of many years of Democratic legislative control and decision making the state has fallen to to bottom in terms of deficits and unemployment.

Re:No.

[reub2000]

Good point. It is not his duty to prove it. But smart ideas alone are not going to convince California taxpayers to invest a few billion dollars in something that has never before been built. Someone is going to have to prove it.

Re:No.

[IICV]

Yes that's why the problem with the high speed rail plan is political, not technical.

Can you imagine the size of the shitstorm that would happen if the government nabbed all that land? It would be insane. The lawsuits alone would cost billions.

On the other hand, a bunch of pylons is fine - they don't split your land in half, and the footprint is relatively small.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose having each pod ejected from the tube as it approaches the city limits; the wings will then deploy and the pod will glide over the city, while the passengers depart in their specially provided jet packs.

No - thank you.

Re:No.

[taiwanjohn]

Actually it's called "eminent domain" (at least I think that's what you're getting at) and this is one of the greatest advantages of Musk's plan. There is already a broad "right of way" along the I-5 corridor, and the Hyperloop can be built on top of it, whereas the proposed HSR line would require the gov't to use its power of eminent domain to acquire the right of way for an entire new rail line.

Even in those few places where the Hyperloop cannot track the I-5 corridor, it only needs a house-sized plot of land every few hundred feet rather than a 20m-wide stripe across the landscape. Farmers can drive around pylons and farm under elevated tubes, but a railway across your land can really ruin your whole day.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the cargo go? Oh that is right, there is not space for any.

Re:No.

[ShanghaiBill]

Someone is going to have to prove it.

Yes, but Elon Musk has made it very clear that someone will not be him.

But I don't think the focus should be on the SF to LA link. It would be far more useful to build something like this for commuting between, say San Jose and San Francisco. That is far shorter, and would be useful to far more people. You can take the Caltrain from SJ to SF, but that is slow and expensive. It is faster and cheaper to just get in the car and drive. Maybe the hyperloop could change that.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, He proposed an idea, AND put a price tag on it without actually doing the studies to determine if that price tag is even remotely close to what it will cost. The earthquake engineering alone for the 'tube' will cost far more than the price tag he stated.

He also didn't even look at any studies to determine if people will want to be put into sardine tins with no windows for hours at a time.

70 billion probably isn't even accurate for his idea, let alone 7 billion.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's called "eminent domain"...

Actually, the government is the only one that can claim eminent domain. This plan calls for private companies to do the work and they would have to pay for the land after public zoning hearings to put something like this in place, just like a utility company does now for infrastructure upgrades.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, even the rail project isn't convincing to California taxpayers to invest billions of dollars for the high speed rail either. It was barely approved back when it cost $10B, however now that the price has jumped to over $60B, a lot less than half the state is in favor of it. No, instead, it is still being forced down our throats because the powers that be wanted it, regardless of what the taxpayers agreed to or currently want.

for the past couple of years, stories keep coming out about it's going to cost more to build than originally planned, and how new surveys are showing less people are willing to ride it than they're original "estimates". Therefore once it's done, with those two factors alone, they are now estimating that ticket prices on them are going to be significantly higher than they originally thought. So the whole deal they originally pitched is out the window, and it sounds like even a worse deal than it did before, so public support from taxpayers has dramatically waned, but hey "they've already started, and it's lots of union jobs for the construction, so ONWARD anyway!"

Don't get me started on the Eminent domain (ie: government stealing) part of it. Gobbling up over 300 farms in the process of this SCAM from farmers and familys that don't want their land taken. The whole thing has been busted open as a combination of a big big land grab, and political "favors" project. The new nickname for the whole project is locally being called "The Train to NoWhere" because only a fraction of people who thought they'd ride it, will, it probably won't be completed for 20 years or more, and they are starting the first segment between 2 towns out in the middle of nowhere.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

for hours at a time.

Speaking of "not looking". Well done for failing to read even a one line summary of the hyperloop proposal.

Re:No.

[dbIII]

Can you imagine the size of the shitstorm that would happen if the government nabbed all that land?

Doesn't that already happen with freeways?
Oh I forgot, economic crisis, nobody is building anything these days. Carry on and will the last one with a job please turn the lights off.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

many years of Democratic legislative control and decision making the state has fallen to to bottom in terms of deficits and unemployment.

Maybe they go together?

Re:No.

[IICV]

When was the last time you saw a new freeway in California? Yes once the land rights are secured they're secured, but getting new ones is a huge stumbling block.

Re:No.

[hargrand]

In Kelo v. City of New London, SCOTUS decided a municipality could use eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another.

Re:No.

[flyingfsck]

Lemme guess, you have no idea how big Europe is, never been there and never used a train...

Re:No.

[stenvar]

Let me quote from my other post:

I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.

I don't want the US to have a European-style rail system precisely because I have taken a lot of trains in Europe. It's an inefficient and overpriced system.

Re: No.

[Anonymous Coward]

7 billion is too low. Hyper loop is a giant evacuated tube from sf to la, with vacuum pumps and linear motors spaced intermittently along the tube. I think there's some sort of tracks in there too. And the passenger compartment is pressurized. HSR is just ordinary reinforced rail tracks and COTS rail cars, and it's going to cost $100 uh I mean $68 billion. I would consider HSR's cost to be the lower bound for hyper loop. HSR is technically simpler and most of its costs are probably in land acquisition and lawsuit driven late design changes, the same tactic used to kill nuclear power. Hyper loop will have these same costs. There was a sj mercury news article last week about how much more bridges cost to build today than in the 30's when the original bay bridge was built, especially in California (but not so much in china). We can't cost effectively build large scale infrastructure in the US any more, at least not in the precious states like CA (some other states seemed to be cheaper for bridges).

Re:No.

[dkf]

It would be far cheaper to build a streamlined self-driving bus that can do 120MPH on existing road infrastructure.

We've some experience with what would be required to make those sorts of bus systems work here in the UK. Unless you come up with some magic to deal with congestion, that bus is going to be doing 40MPH on average, whether or not it is self-driving. The easiest way to keep the way clear for the (whole fleet of) bus(es) is to build a separated roadway; just designating a lane wouldn't work nearly so well, given the propensity of some people to be assholes. However, a separated roadway takes space, either requiring more land to be acquired (in other words, a train route with rubber tyres) or requiring substantial amounts of space to be taken away from the existing roads.

Infrastructure isn't cheap, however you present it, and if you want to improve travel times and capacity you're going to have to invest as what you've already got is very close to full.

Re:No.

[Cytotoxic]

For those who are armchair civil engineers, the BBC program "Top Gear" provides ample evidence of this observation with its 'challenges'. They frequently race a car on normal roadways against public transport on trains, including high speed rail. They are easily able to set challenges where the car and train take a very similar amount of time. In many, perhaps even most use cases, having your car with you at the end of the journey would be a significant advantage. Cost is rarely to the advantage of rail vs a single passenger car trip these days (other than in-city commuter rail). Put 3 passengers in your car and even very heavily subsidized rail prices would have trouble competing with the automobile.

As an additional poke in the eye to all of us commuters, they have also frequently trotted out challenges that pit an automobile against commuter rail and a bicycle. They often show that the bicycle is the fastest way to navigate the city. So there you have it - the BBC has proven that we don't need new rail lines. Everyone should just ride their bicycle.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Evey european or japanese high speed train does this in far less than 3hours.
388 miles (according to google route planner) equals 624km.
German trains do usually 270km/h to 325km/h.
Frensh trains are in general faster.
Japanese trains do up to 425km/h and experimental trains up to 600km/h.
The technology is proven since 30 years or more.

You built a track and buy a frensh train, thats it ... nothing to "develop"!

Re:No.

[stenvar]

For those who are armchair civil engineers, the BBC program "Top Gear" provides ample evidence of this observation with its 'challenges'. They frequently race a car on normal roadways against public transport on trains, including high speed rail. They are easily able to set challenges where the car and train take a very similar amount of time.

And I assume that doesn't even take into account the extra few hours you need to leave early because (1) the train schedule doesn't actually fit perfectly with the schedule at the destination, and (2) because delays and missed connections are a frequent occurrence and if you want to make it somewhere by a specific time, you can't rely on the connection that gets you there in time, you need to take one or two connections earlier.

They often show that the bicycle is the fastest way to navigate the city.

True, although safety, weather, and convenience play a role there as well. But, yeah, if we are going to spend money on city infrastructure, it is probably best to spend it on safe bicycle lanes.

Re:No.

[Gavagai80]

Those shitstorms have been preventing the building of urban freeways for a long time now. For most of my childhood they were talking about putting in another freeway in the neighborhood where I grew up. There was too much resident anger for it to ever happen. It's not just the people whose land is being seized who care -- it's the nearby people who would have to deal with the noise.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-driving cars can will start out at 60MPH and eventually maybe go 200MPH. They won't ever go 800, so, they replace HSR, not Hyperloop.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, you are wrong on several edges. I don't know when you believe to have taken a high speed train. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago?
The distance from Stuttgart to Paris is 3.5h in a TGV(frensh high speed train), it costs -- if you book in time: 29â
By car it takes you 6h. The cost for the road tolls alone is about 35â, with a car that uses 8liters per 100km you use 48l fuel. for 1.50â each. So the total cost by car is 101â verus the 29â by train. You have to have at least 3 people in the car to break even money wise, and you still use nearly twice the time.
So, if you don't book in time, but buy a ticket now for imediate use, the ticket costs around 65â, still only roughly half the price of a journey by car.
This was just an example calculation. You can do the same for Stuttgart - Berlin e.g. there you don't have road tolls, but only fuel costs. The ger,an trains are not as fast as the frensh ones. So your car looks not "that bad" but still loses. The car needs 6:45h and the train 4:45. Train costs about 75â, you use about 52l of fuel which is rougly 78â. So here you only save time. If you book the ticket in advance I believe you can cut the costs to 45â.
Anyway: roughly you are always 25% - 50% faster by train. And equally if you book in time you pay a fraction, down to 25% of the costs you had by car for the traveling. (Keep in mind: the costs for owning a car are not even included in the bill)
Regarding subsidices: those trains/routes are not subsidiced at all. Railway is subsidiced in rural areas, not on main connections.

Re:No.

[DarenN]

In Japan, for instance, the Shinkansen between almost anywhere is significantly faster than driving (the exception would be for short hops inside a single city, which is not what the shinkansen is really for), and is cheaper, faster and more comfortable than air travel. So that's one strike. I haven't been on high speed rail in any of the other locations you mention but unlike you, I'm not willing to spout off about how my experience on regional trains/metros means that High Speed rail in different locations will never work ever.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

In Japan, for instance, the Shinkansen between almost anywhere is significantly faster than driving (the exception would be for short hops inside a single city, which is not what the shinkansen is really for), and is cheaper, faster and more comfortable than air travel. So that's one strike.

No, that's not "one strike". It's cheaper and easier in Japan because Japan deliberately makes other forms of transportation more of a hassle.

I haven't been on high speed rail in any of the other locations you mention but unlike you, I'm not willing to spout off about how my experience on regional trains/metros means that High Speed rail in different locations will never work ever.

It has nothing to do with experience with regional trains; I was living in Europe for several years using the train system as my primary mode of long distance travel. You can believe me: it sucks.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

Sorry, you are wrong on several edges. I don't know when you believe to have taken a high speed train. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago?

Whenever I'm in Europe, and quite recently; I don't like driving in Europe, European drivers are rude and aggressive and the highways are full of trucks.

Sorry, you are wrong on several edges. I don't know when you believe to have taken a high speed train. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago? The distance from Stuttgart to Paris is 3.5h in a TGV(frensh high speed train), it costs -- if you book in time: 29â By car it takes you 6h. The cost for the road tolls alone is about 35â, with a car that uses 8liters per 100km you use 48l fuel. for 1.50â each. So the total cost by car is 101â verus the 29â by train.

That's not how it works in real life. Unless you live near the train station and your destination is near the train station as well, you need two feeder trains, plus enough time to change trains. In addition, since the feeder trains are frequently delayed, you need to leave enough time not to miss the TGV, because if you do, you will be delayed half a day. In addition, you need to leave an additional couple of hours before your appointment at the destination because of delays of the TGV or the final feeder train. So you end up with several more hours overhead. But then you don't actually have a car at the destination, and you can only take a very limited amount of luggage.

Regular one-way fare is EU 120, and that's what you need to compare to the car (namely be able to plan trips short term). The low cost fares also don't give you any flexibility (i.e., if your plans change, you lose everything), and EU 29 is frankly a joke; are you a 12 year old? First class is EU 220 one way, and even that doesn't come close to the comfort and privacy of driving or a short flight. The trains to Paris are crowded and stuffy even in first class. More importantly, you get Stuttgart-Paris round trip (!) flights for about EU 150 (e.g. on KLM) or even less on smaller companies.

As I was saying: the European train system is great for people who can afford to have luxury apartments in city centers and need to go to corporate meetings at Europe's finest corporations in other city centers; it's a subsidized boondoggle for the rich and powerful. It's also great for tourists, who don't have much of a schedule and tend to stay near where train stations are. For the mass of normal people who need to get from point A to point B within a country, it is a nuisance and a colossal waste of money.

Regarding subsidices: those trains/routes are not subsidiced at all. Railway is subsidiced in rural areas, not on main connections.

Of course they are. Here is just one of the many ways in which they are: http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/eu-db-bahn100.html Another is that Germany has for decades tried to use legal restrictions and onerous legislation to kill competition for passenger rail.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

If you book ahead of time, a long distance bus Stuttgart-Paris can be had for EU 15, by the way.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

A lot of people l e close to city centers, so they dont need slow local trains to catch a TGV.
When I go to Paris, I need 5 mins to catch the TGV, riding my bycicly.
As I said before, the cheapest train goes for 29euroes, second class. Who cares if the train is crowded? You need one seat, reservation is mandatory, so everyone has a seat. If you don't believe the price: www.sncf.com or www.tgv-europe.com
Regarding your plane example: it has the exact same draw backs the train has. You need local trains to reach the airport. And bottom line a flight from Stuttgart to Paris takes longer thatn the train.
Your first claim was: car is cheaper AND faster. Both is wrong.
I don't need a car at destination, and I'm comfortable to use the metromor subway at my destination. You aren't ... that is fine for you, but does not change the argument about prices and travel time.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Yeah, but it takes 7h to 8h ... that would spoil the speed advantage of the TGV.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

Your first claim was: car is cheaper AND faster. Both is wrong.

No, what I said was:

Something that allows the well-off to travel in comfort between city centers where ordinary people can't afford to live. For ordinary people, high speed rail requires feeder lines that make the whole trip slower than driving, and the tickets are more expensive than (the already expensive) gas or flying. Why would we possibly want this in the US?

With your pre-purchased EU 29 tickets and times, you are comparing apples and oranges.

Who cares if the train is crowded? You need one seat, reservation is mandatory, so everyone has a seat.

I do, as do lots of other people. I also care about the limited luggage carrying capacity and the general hassle of it all.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

If I have not missclicked and aswered to the wrong person(I mean your original posting), you clearly said: a car is faster and cheaper.
Why someone complains about a train where al seats are taken, while he accepts that a plane might have taken all seats as well, is beyond me.

Re:No.

[stenvar]

If I have not missclicked and aswered to the wrong person(I mean your original posting), you clearly said: a car is faster and cheaper.

I quoted what I said. I did not say without qualification "a car is faster and cheaper". You can't read. But we knew that.

Why someone complains about a train where al seats are taken, while he accepts that a plane might have taken all seats as well, is beyond me.

For the same trip, the time actually spent in the seats in an airplane is much shorter. Furthermore, often planes are simply cheaper than trains, even in Germany, even with subsidies for passenger rail.

And, frankly, I really don't care about Germany's train system either way. If you like it and want to keep paying for it, good for you. I happen to ride it when I'm in Germany because I don't give a f*ck about how overpriced it is, and because I fortunately don't usually have to go anywhere into the sticks.

I just don't want the US to waste its money on expanding passenger rail, because today, we in the US don't have the "benefit" of Germany's totalitarian governments, monopolies, and heavy subsidies to create such a passenger rail system in the first place. Even if the rail system in Germany weren't the inefficient, overpriced, subsidized boondoggle that it actually is, the US would do better just improving roads and building more airports.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Your last sentence makes no sense at all.
How casoemthing that is often as fast a sa plane and which is far cheaper than a car be considered overprised or inefficient?
Also as I pointed out: high speed routes are not subsidiced. Very rural areas where otherwise the trains / rails would be closed are.
How a democracy can be totalitary is beyond me as well.
The quote you made now the second time is not from your first poste (or what I considerd the first one) but from an answer to one of my answers ...
Neverthelsess my appologizes that my first post comparing prices and travel times hit the wrong one :)

Re:No.

[stenvar]

How casoemthing that is often as fast a sa plane and which is far cheaper than a car be considered overprised or inefficient?

Ah, I see, still arguing with hallucinated facts. As I was saying, it usually is neither.

How a democracy can be totalitary is beyond me as well.

Much of the German railway network dates to between 1871 and 1945, you know, when the German government could simply make stuff like this happen by force.

The quote you made now the second time is not from your first poste (or what I considerd the first one) but from an answer to one of my answers ...

The quote is from my very first posting in this thread. But keep on hallucinating.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

You like to quote yourself and then you lose track I guess:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4100815&threshold=2&commentsort=0&mode=flat&cid=44598601

I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.

You claim here: with a train it takes twice as long as with cars, and (even with subsidies -- which don't exist on those routes) travel is more expensive by rail. Both I pointed out is wrong.

Much of the German railway network dates to between 1871 and 1945, you know, when the German government could simply make stuff like this happen by force.
This is nonsense. On all accounts. Neither did the government anything by force "to or for" the railway network, nor had it the power to do so except from perhaps 1933 to perhaps 1943. Nor is the railway network that old. Most of it got reworked often to fit modern needs.

Your years (stating with 1871) make no sense at all ... perhaps you should pick up a history book.

You simply have no clue about the matter at all.

A high speed railway in California would be build perfectly connecting the relevant cities. Would likely be with the newest train technology. Considering the speed limits for cars the train would be minimum three times faster. So everything you (falsely) complain about the european railway network would be avoided from the start up.

But it is very common that american /. commenters are very conservative and resistant to change and against innovation ... keep sitting in your backyard and have fun :D

Re:No.

[stenvar]

I stand by what I wrote, not your misquoting of it. I gave you examples, I'm sorry if you can't follow them. You also keep wrongly claiming that the system isn't subsidized; it is, extensively, on all routes.

If you can't figure out why 1871 is a key date in the expansion of the German railway system or what governmental powers at the time were, your understanding of German history is even poorer than that of the average German. The fact remains that eminent domain and takings, necessary for building a railroad network, are much harder in the US today than they were in imperial and Nazi Germany.

Ultimately, I'd thank you to butt out of discussions about US policies. Americans in general don't care how you people live, eat, travel, f*ck, or do any of the other things you do, and we'd thank you to return the favor. But you're obviously an adherent of the belief "Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen." Sorry, I don't want my country to be like yours; if I liked your country, I'd still be living there.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

How can I quote you wrong, when I simply copy/pasted your own quote from the URL I pasted?

Well, I disproved you three times wrong and now you start insulting me?

1871 was the year when the german empire was founded. Was hat that to do with rail way systems? Nothing of course. But you believe otherwise ...

Re:No.

[stenvar]

1871 was the year when the german empire was founded. Was hat that to do with rail way systems? Nothing of course. But you believe otherwise ...

Gosh, what could the founding of a single unified Germany have to do with creating a nationwide railway system? Whatever reason would railway historians have to pick that date to start talking about the creation of the modern German railway system? You'll obviously never figure it out.

Well, I disproved you three times wrong

Proof? Are you kidding?

and now you start insulting me?

I told you to butt out of US policy decisions because it's none of your business. I don't see Americans giving Germans advice about Stuttgart 21 or the failing Berlin airport. Don't you have your own problems to worry about instead of giving Americans transportation advice?

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Whatever reason would railway historians have to pick that date to start talking about the creation of the modern German railway system?
No idea. Many historians from the USA often have brain dead ideas about what happened when and why. See below.

Proof? Are you kidding?
I gave you the prices and travel times for typical routes for train and car. That disproved your point that the car is faster and/or cheaper and the other point that a train is more expensive and/or slower.
Gosh, what could the founding of a single unified Germany have to do with creating a nationwide railway system?
Nothing. As germany was not unified in the sense you think it was. It was still divided into its old kingdoms like Bavaria, Wuertemberg etc.The railways where constructed by independent corporations. Only a few "federal states" had a federal railway "corporation" that competed with the private ones. Those states basically only cared about themselves and had no special cooperation in building railways. Especially bad examples happened in Baden and Wuertemberg where railways where build especially to avoid to connect to majour towns of the opposite state.

The empire wide planning and construction happend not earlier than 1924 when the "Deutschen Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft" was founded and integrated many private railway corporations.

This was another proof of your wrongness, read wikipedia (if you can read german).

I told you to butt out of US policy decisions because it's none of your business.
The USA are the second biggest CO2 producer of the world (and where the biggest one just a few months ago): so it is of my business. There are plenty other reasons why to be interested into USA politics (also internal politics).
I don't see Americans giving Germans advice about Stuttgart 21 or the failing Berlin airport.
You are nevertheless free to do so. If your advice makes sense it is even very welcome.

Don't you have your own problems to worry about instead of giving Americans transportation advice?
No I personally have not. As I'm not really interested in german problems :D Most of the things you mention could have been avoided easily ... but well, they are done by politicians ... so obviously they never get anything right.

Also you completely got me wrong: I'm not arguing about american politics or how they should set up their transportation systems.

I'm arguing with _you_, especially as half of your statements are "wrong" (Yes, I read your other answers you gave to other people *facepalm* )

Re:No.

[stenvar]

I gave you the prices and travel times for typical routes for train and car. That disproved your point that the car is faster and/or cheaper and the other point that a train is more expensive and/or slower.

You keep comparing apples and oranges. What matters isn't how fast a train can get you from station to station, but what matters when you have to leave your house to make it to your appointment in time with high probability, and that adds many hours to every long distance trip. Similar considerations apply to prices. And all these would be far worse in the US, where there isn't even the rail support network for such a high speed line. And you keep denying the subsidies that are clearly going to German rail.

I've taken literally hundreds of high speed rail trips in Germany; I don't want a system like that in the US. Even if it were efficient (which it is not), I wouldn't want the other changes that go along with it: the housing density, real estate prices, political power structure, etc. Even if it resulted in lower carbon emissions or cheaper and faster transportation (which it clearly does not), I still wouldn't want it because those are only some of many factors to consider.

You are nevertheless free to do so. If your advice makes sense it is even very welcome.

But we don't believe that there is a single right way of doing things. Feel free to make whatever choices you like in Germany. Use horse-and-buggy if you like, we'll come and admire the quaintness of it all as tourists, without ever complaining or telling you to do it differently.

I'm arguing with _you_, especially as half of your statements are "wrong"

No, you are arguing with me because you are German and the one thing Germans generally hate beyond all others is non-conformity, at the individual, group, and nation level. The German cultural norm is to believe that there is one right way of doing things and if others do it differently, they must be made to see the errors of their ways. You feel threatened if other people make different choices from you and so you attack them and rationalize your choices.

I have no idea what the right transportation system for the US is. But I'm quite sure that I don't want the US to turn in any way into anything like Germany or Europe, so we need to make different choices.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess it is pointless to argue with you, as you reiterate the same arguments.

You keep comparing apples and oranges. What matters isn't how fast a train can get you from station to station, but what matters when you have to leave your house to make it to your appointment in time with high probability
You are comparing apples with oranges.
I never denied that point above, I only argued that you are exaggerating that point.
My examples e.g. where trips from Stuttgart (or more precisely Karlsruhe) to Paris and Berlin. All mentioned towns have an excellent local public transport system. So: for 95% of all cases you are faster by train/local transport.

If you have to go by train to small towns, then nyou are right. But that was not the point: you claimed car would ALWAYS be FASTER and ALWAYS be cheaper. Which is wrong.

Later you came again with your argument above and claimed well: there are also planes.

You seem to fail to understand that especially in germany planes have the time drawback of a train which you emphasize on even more. In other words: non one lives at an airport and no one has an airport as destination (because airports in germany are mainly OUTSIDE of the towns)

Back to the trains: you claim their are often crowded. Guess what: the people crowding the train are those that do not suffer from the fact that they only can go "get you from station to station" because that is exactly what they want.

The last ten years I did hundreds of train trips where I never had a chance to be faster in any circumstances with a car. Of course there are circumstances where a car is more versatile (and faster): however the people crowding the trains are not in such a situation: otherwise they would use the car.

You simply forget all the time that we are SPECIFICALLY talking about a point to point connection with a high speed train. Not about a general purpose rail way network. Not about a medium fast train, not about a train that makes lots of stops etc. So all your arguments are void anyway. And this the reason why we argue: your logic fails on all ends.
See: Even if it resulted in lower carbon emissions or cheaper and faster transportation (which it clearly does not) I pointed now out several times it is faster. You are in denial. That is all. You are not rational. That the carbon output would be reduced is a no brainer. But even about THAT you now try to argue. That is close to stupidity. Obviously you never checked how much carbon a train produces versus the equivalent amount of cars. But already you know it does not save carbon dioxid ... tz ... tz.

No, you are arguing with me because you are German and the one thing Germans generally hate beyond all others is non-conformity, at the individual, group, and nation level. The German cultural norm is to believe that there is one right way of doing things and if others do it differently, they must be made to see the errors of their ways. You feel threatened if other people make different choices from you and so you attack them and rationalize your choices.
This is nonsense. It is your perception only. However we all know: the perception is always the truth in the eye of the perceptee ...

The time of "conformity" in germany is over since Hitler is dead ... perhaps you missed that fact.

Coming back to subsidizing. That topic is to complicated to discuss. Bottom line the german railway company gets subsidizes. However as I said before: not for all connections. E.g. connections into foreign countries are not subsidized. The way how it works inside of germany is to complicated to explain in a short article. But bottom line it is as I told you: not ALL connections (also not all inside of germany) are subsidized. You don't believe it? Your problem!

Coming back to the american situation: I'm pretty sure it would be a profitable endeauver to have such a railway connection (SF - LA). And I'm pretty sure with people

Re:No.

[stenvar]

If you have to go by train to small towns, then nyou are right. But that was not the point: you claimed car would ALWAYS be FASTER and ALWAYS be cheaper. Which is wrong.

You can selectively quote out of this thread up the wazoo, but my position was quite clear in this thread: the German railway system is good for people like you who live in city centers, it's lousy transportation for much of the country who end up subsidizing your convenience. And that would be even worse in the US where very few people live within walking distance of the few high speed rail stations that are being planned.

Coming back to the american situation: I'm pretty sure it would be a profitable endeauver to have such a railway connection (SF - LA).

If it were profitable, it wouldn't require $50-100 billion in initial government spending, plus endless further subsidies. The California high speed rail is likely going to cost every Californian of the order of $1000. That's a huge waste of money for something that a few percent of the population on the SF-LA corridor actually ever are going to use. It is beyond stupid.

Bottom line it is YOU who wants to convince me as a reader and your fellow americans that the "good old american" way is the best.

I don't want to convince you of anything; you can't convince a German that anything is wrong in your country. You're indoctrinated from birth to believe certain things and it is hopeless to change your views.

I just point out to my fellow Americans that when they say that we should have a railway system like Europe, I know they wouldn't like it. They wouldn't like the uncomfortable seats, the crowded cars, the hours of delays, the inability to plan their arrival time, the high cost, the ever changing schedules, and the endless waits on drafty platforms in the middle of nowhere. And they wouldn't like paying the higher taxes that are needed to pay for it either. I know that because I have actually used the German system and it sucks.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

you can't convince a German that anything is wrong in your country.
That is nonsense. We all know how fucked up Germany is, that is why nothing is moving forward here, except perhaps the "Energie Wende".

I just point out to my fellow Americans that when they say that we should have a railway system like Europe, I know they wouldn't like it.
That was never what we talked about. We talked about a single high speed connection, AFAIK privately founded.

They wouldn't like the uncomfortable seats, the crowded cars, the hours of delays, the inability to plan their arrival time, the high cost, the ever changing schedules, and the endless waits on drafty platforms in the middle of nowhere. And they wouldn't like paying the higher taxes that are needed to pay for it either.
Thats why YOU could work on _better seats_ which are more comfortable, on better wagons so it is less crowded etc.
As we talk a bout a point to point connection there obviously would be no delays (except if there is a real disaster). And you never would wait on a windy platform. You can plan your arrival time exactly as good as with a plane.
As the whole thing is a private endeauver there would be no taxes involved.

I know that because I have actually used the German system and it sucks. That is nonsense. You might have a bad time here, that is bad luck. Especially there was a time when the "Deutsche Bahn" got restructured a few years ago they had really trouble, however in general it works pretty fine.

Live, unharmed and able to walk away unassisted

[Anonymous Coward]

And no wet tanks or pressure suits!

TSA

[arthurpaliden]

Does that three hours include the TSA screening process?

Re:TSA

[MightyYar]

You are right, this thing might become a target, just like airplanes. Or maybe not... it depends how spectacular the failure is. I suspect it won't be very spectacular - a break in the tube would slow the trains immediately and reduce the damage potential. I think it would be like a normal passenger rail disaster... that is to say, bad, but not what terrorists are after.

Re: TSA

[AvitarX]

I suspect less bad than a typical rail disaster. I get the impression (without reading details) this is about individual cars powered externally. This would reduce the harm, though it'd still approach a plain (which a modern rail problem can surpass).

Re:TSA

[Ichijo]

High speed rail generally doesn't get the same thorough screening as airline boarding, with the exception of the line that goes through the Chunnel.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Estimates

[Anonymous Coward]

California's high speed rail was originally going to cost $33 billion. (2008's Proposition 1A was a $10 billion bond).

5 years later, the estimate is $68 billion and it won't actually be high speed.

Re:Lies, Damned Lies, and Estimates

[Ichijo]

Because of inflation, $33 billion in 2008 is the same as $35.2 billion in 2013 dollars. And $68.4 billion in YOE dollars is the same as $54.5 billion in 2013. So yes, the estimated price has increased somewhat, even after accounting for inflation, but it hasn't really doubled.

And if 220 mph from Palmdale to San Jose (this is the Initial Operating Section which is scheduled to be operational in 2022) isn't high speed, then what is?

Re:Lies, Damned Lies, and Estimates

[Anonymous Coward]

And if 220 mph from Palmdale to San Jose (this is the Initial Operating Section which is scheduled to be operational in 2022) isn't high speed, then what is?

A walk in the park.

Re:Lies, Damned Lies, and Estimates

[khallow]

Depends how they did the accounting. When I hear numbers like that, I don't assume that they've accounted for inflation. It's routine to just add up the spending each year and report that number. In which case, the latter number is probably a doubling of the former number.

Re:Lies, Damned Lies, and Estimates

[Anonymous Coward]

> it won't actually be high speed.

Neither will Musk's option. He admitted last week that he lied and his piece of crap design will only deliver 15% of the speed that he gave his word it would. He is a proven liar. He is the archetype typical businessman. We should not trust him or his kind. They destroyed the middle class and now are sucking the life from the few of us that are left above the poverty line. After he finishes, they'll only be billionaire businessmen and us starving people left. Why support him and his theft? You're as bad as him.

the race

[Ralph Spoilsport]

between hyperloop and high speed rail is a false race. YES we need fast trains to move people. What we need MORE is an electrified rail grid to move our stuff around. Most trains run off diesel. The age of cheap oil has been over for quite a while now. We need to shift our infrastructure away from fossil fuels, sector by sector. Moving ALL mass transport (cargo or live, vacuum tube or rail) to electric is of paramount importance, and it needs to start happening now, this way when oil started getting really expensive and scarce in the coming decades, we will be able to transport food and goods. What I think we should see is someone haul 100 boxcars of food from California's central valley to New York City using ONLY electrical engines, no diesel. That would be a landmark moment in history and a real beacon of hope for a future to technical civilisation.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

bio-diesel is cleaner than electric, once you remember where electricity comes from.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

nuclear?

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a passenger rail system that actually connects cities?
Just try taking a train from Washington DC to Huntsville - you can't.
It's the same for many cities in the southeast - a remnant of the Civil War.

Re:the race

[Dcnjoe60]

between hyperloop and high speed rail is a false race. YES we need fast trains to move people. What we need MORE is an electrified rail grid to move our stuff around. Most trains run off diesel. The age of cheap oil has been over for quite a while now. We need to shift our infrastructure away from fossil fuels, sector by sector. Moving ALL mass transport (cargo or live, vacuum tube or rail) to electric is of paramount importance, and it needs to start happening now, this way when oil started getting really expensive and scarce in the coming decades, we will be able to transport food and goods. What I think we should see is someone haul 100 boxcars of food from California's central valley to New York City using ONLY electrical engines, no diesel. That would be a landmark moment in history and a real beacon of hope for a future to technical civilisation.

Unless you have figured out a way to get electricity out of the air, for the forseeable future, we are going to be using fossil fuel, whether it is to power a diesel engine to turn an alternator to run traction motors of a diesel train (that's all the engine does is turn either a generator or alternator to produce electricity) or that electricity comes from power plant, we are still burning some sort of fossil fuel. It will be a long time before solar and wind and other sources can replace fossil fuel plants.

While it may be more economical to generate electricity in a central point and then transmit it where needed, the maintenance of those transmission lines, particularly for thousands of miles of railroad track would more than offset the savings. Basically, railroads already did what you are proposing, 70 years ago, the only difference is that when they switched to electricity, they carry around diesel generators to supply it. That way, they don't have to rely on faulty transmission lines, brown outs, acts of nature, and a slew of other problems that would leave a train dead on the tracks. Yes, diesel fuel is expensive and will only get more expensive, but so with the production cost of all electricity.

Re:the race

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Solar?

Re:the race

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I completely agree. The American passenger rail system is dreadful.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone in DC want to go to Huntsville?

Re:the race

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The problem is: diesel is either made of petroleum (a very limited resource) or biomass (which has a low Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio, and is also based on a limited resource: arable land). Electricity can be generated locally (nuclear, solar, wind, water, tide, geothermal etc) and fed into a decentralised grid. Nuclear uses a limited resource as well, this is true, however, a switch to thorium fuel would permit a fairly graceful transition out of fossil fuel to a solar based (Because wind and hydro are also solar energy) system.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

...diesel is either made of petroleum...

No, it isn't.

Re:the race

[dkf]

Unless you have figured out a way to get electricity out of the air, for the forseeable future, we are going to be using fossil fuel

Wind power exists. Solar power exists. Hydro power exists. Nuclear power exists. None of those are horribly experimental (unlike fusion) so all that's needed is rolling them out. We also know how to move electrical power long distances. We have all the technology already.

It will be a long time before solar and wind and other sources can replace fossil fuel plants.

Not as long as you think. It's not a scientific barrier. It's not a technological barrier. It's not even an engineering barrier. In many ways, the biggest barrier to fixing things is actually nay-sayers like you.

While it may be more economical to generate electricity in a central point and then transmit it where needed, the maintenance of those transmission lines, particularly for thousands of miles of railroad track would more than offset the savings.

No, but you're having to invest a fair bit of capital to get into a system with lower operating costs. That's a classic trade-off. Sometimes, people choose higher operating costs because they can't justify the capital spend, but it's still cheaper to have the power generation units and fuel not needing acceleration and braking. (The other benefit of all-electric trains is that it becomes practical to use braking systems that convert the kinetic energy back into electric energy as you won't have big problems with storing that energy, so reducing costs. Regenerative braking helps a lot.)

Re:the race

[Pallas Athena]

A landmark moment in history? Make that an american landmark in american history. In Europe, electrical trains are the norm, not the exception. And have been for quite a while. As has high speed rail, BTW. Admitted, if the hyperloop gets implemented, even half as good as it looks on paper, you might leapfrog Europe, and that might be 'a beacon of hope'. But electrified rail grid? Come on!

Re:the race

[rgmoore]

American passenger rail is dreadful largely because rail can't compete with air over the distances Americans want to travel. There are some plausible high speed rail routes, like Boston to Washington and maybe LA to San Francisco, but rail can't compete on speed with the longer routes people routinely want to take. Air travel has a substantial advantage over rail for travel from the East Coast to the Midwest, and utterly crushes it for travel from coast to coast.

At the same time, American freight rail is substantially faster and more efficient than European freight rail. That isn't a coincidence, either. On both continents, there's a lot of shared rail that has to serve both passengers and freight. In Europe, passengers take first priority, and in the US freight takes first priority. Passenger service in the US supposedly got much better during the worst of the Great Recession because there was enough less freight that it made a big difference for passenger trains' speed and reliability.

Re:the race

[Dcnjoe60]

The problem is: diesel is either made of petroleum (a very limited resource) or biomass (which has a low Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio, and is also based on a limited resource: arable land). Electricity can be generated locally (nuclear, solar, wind, water, tide, geothermal etc) and fed into a decentralised grid. Nuclear uses a limited resource as well, this is true, however, a switch to thorium fuel would permit a fairly graceful transition out of fossil fuel to a solar based (Because wind and hydro are also solar energy) system.

To be viable, electricity production has to be reliable and scalable on demand. Wind, tides, etc. do not fit that bill. When loads increase, you can't make the wind blow or the tide come in. Those types of energy can supplement the power grid, but they can not sustain it. Nuclear, is fine, except when was the last nuclear plant built in the US, we simply aren't building them anymore, or in any real quantity, so nuclear is a non-starter. Geothermal would work if you actually have a source for it, and possibly solar in the right locations (otherwise it is like wind). With the exception of hydro electric, that leaves the majority of power in the US coming from coal, natural gas and oil fired power plants. All fossil based fuels.

So whether your locomotive gets it's electricity from it's on board diesel engine or overhead wires, it is still using fossil fuel to generate the electricity. Theoretically it should be cheaper to produce that electricity at a large electric plant and the locomotive get it from overhead wires. However, the maintenance of those overhead wires was prohibitively expensive and most electric lines converted to diesel. Even your local utility company doesn't want the maintenance cost of overhead lines and it doesn't need to have pantographs rubbing up against them at high speed adding to the maintenance woes.

Railroads have a bottom line to worry about. If it were more economical for them to run all electric compared to diesel-electric, they would run all electric. They don't however because the total cost of doing so outweighs the savings on diesel fuel.

Re:the race

[Dcnjoe60]

Yes, wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power exist. However new nuclear plants in the US are pretty much at a stand still, so whether technological or political, there are obstacles preventing increased adoption. Of the others, hydro is the cheapest, but we have pretty much dammed up all of the available waterways that are sizeable enough to be used for energy production without causing some other negative issue. Wind and solar both suffer from the same problem, you can't increase capacity on demand. We have no control over when the wind blows or the sky is clear. To be effective, it needs to be reliable which means it needs to be available when we need it. So wind and solar, while they can supplement the power needs, are unlikely to be major providers anytime soon.

The real issue is not how much fossil fuel the railroads use. It's how much fossil fuel all the cars and trucks on the highways use. Whether railroad or barge or even the proposed hyperloop, they are all magnitudes more efficient than cars and trucks. Solve that problem and you solve 80% of the fossil fuel problem.

Re:the race

[idji]

yawn, we do that in Europe every day with hydroelectricity. Welcome to the 20th century.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe, passengers take first priority, and in the US freight takes first priority.

I don't know about other EU countries, but here in Sweden freight has higher priority over passenger trains.

Re:the race

[Anonymous Coward]

I think solar is close. Of course, you get as many hyped solar innovation stories as battery stories, but if the $/Watt proposition gets better with cheap, printable panels, they could become real ubiquitous real fast.

Re:the race

[khallow]

Because they're returning to Huntsville. The DC natives have no reason to go to Huntsville, but the supplicants from Huntsville have a reason to go to Huntsville.

Re:the race

[dbIII]

However new nuclear plants in the US are pretty much at a stand still

Civilian nuclear ate it's children by lobbying to shut down the thorium research, and then didn't put any money into progress with uranium. What little progress that was made since then was due to Westinghouse buying the products of Japanese research but not keeping their R&D people. Without significant government input to restart it civilian nuclear has flatlined and will be dead once the current plants are closed. The private sector has shown no interest in keeping it alive.

Re:the race

[drinkypoo]

diesel is either made of petroleum (a very limited resource) or biomass (which has a low Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio, and is also based on a limited resource: arable land).

Stop saying this. You are grossly misinformed at best. Biodiesel or green diesel can be made from an algae feedstock, and algae can be grown anywhere you can get sun, air, and water — and the water can be fairly "dirty" by most definitions, or have any salinity between basically nothing and the high end of oceanic. The technology was proven at Sandia NREL in the 1980s and estimated to be profitable by the time diesel fuel reached $3/gallon.

Hyper loop

[Anonymous Coward]

These "Hyperloop" ideas have been bouncing around since at least the 1950s. They are nothing new.

...if it turns out after a few years that Musk's system is truly faster and cheaper, there will still be time to pull the plug on high-speed rail.

"Musk's" system will not be cheaper and it couldn't be profitable - let alone break even. It'll be a HUGE money pit. It'll be the Concorde on land - or below land. It won't be able to carry enough passengers to make it worth while. The technology is unproven and doesn't even exist. It would be better to try it in the NE Corridor - NY to Washington DC.

High speed rail would be a better bet because you can carry more passengers at once, the technology is proven (Gee, high speed rail in an earth quake prone area - the Japanese solved all those problems.), the technology is off the shelf - nothing will have to be custom made (very little R&D), it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper to implement, etc ....

You know, the electric car was first invented in the 19th century, private rocket flight in the 1930s and Burt Rutan has been working on it for DECADES, and there were a few online payment systems before PayPal; so why is Musk considered this "visionary" again?

Oh high, great self promotion - like Edison, Jobs, etc ..

Re:Hyper loop

[Anonymous Coward]

so why is Musk considered this "visionary" again?

Because he produced the first electric car that doesn't need massive government subsidies to sell?

Because he produced the first private rocket that has successfully made it to orbit and to the ISS?

Because PayPal is the first truly successful online payment system?

Re:Hyper loop

[PPH]

"Musk's" system will not be cheaper and it couldn't be profitable - let alone break even.

Maybe, maybe not.

But 'profitable' in this era of large transit systems isn't a goal. The system that gives politicians the greatest opportunity to play hide the tax revenue will be the one that succeeds. The politicos will see to that. You need to ask the question: Which system will provide the most opportunities to skim funds for projects ranging from save the gay whales to housing for hobos? That will be the winner. The technology doesn't matter.

Re:Hyper loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he produced the first electric car that doesn't need massive government subsidies to sell?

Other than up to $5,000-$10,000 in federal and state tax credits? And California emission credits?

Re:Hyper loop

[Dcnjoe60]

"Musk's" system will not be cheaper and it couldn't be profitable - let alone break even.

Maybe, maybe not.

But 'profitable' in this era of large transit systems isn't a goal. The system that gives politicians the greatest opportunity to play hide the tax revenue will be the one that succeeds. The politicos will see to that. You need to ask the question: Which system will provide the most opportunities to skim funds for projects ranging from save the gay whales to housing for hobos? That will be the winner. The technology doesn't matter.

Well, then based on your question, the answer would be Musk's system, since it is all new and never been tried, there is ample opportunity to have cost overruns and blame it on the new technology that is paving the way for the future (whether that is true or not). The cost overruns with the high speed rail in California have nothing to do with the technology but everything to do with land acquisition costs and environmental impact studies causing delays. Musk tries to get around the land costs by proposing using the median down the interstate, one could run high speed rail down the median, too, at a significant cost savings. Musk will still have to deal with environmental impact studies and those costs and delays aren't figured in his optomistically low pricing.

High speed rail is not new it has been around for over 50 years in most ot Europe and Japan and is pretty much perfected. It is what the politicians and regulators are doing that are causing the problems with the project in CA. If you want affordable high speed rail, get the politicians out of it. Put differently, if you scrap high speed rail in favor of the hyperloop, there is no reason to expect that the politicians and regulators won't mess it up, either.

Re:Hyper loop

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

These "Hyperloop" ideas have been bouncing around since at least the 1850s. They are nothing new.

FTFY.

Pneumatic Mail, Part 1 - Dieselpunks

Re:Hyper loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than up to $5,000-$10,000 in federal and state tax credits? And California emission credits?

Should he tell people to ... turn down the tax credits?

It's the general problem with things on such a scale... the rules must be made fair for everyone. Therefore they are needed for some, taken advantage of by others, and the latter group is usually used as the example as why the thing, whatever it is, is bad.

Re:Hyper loop

[flyingfsck]

Uhmmm, trains inside tubes have been around since the 19th century. Why would building a train in a tube above ground (the hyper loop) be cheaper to build and run than a train in open air?

Re:Hyper loop

[Cytotoxic]

In the 1970's the variant was a maglev subway from NY to LA. The train would accelerate in a partial vacuum at roughly 1G and then brake at 1G -- peaking at a few thousand mph and making the trip in some ridiculous time like a half an hour. PopSci, PopMech and other sciency magazines all did features on variants. It seems I remember a feature in Scientific American that had a demonstration system built in a high school gym using a ping-pong ball as the train going some 1,500 mph.

both lose

[slashmydots]

Just build teleporters! By the time they get this hyperloop thing running in like 2020 someone will have invented teleporters and then their business model collapses.

Re:both lose

[PPH]

Very funny, Scotty! Now beam down my pants!

Re:both lose

[DigiShaman]

Assuming teleportation can even occur (physics and energy requirements aside), expect it to be used exclusively for non-organic transport first. I'm expecting a lot of accidental transportation happen before it's deemed safe enough for people.

Viva Las Vegas!

[mspohr]

As a test, it might be better to try this out on the LA to Las Vegas route.
This is shorter and land acquisition costs across the desert would be very low.
The route today is currently very heavily traveled so there would be a good market for passengers.
The casinos would love it and would probably fund it.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Anonymous Coward]

On the surface this sounds like a good idea, but the entity that owns the McDonald's in Barstow is gonna fight this tooth and nail. Good luck with that!

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[MyHair]

Isn't LA-LV too hilly for a high-speed hyperloop at ground level or even ground level plus a few meters? I think it would be a vomit comet in a can.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Dcnjoe60]

As a test, it might be better to try this out on the LA to Las Vegas route.
This is shorter and land acquisition costs across the desert would be very low.
The route today is currently very heavily traveled so there would be a good market for passengers.
The casinos would love it and would probably fund it.

The casinos have been pushing for high speed rail for years. Two obstacles - environmentalists and they want somebody else to pay for it. Other than that, they think its a great idea.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[necro81]

If nothing else, the desert would make a good place to build a 50 km development/demonstration track. Open spaces, easy land acquisition, few neighbors to complain, relatively small environmental impact (it is built on pylons, after all), lessened earthquake risk, and abundant sunshine.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[mspohr]

Don't know what the engineering parameters are for the hyperloop but I imagine that they have figured out something reasonable that works with the real world which has hills everywhere.
Quick look at Google Earth shows max elevation 1475 meters with average slope 2.3% for the current I-5 route. I don't know if this is within their parameters but there is a lot of empty space out there for route selection.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[mspohr]

Interesting that there already is a proposal for a high speed rail link:
http://www.xpresswest.com/
http://www.xpresswest.com/network.html (they have grand plans for the entire Southwest).
They have done a lot of work on it but recently hit a block when they couldn't get the Feds to loan them the money:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/transportation-insider/prospects-dim-high-speed-rail-link-la-vegas

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of another problem. Ever get into a car after it's been sitting out in the sun all day? Ouch! Now try it in the desert. Double-ouch!

Do the math (I'm an HVAC engineer). If you run it in the day, cooling costs will be expensive. Musk's paper ignores the issue entirely.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[pepty]

The casinos would love it and would probably fund it.

video poker games and minibars built into the seatbacks which activate as soon as the pods enter Nevada?

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[pepty]

hmm - Tube is shaded by a solar panel, plus you could have Insulation on the sides facing the sun. Partial vacuum inside the tube further insulates the pods. Heat due to all of the air compression the pods do might be a bigger problem.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Arker]

Not sure whether it would matter or not, but the insulation provided by the near vaccum in the tube is likely to make heat more, not less, of a problem. It wont do anything to prevent sunlight from entering and being absorbed to create heat (or to stop the other sources of heat involved here either.) What it WILL do is prevent that heat from dissipating back out. This is why solar-thermal tubes use vaccum - to reduce heat LOSS back into the surrounding area, after the heat is initially converted from sunlight.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[dhanson865]

Silly me, I assumed the tubes would be opaque or at least dense/translucent. In a warm environment wouldn't it be better if they were white material, painted white, or covered in otherwise reflective material?

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the enviromentalists. The earth has NEVER been cleaner than it is RIGHT NOW, so we need to stop giving any attention to the fucking smelly hippie morons. As for payments, just privatize the whole thing. The invisible hand of the market will make it work, guaranteed. It amazes me that shit like this that is so god damned obvious is like pulling teeth with the rest of society. Why the hell don't they GET IT?

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Arker]

If they are opaque they turn the sunlight to heat themselves, and the interior will be insulated from that. But it's still likely to be generating a bit of heat inside, that will have to be dissipated somehow.

Re:Viva Las Vegas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it a steel tube? I don't think the sun is going to penetrate the near 1 inch thick steel.

neither

[stenvar]

They are both a waste of money.

Re:neither

[Frosty Piss]

They are both a waste of money.

Yes, that's how the Europeans feel about it as well.

Re:neither

[stenvar]

I can't tell whether you're trying to be sarcastic or not, but passenger rail in Europe is a constant political problem: it loses money, it is unreliable, and it carries only a small percentage of overall traffic. So, yeah, Europeans don't feel good about it either. And they would feel even worse about it if they realized how much it costs and how much highway congestion it causes (because all the freight traffic that isn't traveling by rail ends up clogging up the highways).

Re:neither

[Dcnjoe60]

They are both a waste of money.

Yes, that's how the Europeans feel about it as well.

Not just the Europeans, but Asia, too. Pretty much the US is the only country that hasn't embraced high speed rail, something that has been available everywhere else for 50 years. Even the passenger trains of the 1920s ran faster than today's trains.

Re:neither

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're wrong. Can you cite a news story? One that isn't in some right-wing rag?

Re:neither

[Anonymous Coward]

HSR is reliable and breaks even / makes a profit in France. That's the whole point of public investment, you don't have to care about the next quarter's profit.
I checked the UN's report a few years ago, the US has sub-standard infrastructures, and it costs the economy dozens of billions a year. I'll find you the link.

The richest state not being able to provide basic infrastructure like efficient railways for political reasons is a sign a huge failure.
Countries like Algeria and Morroco are planning HSR here, South East asian countries set up projects as soon as they can. The US will be the last country in the world without it.

Re:neither

[xaxa]

I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA: the USA has much more long-distance freight movement. I assume -- tell me if I'm wrong -- that someone sending food across California doesn't ship it by rail. The extra time + logistics (farm - road - rail - road - shop/warehouse at worst) isn't worthwhile.

Europe has much less inter-state freight movement, and thus there's less advantage to rail freight. See: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics (and, as it points out, there's a lot of freight carried by sea, and no statistics on that).

The blue and yellow diagram shows that most freight in western European countries is national, which means the maximum distance is less than the average width of a US state.

The whole EU moved 2.3 trillion tonne-km by all transport modes. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_usage_statistics_by_country#Freight_rail_by_billions_of_tonne-kilometers shows the US moved 2.4 trillion tonne-km by rail alone!

Re:neither

[Anonymous Coward]

Refrigerated rail transport is used for 50% of the agricultural products produced in California.

Re:neither

[stenvar]

I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA

I don't know what point you're trying to make. The US rail system is used almost to capacity for freight; as you point out, the US moves more freight by rail than the entire EU by any mode. That's a good thing, it's an efficient use of US rail lines. European rail systems are used much more for passenger transport and European highways are clogged with freight transport (and European rail systems don't make much of a dent in the usage of personal automobiles either).

The original point of this debate was that people often point to Europe to say how wonderful passenger rail supposedly is. But, actually, the experience in Europe provides no support for increasing passenger rail in the US. Europe's passenger rail system is expensive and subsidized, European highways are clogged. Either the European experience doesn't apply to the US, or if it does, it provides an argument against expanding passenger rail in the US.

Re:neither

[Anonymous Coward]

HSR is reliable and breaks even / makes a profit in France. That's the whole point of public investment, you don't have to care about the next quarter's profit.
I checked the UN's report a few years ago, the US has sub-standard infrastructures, and it costs the economy dozens of billions a year. I'll find you the link.

The richest state not being able to provide basic infrastructure like efficient railways for political reasons is a sign a huge failure.
Countries like Algeria and Morroco are planning HSR here, South East asian countries set up projects as soon as they can. The US will be the last country in the world without it.

In SE Asia, there is a political & economic angle to the HSR that is not applicable to the US.

In SE Asia, there are a bunch countries close to each other. Now, if a few of them participated to make an HSR linking China to Singapore, then the network effect will cause more tourists+businesses to flow through those countries, while the others not part of the HSR line being left out. So what happened was, when there was no plan for HSR, none of those countries were in a hurry to make one, but once there was some sign that the plan for the first HSR line might actually come true (with China helping the financing too), there was tremendous pressure for others to hurry up and form plans for their own HSR lines to join the party, for fear of being left out.

There was real political need in China for the HSR line to Singapore, so they will not be 100% reliant on the sea route from Singapore, which could be easily jeopardize/disrupted by the Philippines and the US.

OTOH, there are no such cross-country politicking in the N. America continent. So unless there are HSR lines in the US that may significant affect business flows (tourism was never big in the US as in many SE Asian countries) between different states within the US, nobody is in a hurry to make the investment.

Re:neither

[dbIII]

It looks like the main argument of many posts here boils down to that it doesn't matter if something works in Japan and even if the hated French can get it to work because Americans will find some way to fuck it up. Do you people really think so poorly of your country, or are you just all having a go at California :)

Re:neither

[stenvar]

I have frequently taken trains in Japan, China, France, UK, Germany, and Switzerland. High speed rail does not "work" in any of those countries. It usually takes twice as long to get anywhere than by car, and even with subsidies, it is considerably more expensive than other modes of transportation. The trains are uncomfortable and packed at rush hour, and at most other times are nearly empty. Delays are frequent.

The US has an extensive and fully utilized rail system, and it is used appropriately for freight. I think my country should be smart enough not to repeat the stupid mistakes that those other nations have made in their transportation infrastructure.

Re:neither

[stenvar]

Here is some info about Germany (use Google translate):

http://www.test.de/Deutsche-Bahn-Wie-puenktlich-fahren-die-Zuege-wirklich-1617492-2617492/

Note in particular that people reached only half the train connections without problems.

Here are some more news stories (these probably aren't the best ones to illustrate the problems, just some examples):

http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-dienstleister/deutsche-bahn-bund-will-konkurrenz-auf-der-schiene-foerdern-seite-all/7154850-all.html

http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/wirtschaftsticker/verband-kritisiert-bahn-verspaetungen-schaden-unternehmen_aid_1067256.html

Try some comparisons between car and train routes:

https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=chemnitz&daddr=fulda&hl=en&ll=50.785102,11.228027&spn=2.927746,4.493408&sll=50.951506,11.304932&sspn=2.917317,4.493408&geocode=FUWSBwMdGirFACnpnf0BX0anRzEc0XUJKPjdUQ%3BFaJrAwMdzbeTACktufnpSTSjRzEwq7ApUEMiBA&mra=ltm&t=m&z=8

Note that for trains, you usually lose a couple of hours due to scheduling: they don't run exactly when you need them to, and you need to leave an extra couple of hours to allow for delays and missed connections.

Trust me, I have traveled a lot on trains in Europe. It's great fun as a tourist when you don't have to worry about time or schedules; as a practical means of transportation, it sucks.

Idiotic

[Princeofcups]

What a truly idiotic proposition. A fixed route implies ground travel, which implies buying up tons of land, which implies god awful levels of politics and zoning, which implies buy in from the state and laws to make it possible, etc. etc. It's impossible to even get started. Any proposal has to be approved by the public. You can't just start digging up pristine forest or people's back yards for your rail.

Re:Idiotic

[guises]

Have you read any of the proposals? Do you know anything about either the high-speed rail or the hyperloop? Do you think you're bringing something new to the table with this comment?

Re:Idiotic

[dkf]

You can't just start digging up pristine forest or people's back yards for your rail.

Wrong. This is the sort of thing that eminent domain laws are exactly for. It's usual to try to minimise the use of such things (it's cheaper if the line-owner already owns the land) but that won't stop things if there is a will to make them happen.

Ownership is a social construct. Always was. Such things are subject to change where there is a good enough reason.

Re:Idiotic

[Denogh]

I don't think the poster was referring to the idea of Hyperloop or FSR as idiotic. He's responding to TFA's proposed X-Prize style challenge. The idea of private entities competing for a prize by each building such a system is a bit much, given the political and private property issues involved. Random X-Prize team cannot invoke eminent domain to compete for a prize.

Re:Idiotic

[Denogh]

Which proposals, specifically, are you referring to? Are there already proposals for an X Prize style competition to create a rapid transit system between LA and SF? Or are you getting your panties in a bunch because you are reading comments without the context of TFA?

It's not a fair test.

[Dcnjoe60]

It's not a fair test. Railroads could deliver that speed today if not for government regulation. Even today's high speed rail projects only get rail travel speeds up to what was normal 100 years ago. Now, if you remove all of the restrictions imposed by the government facing railroad then you level the playing field. In addition, it shouldn't be about getting 1 person there in 3 hours. What is more efficient, moving 1 or a small group of people from point a to point b in x amount of time or moving a large group of people from point a to point b?

The Concorde was very good at moving a small group of people from point a to b at a high speed, but it wasn't economically sustainable. The slower jumbo jets, because they could carry more passengers were actually more efficient. So, if your goal is to get a single person from point a to be as fast as you can, then neither high speed rail nor hyperloop are the way to go. Both would be a collosal waste of resources.

OTOH, if your goal is to move the most number of people from point a to b in a reasonably fixed period of time, then that is a different problem and would probably call for a different solution.

Basically, before throwing money at a problem, you should be sure you have defined the problem you want solved. Otherwise, you might just pay a lot of money for a solution that you don't really need.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[guises]

You're complaining about safety regulations? The big bad government keeps fucking stuff up because it cares too much about people dying, eh? High speed rail in the US can't get up to genuinely high speeds because it's making use of old tracks which can't sustain those speeds. High speed rail in France and Japan manage just fine with their newer tracks, despite all that regulation weighing them down.

The reason why people like rail as a means of high speed transport is because you can move a large number of people relatively quickly and efficiently. If we didn't care about efficiency we could just keep using costly polluting planes to travel everywhere. This is in the hyperloop proposal, in fact - efficiency gains trail off at distances of greater than one thousand miles or so. He suggests sticking with planes to link cities that are further apart.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[xaxa]

It's not a fair test. Railroads could deliver that speed today if not for government regulation. Even today's high speed rail projects only get rail travel speeds up to what was normal 100 years ago.

Rubbish! The fastest train (record) in 1910 was 210.2 km/h (131 mph) -- Germany. It's now 574.8 km/h (357 mph) -- France. The trains used for the latter record are modified TGV trains, to remove some of the safety limits.

For a whole journey: "As of 2007, a TGV service held the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h (173.6 mph)"

Also, government regulation and investment is what's led to zero passenger fatalities on trains in Britain in the last five years. Any accident, or "near miss", is investigated without trying to assign blame, but to identify how it can be prevented in the future.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[Dcnjoe60]

You're complaining about safety regulations? The big bad government keeps fucking stuff up because it cares too much about people dying, eh? High speed rail in the US can't get up to genuinely high speeds because it's making use of old tracks which can't sustain those speeds. High speed rail in France and Japan manage just fine with their newer tracks, despite all that regulation weighing them down.

The reason why people like rail as a means of high speed transport is because you can move a large number of people relatively quickly and efficiently. If we didn't care about efficiency we could just keep using costly polluting planes to travel everywhere. This is in the hyperloop proposal, in fact - efficiency gains trail off at distances of greater than one thousand miles or so. He suggests sticking with planes to link cities that are further apart.

I said nothing about safety standards. Those aren't the regulations delaying it. It is the big bad government messing it up. The railroad right of ways have been there for 100 years. Cities then built up around them. If the state wants a highway to go through that area, the railroad needs to either relocate or build the overpass for the highway. As for high speeds, most rail in California is already welded rail on concrete ties rated for 150mph or greater. The NE is different, not because of the quality of rail, but the sharpness of curves. That is not an issue on the west coast.

I do agree, however, about the efficiency and high speed rail. As for the hyperloop, it is yet to be proven and most experts agree that the costs quoted are vastly understated, not to mention land acquisition. It is unlikely that the state will approve an 800mph missile in a tube above their freeways. While it is unlikely that something will go wrong, if it does, it would be catastrophic. Once you figure in land acquisition costs, the hyperloop quickly approaches the cost of high speed rail and that is before the environmental impact studies and everything else involved.

It is well documented that what has driven up California's high speed rail cost are political manipulations of the route along with land speculation. All of a sudden a worthless piece of property is valuable if it will force the railroad to go miles out of its way to get around it. There is no reason to expect the same thing would not happen with the hyperloop. Or, if it is permissible to have the hyperloop go down the median of the freeway, why not high speed rail?

Re:It's not a fair test.

[Dcnjoe60]

It's not a fair test. Railroads could deliver that speed today if not for government regulation. Even today's high speed rail projects only get rail travel speeds up to what was normal 100 years ago.

Rubbish! The fastest train (record) in 1910 was 210.2 km/h (131 mph) -- Germany. It's now 574.8 km/h (357 mph) -- France. The trains used for the latter record are modified TGV trains, to remove some of the safety limits.

For a whole journey: "As of 2007, a TGV service held the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h (173.6 mph)"

Also, government regulation and investment is what's led to zero passenger fatalities on trains in Britain in the last five years. Any accident, or "near miss", is investigated without trying to assign blame, but to identify how it can be prevented in the future.

I was referring to train speed in the US, I should have been more clear. The same with the comments about government regulations, those were directed at the US, too, and not with safety issues, but other regulations.

I am actually a proponent of high speed rail, it is a shame that the US, with supposedly the greatest economy and wealth of any nation can't get it done. It doesn't require any new technology, other smaller countries have already done the research and paved the way, we just refuse to do it.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do Americans pretend that they have especially strict regulations? The US is the least regulated market in the western world. And yet so often the least efficient. Most of the problems you whine about come from a lack of regulations, not an excess.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[AmiMoJo]

Concorde was never designed to complete with large jumbos, it was always going to be a premium way to travel. If the US hadn't failed to develop its own supersonic passenger aircraft and then banned it out of spite we might have many such aircraft in operation today.

Re:It's not a fair test.

[Dcnjoe60]

Concorde was never designed to complete with large jumbos, it was always going to be a premium way to travel.

As will be the hyperloop, if it ever gets built.

It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[Above]

Right of way has always been the problem for transportation. Long narrow corridors intersect many landowners. One of the major reasons the transcontinental railroads were able to be built by private industry is that the US Government owned much of the land, and gave it to them. They didn't have to go buy small strips of land from thousands of land owners.

Follow a small road project in your area. Land acquisition will take years, decades usually. There will always be several people who just don't want to sell, either because they like where they are, or don't like the project. Eminent Domain laws in this country were designed in the early 1800's, and really don't fit a modern society at all. Worse, as we see in California, with long haul transportation there are political objections as well. Whole towns and counties that won't cooperate.

There is no practical way for private industry to obtain the land needed to build rail/road/hyperloop in 99.99% of the cases. That's why most private roads are really "public-private partnerships", government gets the right of way, and then leases it to the company for a hundred years or something. If we want more efficient transportation the thing that needs to be debated is eminent domain and how society as a whole handles these issues. Can the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget land, build it in the ocean.

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[Immerman]

Actually one of the benefits of the Hyperloop idea is that it's designed to follow the existing government-owned highway right-of-way except for in a very few places where its path winds too much to allow for the high pod speeds. This is actually an advantage shared by most elevated transport systems - since it's relatively easy to span 100 yards or more between pylons there is minimal impact at ground level which radically reduces both land acquisition and preparation costs, as well as radically reducing environmental impact in sensitive areas and the difficulty of passing through already-developed areas. A farmer is extremely unlikely to be willing to sell a strip of land to build a road that splits his farm in two, but might be far more receptive to selling a few small plots of land to build pylons on and a right-of-way through his airspace. Especially for something like the Hyperloop where the near-vacuum tube and air-bearings should make passing pods fairly quiet and invisible

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[jklovanc]

Actually one of the benefits of the Hyperloop idea is that it's designed to follow the existing government-owned highway right-of-way except for in a very few places where its path winds too much to allow for the high pod speeds.

Current government owned right of ways are surveyed for trains and roads. They are not sized for high speed curves. I did some calculations and at 600kph the radius of a curve would have to be 5.7 kms to keep the angular acceleration at 1/2G. Very few, if any, right of ways are surveyed to that standard. Most follow the contours of the land and have many more sharp curves. Once off the right of way it will take a lot to get back on.

difficulty of passing through already-developed areas

The pylons have to touch the ground somewhere? In built up areas there will probably already be something there. Even in the best cases would you want a pylon at your back door and/or a tube over your house? There is also the issue with taller buildings. Keep in mind the angular acceleration issue and you will see that the tube can not change direction very quickly. There will be buildings in the way.

A farmer is extremely unlikely to be willing to sell a strip of land to build a road that splits his farm in two, but might be far more receptive to selling a few small plots of land to build pylons on and a right-of-way through his airspace.

Do you realize how much a pain it is to have pylons in a field? Many fields are watered my moving sprinklers; Tilling, planting and harvesting is done by large machines that are not very maneuverable. An overhead track would still effectively cut the field into two sections. There is a reason why most local power lines follow roads. Too many poles. Usually when you see them going across a field it is to get power to the water pump on the well.

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[westlake]

One of the major reasons the transcontinental railroads were able to be built by private industry is that the US Government owned much of the land, and gave it to them. They didn't have to go buy small strips of land from thousands of land owners.

They were given 6,400 acres of government land for every mile of track. To be sold to private buyers who would generating traffic and revenue for the railroads well into the next century.

Section 3 granted an additional 10 square miles of public land for every mile of grade except where railroads ran through cities or crossed rivers. The method of apportioning these additional land grants was specified in the Act as being in the form of ''five alternate sections per mile on each side of said railroad, on the line thereof, and within the limits of ten miles on each side'' which thus provided the companies with a total of 6,400 acres (2,600 ha) for each mile of their railroad.

Pacific Railroad Acts

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[Above]

I bet if we gave away that much land today to someone who built Hyperloop it would be done in a couple of years.

Re:It's the Right of Way that's the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

A farmer is extremely unlikely to be willing to sell a strip of land to build a road that splits his farm in two, but might be far more receptive to selling a few small plots of land to build pylons on and a right-of-way through his airspace.

Do you realize how much a pain it is to have pylons in a field? Many fields are watered my moving sprinklers; Tilling, planting and harvesting is done by large machines that are not very maneuverable. An overhead track would still effectively cut the field into two sections. There is a reason why most local power lines follow roads. Too many poles. Usually when you see them going across a field it is to get power to the water pump on the well.

Americans complains too much? A pylon in the field would be as much inconvenience as a wind turbine, yet I see no lack on such turbines in Europe standing in the middle of farms. I see lots of power lines going through farms in Europe also.

Yeah, planning the farm machine route around one or two pylons in the field that never moves is SOOOOO difficult!

The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

68 billion for this thing is madness. So anything that undermines the project and shuts it down is in the public interest.

Further, if we're going to build a silly vanity project, I'd much rather have the hyperloop. The hyperloop is at the very least cutting edge and not something out of the 70s. California is supposed to be cutting edge. We deserve better then an over priced crappy train.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. You deserve to pay for a much more expensive, "cutting edge" people mover. Oh, and thanks for building it, I may use it when I visit.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[jklovanc]

We deserve better then an over priced crappy train.

Is a technology that has not even made if to the drawing boards and may not work after spending hundreds of millions on research better? I don't think so. Just because it is cutting edge does not mean it will work.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

Doesn't matter.

The train is about 60 billion too expensive and getting more expensive all the time.

Its also very slow. It won't even go 200mph which is a joke. The plane is vastly superior at that speed.

Bottom line. The train is officially an idea backed exclusively by the ignorant or the corrupt. Anyone with a clue wants to kill the idea unless they're on the take.

So ANYTHING that shuts that project down is in the public interest.

Furthermore, if we are to have a stupid boondoggle vanity project then I want it to be one I can actually be proud of... a 1970s era fast train that is about 10 times over budget doesn't do it for me.

I'm not that stupid.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[jklovanc]

Two wrongs don't make a right. Replacing a bad project with another bad project is not a good idea. The tube project has a small budget but that does not mean that the budget will be met. How can a valid budget be made if the following factors are not taken into account;
1. route and cost of land
2. where the tube will be above ground and below ground.
3. material costs
The budget is a vague estimate the real costs could be 10 to 100 times as much.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

Ah but it does if the second wrong is less wrong and replaces the previous wrong.

If something is 100 points of wrong and I replace it with something that is 10 points of wrong then the idea is 90 points of wrong less.

As to your points... dude.

1. The land is the same as the highway land. So it should only really be station land use since the track land is already being used for highways.

2. The tube will be almost entirely above ground. In fact, it might be above ground at all times. In fact, its mostly going to be elevated. So not only out of the ground but above the ground.

3. Materials costs are lower mostly because the tube is cheaper then the track. It doesn't have to be as precise. Very even precision steal track is expensive. Concrete pipe is not.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[dbIII]

I'm not that stupid.

The other thread that refuted all of your points argues otherwise, unless you are merely pretending to be stupid.

backed exclusively by the ignorant or the corrupt

You couldn't possibly be that stupid and still be capable of typing it so it appears you are doing it for our entertainment. Do carry on.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[jklovanc]

Ah but it does if the second wrong is less wrong and replaces the previous wrong.

Wrong is an absolute not a relative word. The tube technology is just an idea right now and there are many hurdles to get over to even know it it will work. Throwing away less money is still throwing away money needlessly.

1. That assumes that the tubes can follow existing right of ways. That is not valid considering that curves taken at 600kmh are much wider than at 110kph it is doubtful that existing rights of way will work..
2. Have you seen land contours? With all the ups and downs and lefts and rights it will be like a roller coaster. To try to keep the ride smooth the towers could get very tall. There will be places where corners can not be made fast enough and the tube will have to go underground.
3. You are talking a lot of rare earth magnets, high power electronics, light weight materials, etc. Industry is very good at making rails. That can not be said for a technology that has not even been designed yet.

If you have an issue with high speed trains then work against them. Trying to divert attention to another useless technology is the wrong way to do it.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

Penny saved is a penny earned.

This project might stop the bullet train which will save us money.

Its a zero sum game. That's money.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

Sounds like someone is still sore after the last time he got spanked.

I drink your tears, twit.

*flicks frozen peas dbll's forehead*

You are now little more then a sad object of reticule.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[dbIII]

Spanked? People can look at that thread for themselves and see that no such thing happened. Instead you made a bit of noise with no substance and gave the impression of a man angry at the entire world because he can't get laid.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[jklovanc]

It is equally possible that this project will fail and they will go back to the bullet train anyway wasting even more money. A penny thrown away is a penny spent.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

no it isn't... one failed project is likely enough to break the hysteria that caused the first project to get in the first place.

Regardless, its a worthy gamble.

You want to be a purist about it? Then shut down the existing program right now and I'll side with you.

Fail to do that and I'll go to plan B.

End of discussion.

Re:The bullet train is dumb

[Karmashock]

Actually, anyone that is literate can see you failed horribly and fell to making really stupid insults when your argument collapsed.

Whatever, bro. Delude yourself as you please. Anyone with more then two functioning brain cells knows the truth.

oops

[milkmage]

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Big-setback-for-California-high-speed-rail-project-4739710.php

"the agency overseeing the bullet train failed to comply with the financial and environmental promises made to voters when they approved initial funding for the project five years ago."

OP

[Dishevel]

Op is an idiot.

Everyone in California knows that the high speed rail project is crap. Over budget by miles. Will not go to LA or SF. Will not be high speed.

This should never be built.

Monorail....

[Anonymous Coward]

.....Monorail.....Monorail.......Monorail......Monorail.....

Re:Monorail....

[bkmoore]

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
.....

Telecommuting is such a failure.

[mozumder]

This is true.

Nothing beats actual human interaction.

Telecommuting is such a failure.

Nobody wants their human interaction cheapened. If you ever want to build any kind of relationship (sales, groups, fucking, etc..), you actually have to meet people in real life.

Telling someone you want to telecommute is telling someone you aren't worth their time to do something expensive for them

Telecommuting is for people that want to cheapen relationships.

Also, 100% of the population needs to build relationships. It's not a salesman-only thing. You have to build relationships with your boss, your clients, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your government representatives, etc. basically anyone you want to do you good, you need to do good for them.

Only libertarian losers that believe in "freedom" think life shouldn't be about building relationships and think of life as for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to kiss ass to those in power if you want power back.

You can find these sorts of self-absorbed losers on computer sites like Slashdot and Reddit. There is a reason geeks are considered awful people.

Re:Telecommuting is such a failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only libertarian losers that believe in "freedom" think life shouldn't be about building relationships and think of life as for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to kiss ass to those in power if you want power back.

You are such a good laugh. Did you think that your beloved alpha males and people in positions of power got to where they are by not thinking of life as for themselves? You are right in a sense though, those people are very good at building relationships, specifically with chumps just like you who allow them to take credit for your efforts while convincing you it's the right thing to do and that some day all that sweating and ass kissing will be rewarded.

Re:Telecommuting is such a failure.

[ColdWetDog]

Burma Shave.

Re:Telecommuting is such a failure.

[DG]

Uhhh, Dude - the reason why they are called “alpha" males is because *they are in charge*.

All that "relationship building" stuff *works*. It's like you are sneering at *gravity*.

DG

Re:Telecommuting is such a failure.

[khallow]

Only libertarian losers that believe in "freedom" think life shouldn't be about building relationships and think of life as for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to kiss ass to those in power if you want power back.

Ah, yes, the instinctive urge to bash so-called "libertarians" brings out the inner cockroach. Libertarianism has nothing to do with "building relationships," but is merely a philosophy about governance. In a libertarian society, there would be an even greater need to build relationships because you couldn't use the force of the state to insure compliance or seize resources. The mugger doesn't need to build a relationship. While much is made of self-reliance, less is discussed of the new opportunities for building relationships that would exist in a libertarian society.

There's a portion of the population that is for lack of a better word, "introspective". They don't interact well with people or easily build relationships. They aren't naturally libertarians any more than anyone else. So labeling this group as "libertarian losers" just indicates ignorance on your part.

Partial success == partial payment?

[mypalmike]

The money, to be donated by big corporations, would go to the first organization that delivers a live human from Los Angeles to San Francisco

So what do I get for delivering a dead human?

Re:Partial success == partial payment?

[pepty]

Capital punishment is a touchy subject in CA, but execution by public transportation would certainly obviate the difficulties states face in procuring drugs for lethal injections. However, this particular competition would probably get more popular support if it was proposed for a Dallas-Houston route rather than LA-SF.

Re:Partial success == partial payment?

[Immerman]

20 years?

Re:Partial success == partial payment?

[Anonymous Coward]

A local anaesthetic, a small scalpel and a suction pump would obviate the need for lethal injections too, but you don't see them proposing that either.

Proven that it's wrong for that area

[SuperKendall]

"conventional" high-speed rail is a proven concept in use today in many non-North American countries.

I have used high speed rail in Europe, including Germany.

It's nice but usually slower than planes.

The hyperloop has the chance to be significantly better than airplane travel, at a reduced environmental (and noise) impact compared to a train.

I am totally against the California rail project because even the current high estimates are probably 5x lower than actual cost. But if we build the hyperloop, we advance all kinds of technology and leapfrog the state of the art in ground travel.

Re:Proven that it's wrong for that area

[Kjella]

I have used high speed rail in Europe, including Germany. It's nice but usually slower than planes.

No doubt the plane is much faster with about 500 mph, but who arrives first highly depends on the distance. If you're going city center to city center and need to take the train to the airport, check in, board, fly, collect luggage and take another train to the other city center then any train that takes less than three hours is probably faster. For a napkin calculation you can probably keep a 100 mph average with a 150-200 mph train, so around 300 miles starts being the threshold where you'd rather fly than go by train. New York - Washington DC and LA to San Francisco seem like reasonable HSR distances, obviously if you're going from coast to coast then it's way, way faster by airplane.

Understanding

[SuperKendall]

If you waste money to procure a handshake, you shouldnt be in business.

If you don't understand the true value of a real face to face handshake is at times immeasurable, you DEFINITELY should not be in business.

Re:Understanding

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the true value of a real face to face handshake is at times immeasurable..."

At times, but not at all times. I interviewed for my current job over video. I didn't meet a single interviewer (including the hiring manager) in person. Interviewers were from around the US and Europe. Multiple rounds over several weeks. It worked perfectly. I got the offer, I accepted the offer, and I work remotely. I worked for my boss for 9 months before I met him in person. Most of my calls with my colleagues and manager are via video. In over a year, I have been in the same room as my manager on about 4 days (1 day on one trip, 3 days on another trip). And you know what? It works just fine.

Good video (enterprise telepresence stuff) is so good you can reduce your travel dramatically and still maintain the feeling of being in contact, in person.

So high speed travel? Who cares? It really isn't needed as much as it used to be.

He did say five hours...

[SuperKendall]

Google Maps reports LA-->SF at 382 mi, 5 hours 35 minutes.

He said "if it were not for CHP, I could make it in five every time".

Shaving 35 minutes off a five hour trip is really easy if you drive reasonably (i.e. non-dangerously) fast.

In fact pretty much all the time I am somewhere five-ten minutes per hour faster than the Google estimate.

Re:He did say five hours...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what Google Maps tells you, it is not 5 hours and 35 minutes from SF to LA. I have driven the SJ/LA route at all hours of the day and night, weekday and weekend, and it is a minimum of 6 hours. Add the extra distance of SF and it is over 6 hours, closer to 7 if during commute hours, and 8 if there is an accident. God help you if you are stuck in snow at the Grapevine, or it is closed.

Re:He did say five hours...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what Google Maps tells you, it is not 5 hours and 35 minutes from SF to LA. I have driven the SJ/LA route at all hours of the day and night, weekday and weekend, and it is a minimum of 6 hours. Add the extra distance of SF and it is over 6 hours, closer to 7 if during commute hours, and 8 if there is an accident. God help you if you are stuck in snow at the Grapevine, or it is closed.

How about early Sunday morning? That's usually the best time to go for a fast run on an empty freeway.

Does not NEED them

[SuperKendall]

Other than up to $5,000-$10,000 in federal and state tax credits

The point is the Telsa is the first electric car that does not NEED to subsidies to sell, not that they do not exist - people would still be buying the car without those credits.

Fundamentally flawed

[Immerman]

Even worse the fundamental idea of is deeply flawed - Hyperloop, high speed rail, or anything else that requires serious infrastructure have most of their costs up front - in order to qualify for the competition the system already has to be fully completed. You could skimp on the trains/pods/etc, but those are a tiny fraction of the overall cost.

So what exactly would be the point of a competition? Even if you could somehow fund all the competitors, you're building a bunch of alternate solutions to a problem that can likely only financially support one of them, meaning that at best all other contenders ave been a colossal waste of resources, and at worst the competition drives *all* the solutions out of business.

Re:Fundamentally flawed

[FatLittleMonkey]

It's worse than that. Using a specially-built one-off single-passenger vehicle on existing infrastructure would meet the proposed 3hr goal. A race car on exisitng (but cleared) roads. A specially built rail vehicle on existing (but cleared) lines. I'm sure someone could come up with a single-use vehicle for a few tens of millions, to claim a $10 billion prize.

Re:Fundamentally flawed

[dbIII]

Even worse the fundamental idea of is deeply flawed ... or anything else that requires serious infrastructure have most of their costs up front

I think that very common attitude sums up why China is succeeding and the USA is slowly sliding into a hole. After reading all those SF stories (and post-roman history) about scavenging in the ruins of a formerly successful society I never expected to see people wanting to run a country that way.

Science Fiction, meet Science fact

[Provocateur]

Commuting 300 mph to another city? That's science.

To work at a job there? Now that's fiction.

Re:Science Fiction, meet Science fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Comment of the day, really. +6 Insightful

It's all wrapped up in the Name

[Anonymous Coward]

"HYPE"rloop...

Airline Industry

[Suffering Bastard]

I wonder if the airline industry would try to stop or slow this down. Every ticket sold to get from NY to LA via hyperloop would be a ticket not sold to an airline company.

Given the choice between waiting in long lines to be TSA manhandled, sitting on a runway for who knows how long, then suspended in air for more hours by a machine that could fail in one of any of a million ways and plummet from 30,000 feet for 15 minutes of sheer terror before violent death -- or getting on a sleek new sexy technology ground transport that gets me there sooner and safer, I think I know where I'd be more willing to put my dollars.

Not that flying will go away, of course, but this could eat considerably into airline company profits.

Re:Airline Industry

[jcr]

I wonder if the airline industry would try to stop or slow this down.

They have no need to do so. Aircraft buried the rail industry because their advantages are compelling. Politicians' fantasies have no effect at all on economic reality.

-jcr

Re:Airline Industry

[dbIII]

It looks to me like aircraft buried rail due to the way rail was run. Aircraft did an end run around a complacent monopoly in each case and the monopolies screamed for help from government instead of doing something to compete. The politicians' fantasies were of air travel and they had a huge effect on economic reality by paying for airports with public money.
The damage an unpowered runaway train can do shows clearly how little energy you need to expend to move a lot of stuff about by rail. Somewhere on a route there is an infrastructure crossover point where air makes sense and rail doesn't and vice versa

Re:Airline Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the airline industry would try to stop or slow this down.

They have no need to do so. Aircraft buried the rail industry because their advantages are compelling. Politicians' fantasies have no effect at all on economic reality.

-jcr

I know, right? So long as the government continues to make up deficits in FAA funding not covered by usage taxes, provide no-interest government-backed loans to build and expand airports, subsidize routes to rural airports through the EAS program, and occasionally bail out the airline industry like it did after 9/11, the obvious economic advantages of air travel will guarantee its success.

Legacy

[Snufu]

The smog to fog route should be half commuting endeavor and half civic, aesthetic milestone. It should not be viewed only as another way to shuttle business travelers around, but also as a high speed, low impact way to experience one of the most magnificent stretches of earth connecting two significant cities. The route should follow El Camino Royal (US101) with additional forays along the coast.

Not practical, not cheap, but things that are enduring and meaningful are rarely easy to do. Our legacy to future generations should be more than decaying strip malls and overburdened highways.

Don't Forget: Excess Electricty

[wjcofkc]

In this debate, people have forgotten an important point that Musk made early on: In being solar powered, the system is expected to yield enough excess electricity to make it worth contributing to the grid. I'm not going to get into the debate itself, but for those of you tossing the ball back and forth, you should consider this point in your arguments, whether you think that particular claim is feasible or not.

Re:Don't Forget: Excess Electricty

[Anonymous Coward]

In this debate, people have forgotten an important point that Musk made early on: In being solar powered, the system is expected to yield enough excess electricity to make it worth contributing to the grid. I'm not going to get into the debate itself, but for those of you tossing the ball back and forth, you should consider this point in your arguments, whether you think that particular claim is feasible or not.

Hi, I'm going to fuck you in the ass, but unlike the other guy who will be fucking you in the ass, I'll be tossing silver coins out of my pocket some of which you might be able to grab as you're gasping for breath. I'm not going to get into who should be fucking you in the ass, but when you consider the possibilities, you should consider that I'll be tossing silver coins out of my pocket while fucking you in the ass, whether you think that particular claim is feasible or not.

Re:Don't Forget: Excess Electricty

[khallow]

What was the important point in that? If solar power was such a significant advantage, then we could just build it without attaching a transportation system to it. Sometimes there is synergy between otherwise uneconomical systems merged together, but usually it goes the other way with an aggregate system that is worse off than either system taken separately.

Frankly, I think he's better off just dropping the solar power angle and tying to the grid for his power needs.

Hold it right there.

[jcr]

We should pursue all promising new options for efficient mass transit,

That precludes the state's "high speed rail" boondoggle, then.

-jcr

What about capacity

[svirre]

The largest issue I have with the hyperloop proposal is its rather pitiful capacity. At the highest rate proposed, with once cart every 30 seconds it still only transpoprts ~3600 PAX/hr, which is about on par with a 3 lane highway and that is before mixing in the car carriers.

Bog standard high-speed train lines do 30000 PAX/hr routinely, and while the hyperloop carts might be able to scale some, based on how they do the air bearing and that I think linked carts likely will not work, I doubt they can scale much other than by building multiple tubes (which adds upp the most expensive component in the system)

The biggest value add by public transport is to be able to free up the excessive area consumption an automobile based society incurs, but to do this the public transport in question better beat the automobile in land use with a wide margin.

Looking at speed alone is a bit of a red herring. faced with increased transport speeds people have always responded by traveling further which just escalates the problem of increased land use and increased energy use for transport. Throughput pr. unit land is likely a better metric for sustainable travel solutions than raw speed.

Re:What about capacity

[Animats]

The largest issue I have with the hyperloop proposal is its rather pitiful capacity. At the highest rate proposed, with one cart every 30 seconds it still only transports ~3600 PAX/hr, which is about on par with a 3 lane highway and that is before mixing in the car carriers.

Musk writes in his proposal: "Assuming an average departure time of 2 minutes between capsules, a minimum of 28 passengers per capsule are required to meet 840 passengers per hour." So it's even worse than 3600PAX/hr.

Compare current flight capacity. At peak, there are 5 flights an hour from SF to LA. The most common plane on that run is a Boeing 737 with 137 seats, for 685 seats/hour. So the Hyperloop has more capacity than the current aircraft. Comparing with other tunnel systems, Eurotunnel moves about 30 trains per hour, and their trains are 400 meters long with a seating capacity of 750 on the passenger-only Eurostar trains. Hyperloop is way below those levels.

Overcapacity is a big issue for US high speed rail. It's not clear there's a market for far more passenger transport between LA and SF than is currently available.

Even at the low rate, there's a Hyperloop capsule every 2 minutes. It's not clear you could reduce that interval by much. The capsules to be at least one emergency stop distance apart, plus a safety margin. Also, the stations will need multiple tracks and airlocks, so that loading and airlock pump-down time can be overlapped for multiple trains. The system will definitely need low-speed switches (not too hard) and maybe high-speed switches (big, but buildable). Musk oversimplifies those issues.

It's amusing that the proposed location of the "San Francisco" station (p. 51) is not in or near San Francisco. It's near Musk's Tesla plant in the East Bay.

Re:What about capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, Eurotunnel? 30tph? No. Four trains per hour on the ferry route just across the channel. And when you switch to talking about Eurostar's 750 passenger trains that run from capital to capital there's only one of those per hour most of the day. You could never run 30tph on that line. Ten trains per hour is plausible in theory on a high speed line but I wouldn't want to promise it to anybody because most days they'd be disappointed.

30tph is the sort of figure you see for a metro system. The New York subway, parts of London Underground, that sort of thing. A high volume, heavily automated metro service can hit 30tph, thus a train arriving every 2 minutes, although if anything goes wrong there will be hell to pay because there's no margin for error.

The other place you'd see 30tph, or even slightly more is at a terminus where many lines come together. A big railway terminus like Waterloo in London might hit 60tph during an unsustainable peak. But it does that by having a lot of different lines, going to different places and by letting trains stack up (or working from unreplaced stock) at peak periods, relying on a few hours between peaks to fix things.

Re:What about capacity

[Animats]

The original design capacity for Eurotunnel was supposed to be 30 trains per hour in each direction. But with the present signalling system (classic fixed block), it's only 20 trains per hour. They never reach that, though, much to the annoyance of Eurotunnel's financial backers. They have far more capacity than they need. Surprisingly, the tunnel hasn't totally replaced car ferries, although it did put the hovercraft ferries out of business. There are shuttles, through passenger trains, and freight trains all being funneled into the tunnels.

This is a real worry for SF to LA high speed rail. If built, it may be way underutilized.

The lever you have pulled, "Brakes," is no longer

[Joe_Dragon]

The lever you have pulled, "Brakes," is no longer in service. Please make a note of it.

It's moderated funny but coming true

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I've seen police checkpoints when I was boarding an Amtrak train already and there was a remarkable case where the TSA searched people *leaving* a train.

The TSA gets to define its own scope. Guess what happens when a bureaucracy can do that.

uh huh

[Goldsmith]

1) you really expect to get $10 billion in corporate donations?

2) anyone who can make it through the state of California's environmental, legal and political gauntlet and build ANY dedicated passenger train system from LA to San Francisco deserves an award.

The problem is not that we don't know how to build great trains, the problem is that we don't know how to build a large project across multiple counties in California.

Re:uh huh

[dbIII]

anyone who can make it through the state of California's environmental, legal and political gauntlet and build ANY dedicated passenger train system from LA to San Francisco deserves an award.

It's classic third world impossible red tape which is in place to ask for a bribe so that the red tape magically vanishes. Did you really think Enron was the only sign of such corruption?

Autobahn

[Anonymous Coward]

200 mph. Separated lanes. Specially licensed drivers and strict tech specs and inspection requirements for their cars. Simple. Much Cheaper. Many Americans who actually want it. Bonus points for Musk to front this idea through his Tesla corporation, and put inductive charging into the road for any electric car--no crony "Tesla only" or patented chargers please.

Elon Musk is a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineering reasons for the existence of a rail network test the true intelligence of an individual. The concept of the rail-road is so simple, its very simplicity itself makes morons think it must be a sub-optimal solution. You see, the really stupid think engineering is about conquering the most difficult problems, and then using extreme methods to keep the issues arising from such difficulties in check. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The best engineering always seeks simplicity. Sure, the road to simplicity may involve insane amounts of research (go look at the manufacturing of integrated microelectronics as an example of this). But the idea end result is a solution as clean and straightforward as possible.

The present day problem with our railways has NOTHING to do with technology, but a political refusal to use this form of transport efficiently. Anyone with any education (clearly not this idiot Musk) knows that railways in most First World nations came under massive attack by those set to make their fortunes in the road systems. The overhaul that Victorian designed railways so desperately needed thus never really happened, in order to ensure that transport by road and air appeared a preferable choice. Laws were even passed to ensure that new rail-lines could not be created if existing home/business owners would not sell their land.

Today, it is trivial to increase the speed of rail transport to levels vastly beyond those currently available in nations like the USA or UK. However, building such high speed rail networks would require the actual intent to encourage people and freight to travel this way. Such a transport system would be insanely good for the general citizen, but very bad for the corrupt elite that rule over them. Thus we have self-defined elitist scum like Musk muddying the waters in an attempt to ensure high-speed rail networks are NEVER built in the USA.

Here's a clue for the clueless. How many supersonic passenger services are running today? I mean, we all KNOW that supersonic planes are 'easy' to build, don't we. So why do your Jumbo Jets travel so slowly. Shouldn't Musk be cluing us in here? The answer is obvious to anyone will real engineering skills. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it can be done cheaply, reliably, repeatedly or with sane levels of future maintenance. Musk is just another highly placed individual doing everything he can to prevent America emulated China in its 21st Century Rail projects.

Re:Elon Musk is a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the conspiracy theory argument of why rail travel has failed. Then you completely contradict yourself in the final paragraph. The last paragraph explains why exactly why high speed rail will never succeed in a large nation such as the USA.

Hyperloop...

[HockeyPuck]

Giving people the chance to be stranded 50ft off the ground a few miles outside of Coalinga while the scent of 5000 heads of cattle wafts your way...

Simple math

[jklovanc]

My main issue with the tube technology is that all the articles seem to assume that the tube will be straight. In the real world there are very few straight lines. Between any two distant points there will be mountains, valleys, cities, rivers, hills, houses, etc. The tube will not be straight unless you want to build it underground all the way then it becomes very expensive. Even underground there will be issues with valleys where the tube may have to be suspended. To me it is a given that the tube will have to have curves in it which brings me to the math of curves.

The acceleration of an object moving along a curve is a= v^2/r or r = v^2/a. If the object is moving at 600kph and we want to keep the acceleration to 1/2G at most the radius would be 167^2/4.9 = 5.7 km. That would mean to alter course by 45 degrees it would take 9kms. That is a very long curve. It is even worse in that the curve would have to have an in run and an out run to make the transition manageable. Remember that these curves are not just left and right. If one goes over the brow of a hill negative G's could be an issue. The human body can not handle feeling lighter very well. people get sick pretty fast.

To keep these smooth curves there will be very few places where the tube will be sitting on solid ground. Much of the time it will be under ground or suspended in the air. Both of those make construction and maintenance very expensive.

Re:Simple math

[Anonymous Coward]

there will be very few places where the tube will be sitting on solid ground.

There will be no places where the tube is sitting on the ground. Learn to read.

The Only Way to Make Things Worse

[kj_chaotic]

So, the key to high speed rail is to encourage TWO projects with a total estimated cost of $75B. And to do this by adding incentives worth ANOTHER $10B. All for a transportation mode that has not been well excepted historically. Wow. Why not.

Already been done!

[Anonymous Coward]

California Representative Willie Brown drove from SF to LA in 3 hours ~30 years ago in a Porsche 911 Carrera.

Why between LA & SF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there that much auto and air traffic between SF & LA to justify either of these projects?

Re:Why between LA & SF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the idea is to leverage the presence of these two major markets within the same state by making them virtually closer together. More business opportunities and easier management will arise.

the "false choice"

[khallow]

Elon Musk thinks California should kill its $68 billion high-speed rail project and build his $7.5 billion Hyperloop instead. It's a false choice. We should pursue all promising new options for efficient mass transit, and let the chips fall where they may; if it turns out after a few years that Musk's system is truly faster and cheaper, there will still be time to pull the plug on high-speed rail.

I would have pulled the plug on California's HSR project some time ago. It has already demonstrated sufficient failure and cost ballooning for me. But let's drag this out and spend more money.

Just remember that you probably could have funded Musk's project completely on what they'll squander on the HSR project before it is canceled. He might be a bit off on the $7.5 billion figure and he does have a tendency to promise more than he can deliver, but he's done a good job in the past of controlling R&D cost growth in his engineering projects.

Big Corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny how Slashdotter's and the editors are always pissing on large evil corporations EXCEPT when they want them fund something. If I was the CEO of one of those corporations I would say, "FUCK OFF!"

Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[mozumder]

So, in government, "building relationship" is manifested in what's called "taxes."

You kiss other people's ass in society through paying taxes and building services for them for their benefit. The millions of other members of society will then benefit you in return.

This is also known as "socialism."

Libertarianism prevents building relationships because it explicitly prohibits paying taxes and building government.

That is because libertarianism is the "me first" idea of governance: First give me what I want by not taking my tax dollars, then I will think about benefitting you later.

Really, there is a reason libertarians are considered awful people, and that's why you see them pop up so much among other awful people like in nerd sites or isolated gun or rural cultures. Try finding a libertarian among a Vogue Magazine audience or in New York City, where everyone knows to socialize.

Libertarians just don't believe in socialization, and that, by definition, makes them terrible human beings. And because they're terrible human beings, they're going to be stuck with poorer economics around them. That is why libertarians tend to exist in weaker social ares, like poor, less educated rural environments. Libertarians will always hail from the ignorant folk, as there has never been a libertarian genius. Once a person starts to think more about it, they abandon libertarianism.

Libertarianism is for people that doesn't know that it's ok to sacrifice a pawn (their taxes) to save the king (their health care), for example. They don't know that government is a giant Costco that actually benefits them in the long-run, because they see the incremental failure that is them losing tax dollars. Libertarianism really is about the "me first, then others" philosophy. It is intrinsic to their failure.

Seriously, learn to fucking think of others before you think of yourself first. It's actually better for you that way.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[khallow]

I read this and it just sounds like a parody of human thought. Paying taxes is a "relationship"? That's a mockery of the word. Though I must admit that I wouldn't mind enjoying the same relationship with your bank account that your favorite tax collection agency has. But maybe you should put a bag on your head first.

And all these straw men libertarians? Can't say that I really care what you think there. One can study actual libertarian philosophy, discussion and such. What you claim just isn't true.

For example, let's consider your second to last sentence.

Libertarianism is for people that doesn't know that it's ok to sacrifice a pawn (their taxes) to save the king (their health care), for example. They don't know that government is a giant Costco that actually benefits them in the long-run, because they see the incremental failure that is them losing tax dollars. Libertarianism really is about the "me first, then others" philosophy. It is intrinsic to their failure.

So here, there's some naive notion that government is a giant store where you get more out than you put in. Ignoring that this analogy is so broken as to be unrecognizable, where's the demonstration that you will get more out than you put in?

Last I checked the US government together with the assistance of about every developed world government has the capability to spy on every phone or internet connection in a vast part of the world. I don't want that in my shopping cart. That's what your Costco delivers. You may not have noticed, but libertarians tend to be very paranoid about this sort of thing. And I think there's great reason to be fearful of what the governments of the world will do with this power.

Then there's the problem of governments not following the rules. A lot of people get that it's bad when businesses don't follow the laws and aren't punished for it. But who's supposed to be enforcing those laws? It's not the libertarians screwing this one up, but the same government providing all those Costco benefits.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

So here, there's some naive notion that government is a giant store where you get more out than you put in. Ignoring that this analogy is so broken as to be unrecognizable, where's the demonstration that you will get more out than you put in?

Ignoring the fact that you are extending his analogy is a ridiculous level just to mock it, I'll explain how you get more than you put in.

The simple fact is that most people do get far more out of the government than they put in. That's how taxes work for most people. If I get cancer the government will treat me for free, even though the cost is likely to be far more than I have ever paid in to the healthcare system by taxation. Even if I don't get cancer I'm still better off because I didn't have to buy expensive cancer insurance that would probably have stiffed me anyway.

This is possible because taxation is somewhat proportional to income, and because companies that wish to operate in and benefit from our society also pay taxes. I realize this is quite offensive to some people who view it as theft, but I'm not debating that. I'm just pointing out the obvious way that the majority get more out than they put in.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[khallow]

Ignoring the fact that you are extending his analogy is a ridiculous level just to mock it

I wasn't the one comparing a government to a Costco store. Remember what I said about the parody?

The simple fact is that most people do get far more out of the government than they put in. That's how taxes work for most people.

If I get cancer the government will treat me for free, even though the cost is likely to be far more than I have ever paid in to the healthcare system by taxation.

That is never for "free" - even you reverse yourself in the next sentence fragment. Why even say that word? Even if we consider the remote possibility that you never have to pay net positive taxes due to circumstance, someone has to pay for that service.

Even if I don't get cancer I'm still better off because I didn't have to buy expensive cancer insurance that would probably have stiffed me anyway.

How if you had to buy cheaper health insurance instead? It's amazing how so many thinks the current, ridiculously priced US system is the only way to do health insurance. The US also had a health insurance system right after the Second World War, but it took a far smaller part of the economy back then.

This is possible because taxation is somewhat proportional to income, and because companies that wish to operate in and benefit from our society also pay taxes.

This is possible because someone makes a lot more than you do and they employ a bunch of people. If that changes, say because your government drives out enough businesses with regulation and high operating costs (such as via taxes), then you don't get that nice health care any more.

I'm just pointing out the obvious way that the majority get more out than they put in.

And I'll point out the obvious. That what you claim is not obvious. For example, in the US, I get to pay for corruption, NSA spying, onerous regulations, and a political class that is fairly hostile to just about everything I care about. Those things have negative value for me.

And the same government that does all that, wants to do my health care too? I'm not falling for it.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

That is never for "free" - even you reverse yourself in the next sentence fragment. Why even say that word? Even if we consider the remote possibility that you never have to pay net positive taxes due to circumstance, someone has to pay for that service.

Pedantry. In the UK we say that treatment is "free at the point of delivery", i.e. you pay the hospital nothing. They don't check your wallet before checking your pulse. Obviously it isn't free in the sense that the government pays for it out of taxation, but we are just arguing over the meaning of words here.

How if you had to buy cheaper health insurance instead? It's amazing how so many thinks the current, ridiculously priced US system is the only way to do health insurance. The US also had a health insurance system right after the Second World War, but it took a far smaller part of the economy back then.

I could never afford it. I have chronic health issues. Insurance companies won't touch me, unless I agree to exclude those issues. It's hard to see how any insurance company would take on someone it knows will take out more money than will pay in, especially if there were no regulation preventing them from doing things like genetic testing or refusing people with certain illnesses.

Insurance companies are in it for the money. You are their cattle. They are only interested while you are healthy.

This is possible because someone makes a lot more than you do and they employ a bunch of people. If that changes, say because your government drives out enough businesses with regulation and high operating costs (such as via taxes), then you don't get that nice health care any more.

You made two mistakes. Firstly, it is possible because society has educated people to a level where there are skilled staff available to these companies and has kept them healthy enough to work. A lot of those companies are benefit scroungers anyway, paying so little that their employee's wages have to be topped up by the government just to allow them to live and carry on providing labour.

Secondly, if operating costs went up some companies left, that would just allow others to come in and take up their share of the market. If Ford doesn't want to meet European safety standards or pay taxes in Europe they can leave. There are plenty of other manufacturers who are happy to take their business. All you do by minimizing taxes and regulation to attract business is allow yourself to be exploited so some rich prick can pay himself a few million extra this year.

If you don't believe me then look at China. Much less regulation, lower taxes, and yet we still have jobs and a high standard of living in western Europe. All our current problems are of our own making, nothing to do with shitty low-wage jobs that contribute nothing back moving to shitty low-wage countries.

For example, in the US, I get to pay for corruption, NSA spying, onerous regulations, and a political class that is fairly hostile to just about everything I care about. Those things have negative value for me.

I pay for that stuff too and hate it, but overall it's still a net benefit. Name one country where there is minimal government and regulation and also minimal corruption, democracy, reasonable healthcare and quality of life. Such places don't exist, and can't exist.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[khallow]

If you don't believe me then look at China. Much less regulation, lower taxes, and yet we still have jobs and a high standard of living in western Europe.

For now. It's worth noting that around 1975, there was a vast gap between what the China could do and make and what Europe could do and make. Both got a lot better over the decades, but China definitely is catching up.

In the last decade, it's PPP GDP per capita has doubled compared to 10-20% gains over the same period for most European countries. In twenty years at the current rate, they'll be past a good portion of the poorer European countries. And they'll have overcome those Eurozone trade barriers (like the various ISO standards). Now, obviously, they could hit the same economic walls that Japan and Europe has hit.

I see your bravado as whistling past the graveyard. There's no special reason to employ Europeans or North Americans. They aren't that well educated and the physical infrastructure of those regions just isn't that good, especially for the premium you have to pay. What makes those places special is their legal infrastructure which still makes it relatively easy to live freely, create businesses, and employ people. Throw that away, and you've lost the fundamental advantage of those regions over places like China.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

This is possible because taxation is somewhat proportional to income, and because companies that wish to operate in and benefit from our society also pay taxes. I realize this is quite offensive to some people who view it as theft, but I'm not debating that. I'm just pointing out the obvious way that the majority get more out than they put in.

I think the problem here is that when libertarians argue the societal benefits of taxes, they do so with respect to society, not individuals. Society as a whole does not get more out of taxes than they put in. They get far less (due to corruption, waste, spending on things that don't interest the general populace, etc, etc). For instance, society put a whole lot of money into the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, but saw little actual benefit from them. It is only when you view taxes in the perverse "theft of one individual from another" perspective can a "benefit" actually be achieved.

That's rather ironic, btw, as libertarians are typically seen as the greedy/self-serving ones with liberals being the generous/society-focused ones -- yet liberals couldn't give a damn about society as a whole, so long as money is being transferred from the affluent to the less affluent.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

I could never afford it. I have chronic health issues. Insurance companies won't touch me, unless I agree to exclude those issues. It's hard to see how any insurance company would take on someone it knows will take out more money than will pay in, especially if there were no regulation preventing them from doing things like genetic testing or refusing people with certain illnesses. Insurance companies are in it for the money. You are their cattle. They are only interested while you are healthy.

If insurance worked on a contractual basis, this would be easily solved. Basically, when you enter into a long-term agreement with a health insurance company, ensure that the contract can't be trivially terminated by either party. This would require a very small amount of regulation, not a government takeover of healthcare. To handle the case of "lock in", require that other insurance companies allow transfers of people with current policies with other companies w/ a cap on premium increases vs the average industry rate. Piece of cake.

There are always ways to solve real problems with a minimal amount of governance. However, our politicians rarely resort to those (which is why every bill is thousands of pages long, and why our tax code requires a team of accountants to decipher).

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

You are looking at it in the wrong terms. The majority of individuals get more out than they put in. Those who don't are not greatly harmed because they are still rich. In fact those who get less monetary value out for their own personal use still benefit from living in a relatively content and healthy society.

You, like many people, made the mistake of trying to put a dollar value on everything. You know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as we like to say.

There is also the assumption that having private companies provide services at the request of individuals would be more efficient than having the government doing it. Apart from the difficulty of organizing certain services there is no evidence that this method would be any better. Do you have any evidence?

yet liberals couldn't give a damn about society as a whole, so long as money is being transferred from the affluent to the less affluent.

It's not about transferring wealth. It's about stopping theft.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

So if you can't afford it when you are young you are fucked. If there is any tiny get-out or loophole in the contract you are fucked. If the company goes bust you are fucked. If the company just decides to screw you because by the time you get your day in court you will have died of cancer anyway you are fucked.

Insurance is already bad enough with the current level of regulation. People get screwed all the time. If you think less regulation is going to improve that you are delusional.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[khallow]

So, in government, "building relationship" is manifested in what's called "taxes."

Another way to see how absurd your suggest is, is to consider a previous statement you made.

Nothing beats actual human interaction.

Telecommuting is such a failure.

Nobody wants their human interaction cheapened. If you ever want to build any kind of relationship (sales, groups, fucking, etc..), you actually have to meet people in real life.

So what sort of person would rather have "human interaction" with their favorite tax collection agency rather than the far less baneful choice of sending them a payment every now and then. You have to be missing that survival instinct.

And of course, there's the distant and remote interaction of Slashdot. I'm not particularly interested in having "human interaction" with you. And since you're posting on Slashdot, it seems to me that you reciprocate. So why are you baiting libertarians rather than having those meaningful human interactions you seem to want?

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what sort of person would rather have "human interaction" with their favorite tax collection agency rather than the far less baneful choice of sending them a payment every now and then.

Just to answer you... normal people do it. Maybe you spent too much time on slashdot amongst other logical people, but normal people aren't logical.

Human interaction isn't about making logical sense. It's about "feeling good". It's about following irrational emotions. It's like the concept of being "cool" or popular amongst kids (do they still use the word cool? That kinda gave away my age...). You would think people grow out of it, but... most of them don't (on the other hand, seeing as a big part of politics is just being the popular kid, there's no logical reason for them to grow out of it)

You have to be missing that survival instinct.

No, he is choke full of survival instincts. He's following the survival instinct of herd mentality- everybody else is irrational and chasing after being "cool" and social, so you/he follows along. Yes, sometimes herds stampede and run themselves off cliffs and are their own undoing, but most of the time being in a herd is advantageous.

Furthermore, he's following his emotions. Following your emotions is another survival instinct, because people and many animals do need some level of emotional comfort to survive and thrive. For example, if I lock you up, it doesn't matter if I provide all the water/food/etc you need. You still wouldn't function as well as you optimally could. So instinctively, people would follow their emotions and do what feels good, instead of analyzing for unintended consequences.

And of course, there's the distant and remote interaction of Slashdot. I'm not particularly interested in having "human interaction" with you. And since you're posting on Slashdot, it seems to me that you reciprocate.

False dilemma. Just because he posts on slashdot doesn't mean he cannot have "human interactions" outside of it with other people.

So why are you baiting libertarians rather than having those meaningful human interactions you seem to want?

Again, false dilemma. For all we know, he could be using us nerds as a way to strengthen his human interactions with his other jock friends

Capcha: "stupid". Yes, people are very stupid.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[khallow]

Just to answer you... normal people do it.

Nope. They only have such "human interactions", if summoned for an audit or the equivalent in your country.

You have to be missing that survival instinct.

No, he is choke full of survival instincts.

Whatever. I'd rather cut checks to the IRS at a distance than meet face to face and help an auditor make quota.

And of course, there's the distant and remote interaction of Slashdot. I'm not particularly interested in having "human interaction" with you. And since you're posting on Slashdot, it seems to me that you reciprocate.

False dilemma. Just because he posts on slashdot doesn't mean he cannot have "human interactions" outside of it with other people.

What "false dilemma"? It's a simple observation. He's yacking on Slashdot rather than having some of his valued human interactions. I merely note that he's making a choice that by his standards is rather bad. Same goes for the "trolling libertarians" observation. I don't rule out the possibility of other choices that have even more value than the two I mention.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

Those who don't are not greatly harmed because they are still rich.

That's not a fair statement. For one, there's wide ranging definitions of "rich", and whereas Bill Gates may not feel it if you take a million from him, a "lesser rich household" pulling in ~250k a year will impact their lives if you raise their taxes. Sure, they're not going to be starving or destitute, but their lives will be affected. They earned their money and deserve it -- who are we to say "fuck you, live an average lifestyle, now give me your wallet"? -- you seem to believe that if people aren't starving, they shouldn't be complaining -- as if the purpose of life is simply to exist. You are wrong when you claim we know the value of nothing -- as a matter of point, we know the value of our money. We know how precious each dollar is and how being taxed an extra 10% means I have to allow my cancer stricken mother w/ no savings to continue working because I don't have the funds to say "go ahead and retire, I got your back." I can't tell my starving bartender friend, "Sure man, lemme hook you up with a pub of your own." Or hell, even something so simple as having the money to retire a few years earlier than normal -- life is precious and short -- who the hell are you to tax me heavily such that I'm forced to spend an extra half decade toiling away at a job and claim it isn't going to "impact" me??? We know price AND value. You are the one who seems not to understand these things. And that's immensely obvious when you think you can take a substantial chunk of a rich man's money and assume it's going to have zero impact because he still have more than the average.

There is also the assumption that having private companies provide services at the request of individuals would be more efficient than having the government doing it. Apart from the difficulty of organizing certain services there is no evidence that this method would be any better. Do you have any evidence?

History. Both the government and the free market have their flaws, but the free market has a far better history of accomplishing efficiency than governments (likely because there is no motivation to cut costs or to compete in government).

It's not about transferring wealth. It's about stopping theft.

Another talking point...you do realize there's a large swath of "rich society" that ISN'T financial fatcats gaming the system? They are the vast majority, btw. Doctors, lawyers, small business owners? Senior employees in their 30s and 40s in their prime earning years? These people aren't stealing shit from anyone -- they're living day to day just like everyone else trying to improve their own lives or the lives of their families. The theft you speak of is trying to excessively tax them because you believe their desire to pursue more wealth so that they might live a more comfortable life outside of work is "frivolous" -- that their goal of trying to retire earlier or maybe get enough money to be able to help out their friends or family -- this too is "frivolous" to you. And it's bullshit.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

Insurance is already bad enough with the current level of regulation. People get screwed all the time. If you think less regulation is going to improve that you are delusional.

As you too are also delusional. Regulation in healthcare have been growing every single decade ever since the government first intruded in the 40s. That's more than half a century of increasing government regulation and all we've seen is ever increasing costs -- yet you put your faith in regulation???

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

You would have to have a hell of a lot of money to put in 250k/year. In the UK it would be £600,000 to pay about £250,000 in tax. Having "only" £350,000 in your pocket every year isn't exactly living an average lifestyle. The average wage is £24,000 in the UK, which after tax works out as about £19,000 in your pocket.

You seem to think I want to tax people who can't afford healthcare into oblivion. Of course we have free healthcare anyway, so everyone can "afford" it, but that really isn't the case. If $350k isn't enough to cover healthcare costs that's not a taxation problem, that's a you getting fucked by the insurance companies and doctors problem, something else we don't have to worry about.

The free market has a history of being "efficient" but also of providing shitty and expensive services. We tried privatizing stuff that the government did because people complained that the government was doing a bad job of it. Buses, railways, water supply, electricity supply, gas supply, road maintenance, some healthcare, some education, some security and policing. All went to shit. "Efficient" shit, but still shit and more expensive for us. Part of the problem is that you can't create markets in some of these areas - there is only one water network in a town, and you can't stand at the platform and decide that instead of taking a Virgin train to your job in London you will take a South West train to Birmingham today. Part of the problem is that private companies expect to make a profit and to deliver the absolute minimum service they can possibly get away with.

Interesting you should mention doctors and late career employees. Those people are not the rich. They might just about pay top tier tax on the last few percent of their earnings if they are lucky. They are well off but still middle class. At the moment, in the UK, their tax burden is probably about right. It's the people well above that band who are paying too little tax at the moment. It doesn't help that they tend to dodge a lot of tax too, by funnelling income into shell companies and offshore accounts. Most people can't do that.

You fell for one of the oldest tricks in the political book. You think you are rich because you earn, say , $100,000 and that when people talk about rich people paying their fair share that means you. It doesn't. It's just what the real rich people want to you think so that you keep voting for stuff that makes them richer while disadvantaging yourself.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

I said insurance regulation, not healthcare. Learn to read properly.

In any case, the main reasons that both insurance and healthcare costs are going up are that treatment/repair is getting more expensive and that people sue them for compensation more often. A decade ago hardly anyone claimed for whiplash in a car accident, now it's pretty much standard and the insurance company usually offers it to you pre-emptively to avoid litigation.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

nteresting you should mention doctors and late career employees. Those people are not the rich. They might just about pay top tier tax on the last few percent of their earnings if they are lucky. They are well off but still middle class.

Except that these are the people that politicians go after when they're looking for money. Obama himself drew the line in the sand at 250k w/ the Bush tax cut expiration. And the reason they do it is because there simply isn't enough money in the super upper echelon to pay for all the programs our bloated government wants to run. You can't just gouge the .1% -- you could take all their money and it wouldn't put a dent in our budget. And that's why they go after the "upper middle class", as you refer to them. And it's also why we rail against it and claim government should be smaller.

You fell for one of the oldest tricks in the political book. You think you are rich because you earn, say , $100,000 and that when people talk about rich people paying their fair share that means you. It doesn't.

No sir, I'm afraid you fell for it. You're letting the politicians fan the flames of intense hatred people you have of the financial fatcat to raise taxes on the upper middle class and "lesser rich". Look at the legislation yourself. None of it targets the millionaires and billionaires. Every single tax break cuts off or phases out somewhere in the 100k - 200k range. Every single tax hike tends to target the 125k+ individual or the 250k+ joint. If what you said was true, this would not be the case. Hell, just look at the Obamacare tax that is 250k+ joint: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/obamacare-investment-income-tax_n_2236687.html

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

250k is well above doctor or standard career salaries. UK GPs get about £120k/year, for example, and a good late career salary would be in the 50-60k range.

If you can't live off 250k and pay fair taxes then the cost of living in your country is ridiculous. That is your problem - things like healthcare mean you have to be super rich just to live a comfortable life.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[Magius_AR]

250k is well above doctor or standard career salaries.

No it isn't. That's 250k HOUSEHOLD (that's two people -- 125k per person). In some high cost-of-living regions (such as say NY or California, which comprise 46 million people total, or 15% of the total populace of the US), 125k/yr is far from "make it rain" cash. The median salary is like 60k. Doctors tend to make anywhere from ~150k to ~300k. Lawyers are somewhere in the 6 figures depending on stage of career. Late career white collar (say senior computer engineers or something like that) easily are in the low six figure range. Even a late career government employee (GS-13) is in the low 6 figures.

If you can't live off 250k and pay fair taxes then the cost of living in your country is ridiculous.

There is some truth to this. But it doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Re:Libertarianism is also such a failure.

[AmiMoJo]

Right, but in most places income tax is per person, not for combined income. In fact in the UK if you are married and one partner doesn't work or earn much the other can get their some of their tax allowance (the amount before they pay anything).

live human

[jamesh]

delivers a live human from Los Angeles to San Francisco, over a fixed ground route

Hmmm... so the human does actually have to be alive on delivery. That complicates things a little... I wonder if I can get a special exemption for that rule if I pass an official some cash under the table.

and "ground route" too. If I strap a person to a rocket and that rocket is _close_ to the ground for its entire journey, does that count?

They both suck

[russotto]

World's slowest "high speed" rail which will cost a ridiculous amount of money to start and overrun that, and probably never get completely build due to lawsuits and politics and such. Or a total pie-in-the-sky science fiction idea which will never happen either.

Big projects, big wastes

[manu0601]

There are two approaches to big projects. First is central plan from the government, second is competition that let emerge the best solution.

Some countries are fond of the first approach (China and France for instance), some others like USA find it inefficient and usually prefer the second approach. Truth is that both way of doing big projects have merits and issues, and both have successes and failures.

However, the competition approach seems to have a big issue when the barrier to enter the project is a few billion dollars. That means that failed project will have wasted billions, which put a very high price on the succeeding project.

While it is true that a government-planned big project can also be a failure, at least there is only one billion-worth failure, not several.

Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Musk as much as the next guy, he's got an impressive track record.

However I suspect that any high speed rail system will be expensive. My city just put in major new line in the local LRT. The cost was over $1 billion! This isn't the 1870's and these projects are not the old transcontinental rail systems.

Therefore as a matter of plausibility, I think that California's numbers are closer to to the mark. And I acknowledge these are different systems, comparing apples and bananas.

No, also slower

[SuperKendall]

For a napkin calculation you can probably keep a 100 mph average with a 150-200 mph train, so around 300 miles starts being the threshold where you'd rather fly than go by train. New York - Washington DC and LA to San Francisco seem like reasonable HSR distances

Taking a train to Amsterdam from Berlin was significantly slower than flying, even dealing with airport security. It's 406 miles...

The thing you are not factoring in is other stops. Even in an express train you may have a few stops, or points the train has to slow.

It is a bit more comfortable, I'll grant that! I myself will tend to drive anywhere within about 500 miles rather than fly, even though it's a lot slower.

Again though, even if it's comparable the thing about the hyper-loop is that it could blow both plane and train out of the water in terms of convenience and time. The things we would learn from building it could have enormous value.

When I first read about it I just figured it was a stupid wacky idea. But serving short runs as he says, that has a lot of value and beats out trains in every metric including cost! No way a train is going to get finished anyway, so why not just switch to the hyperloop?

tl;dr

[khallow]

Bottom line is the same government which you trust to hold your hand and wipe your ass, you wouldn't trust with business regulation, starting wars, or tapping phone lines. You're more of a problem to yourself than libertarians ever could be.

High ongoing cost

[dbIII]

Planes cost a lot to lift in the air and get on the ground and there's no easy answer to both of those so the cost per trip is going to be high no matter what is spent in infrastructure.
Other stuff can be a lot cheaper per trip once you've spent a lot on infrastructure. There's a crossover point where on one side planes make sense and on another they don't. Where that point lies depends on location and the time frame considered. It's beginning to look like you don't have to consider very many years for even 1968 Japanese rail to be a better idea than planes between LA and SF, but that's where it gets political and Boeing even had the clout to get some spies to work for it at taxpayers expense against Airbus. A group pushing for something else would need similar political clout.
Also it would have to be a private or Federal thing since Californian state governments act as if they've been on a drip feed of LSD since the 1960s.

Re:High ongoing cost

[MightyYar]

Planes cost a lot to lift in the air and get on the ground and there's no easy answer to both of those so the cost per trip is going to be high no matter what is spent in infrastructure.

And yet the cost of a flight vs an Amtrak ticket is very competitive. The only reason intercity trains ever make sense is because you don't have the security hassles, or in the rare event that one needs to travel from a downtown to a downtown. If this thing attracts the TSA, it is all over.

It's beginning to look like you don't have to consider very many years for even 1968 Japanese rail to be a better idea than planes between LA and SF, but that's where it gets political and Boeing even had the clout to get some spies to work for it at taxpayers expense against Airbus.

Is LA to SF really such a big route? SF is not a very big city. LA is colossal, but do enough people really hop between them? They seem like totally different worlds to me.

Re:High ongoing cost

[dbIII]

And yet the cost of a flight vs an Amtrak ticket is very competitive

I've got another post somewhere here about complacent monopolies not getting their act together. Just because Amtrack is far worse run than Indian, Italian or whatever rail (notice I'm setting the target low) doesn't mean rail in general is useless.

Is LA to SF really such a big route

Some people like to think so but I've got no idea what the actual current numbers are and how much of this is wishful thinking "build it and they will come".

Re:High ongoing cost

[MightyYar]

doesn't mean rail in general is useless.

Good point. But I'm pretty sure this thing, whatever it's form, will end up in either Amtrak or Caltrans's hands.

"build it and they will come".

There is some truth to that. It might take a while, but people will always develop around infrastructure. We do it with highways now, in any event.

I got this.

[goodmanj]

I can win this prize no problem, for a cost of just $1 billion. List of expenses:
      $200,000: one top-of-the-line superbike.
      $999,800,000: Bribes for every highway patrolman on I-5.

Now, if you want me to deliver more than one live human, that could get more expensive.

What about self-driving automobiles?

[LagFlag]

California's High Speed Rail is a boondoggle. I speak as a Californian. The problem is not simply traveling from SF to LA, it's how to get to where you are going once you are there. In each large city, the public transit system is not comprehensive enough to make travel easy. I don't take my family on BART to SFO because it costs $50 each way. These billions would be better spent enhancing BART or LAs subway system. What no one has yet commented on is the impact self-driving cars will have on transportation. Driving from SF to LA will no longer be so onerous if you can do work on the way. We will see the birth of the working commute.

The * choice

[dbIII]

I would have pulled the plug on California's ADD WILDCARD HERE project some time ago. It has already demonstrated sufficient failure and cost ballooning for me.

Fixed that for you. Even the much hated French can get high speed rail right.

Re:The * choice

[khallow]

Good point. It may well be that Musk would run into the same cost ballooning just because he's trying to do it in California.

Skunk works

[dbIII]

If you can keep the project off the radar of the bottom feeders then it's more likely to succeed. Public or private doesn't matter so much as keeping it from being run by a useless horse judge that is attracted to something big and shiny.

Lack of feeder routes + get people out of cars

[originalhack]

California has no feeder routes. Even in areas where a train seems to be available, by the time a passenger manages the connections at both ends and adds in the wait time for even the most on-schedule service, train is MUCH slower than driving. If someone is to spend an hour (or two) getting from their origin to downtown LA and another hour (or two) getting from downtown SF to their destination and pay for parking and car rental, the train has to beat a car by at least 4 hours to get used much.

Walk To Work

[ZombieBraintrust]

We should not focus money on better ways to travel long distances. Instead focus on locating work closer to where people live. The guy who has a 15min walk to work doesn't need billion dollar trains. People who live close to their family don't need billion dollar trains. We have cheap housing and utilities all over the country. These billion dollar trains are just a way of stuffing more people into Los Angeles.

The hell with LA to SF

[Autonomous Crowhard]

The casinos should fund the LA-LV hyperloop. It would be a great demo project and image how quickly the casinos would recoup their money if people could make that trip in 20 minutes.