Colorado Taking Steps To Get Its Own Hyperloop (usatoday.com)

According to USA Today, Colorado's transportation department is looking at the possibility of a Rocky Mountain hyperloop to curb traffic woes. You could travel from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, a distance of about 125 miles with Denver in the middle, in less than 20 minutes. From the report: After partnering with Virgin Hyperloop One, one of the companies racing to develop the super-speed technology that essentially would transport vehicles and people pods on electric skates in a big pneumatic tube, Colorado Department of Transportation officials plan to spend the next nine months crunching the numbers to determine what it might take to bring this type of transit to Colorado. Above-ground routes are cheaper to build. But Musk's Boring Co., another company testing the technology, has been focusing on hyperloop transportation in tunnels. The proposed Rocky Mountain hyperloop would be centered at Denver International Airport and stretch about 100 miles north to Cheyenne, Wyo.; about 125 miles south to Pueblo, Colo.; and about 100 miles west to Vail, Colo. It carries a hefty $24 billion price tag. State transportation officials estimated it would need an initial investment of $3 billion just to get the first 40 miles from the airport north to Greeley, Colo., completed. Why a hyperloop? State officials estimate Colorado's population will grow by nearly 50% in the next 20 years.

Comments

Stargate

[WrongMonkey]

Why don't they build a Stargate to solve their traffic problems? I know Stargates don't exist, but neither does a hyperloop. If you're going waste money on imaginary concepts, dream big!

Re:Stargate

[Jeremi]

One minor difference: we know how to build a Hyperloop. There aren't any new scientific principles at play there, it's only a matter of engineering.

Stargate technology, OTOH, is a bit more nebulous at this point :)

Re:Stargate

[alzoron]

Colorado Springs is one of the cities in the route, they already have a stargate. They need a hyperloop to get people to the stargate.

But how do you get around once you get there?

[El Cubano]

You could travel from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, a distance of about 125 miles with Denver in the middle, in less than 20 minutes.

There was an effort in Florida to try to get light rail from Miami to Tampa. In my mind the biggest obstacle was transportation once you get to the destination. I could understand something like this between two major cities with top notch mass transit, like New York and Boston. However, I don't think Fort Collins and Colorado Springs fit the bill, same as Miami and Tampa. Tell people "we can get you from CIty A to City B and then all you have to do is rent a car when you get there" is not going to get a ton of support. It works for air travel because the cost of a rental car is usually a small fraction of the airfare. However, for an economical light rail/hyperloop setup, the rental car cost now probably exceeds the long haul transport cost.

Ummm.... No.

[thesupraman]

Exactly! And they will never be able to land rockets on their tail! NASA have proven reusable space flight costs (hundreds of..) billions!!

I am however interested that the aviation industry are worried enough to pay for FUD already...

btw, you need to tune your FUD. The tunnel would recompress, not be explosive, and have little to no effect (except on efficiency of service).
Things inside the tunnel could decompress, although calling what they would do from a small hole like a rifle bullet 'explosive' is overstatement in the least.
Of course the pressure difference between what they would experience and what an airliner at altitude experiences is pretty damn small.

I suggest you are better addressing the boondoggle angle, or more to the point kicking the damn TSA out of your airports, since they are the ones destroying your particular industry.

Just wondering, is boeing or airbus paying your invoices, or are the airlines picking up the tab?

Re:Ummm.... No.

[Immerman]

Those on/off ramps might be a lot more expensive than you're thinking - you need to do all of your acceleration and braking there so that you've matched speed with traffic on the main line before entering. And since the cars aren't self-powered, that means you also need at least one full-length, full-power linear motor - or as many as four if you're getting frequent enough traffic that you can't safely use the same length of tube for both acceleration and braking in both directions.* Plus of course the capacitor bank needed to store and deliver all that power fast enough.

* I'm picturing a single on/off tube running roughly parallel to the main lines, multi-Y-ing at both ends between the main lines and airlocks onto an open-air track loop leading from one end to the other. Plus some mechanism to turn cars around when they need to be sent back the way they came - probably an additional siding loop where at least a couple cars can be parked awaiting passengers.

Why not Uber??

[SuperKendall]

If you went from Denver to Ft Collins, or Pueblo, or Colorado Springs it would likely be for an event. So you'd just take an Uber or a taxi to your final destination, just like people do with light rail today..

Or - is it a coincidence that Musk also makes self-driving cars? I think not. What if every Hyperloop terminal had a fleet of self driving cars passengers could use as taxis? The hub could be well set up for rapid charging, there would not have to be any driver.

Re:Why a Hyperloop

[Cyberpunk Reality]

...unlike a well understood technology like passenger trains...

Um.... I think you underestimate the incompetence of the people likely to be involved. Last year:http://www.cpr.org/news/story/trains-boulder-longmont-still-far-will-be-finished-rtd-says

The train to Denver International Airport starts next week. It's the first of four lines opening this year in the metro area. But none of them will go to Boulder and Longmont, even though residents there have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes with the promise of getting rail service

This year: http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/23/longmont-long-delayed-fastracks-line/

Former Longmont Mayor Julia Pirnack is firmly in the no-compromise camp. She is trying to get $5,000 together so that a former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler can explore whether anyone can viably sue the Regional Transportation District for the lack of a train in Longmont. Pirnack said in an interview earlier this month that since she was one of the people who pushed for Longmont to vote for FasTracks in 2004, she feels that RTD made a liar out of her because the commuter line promised in the FasTracks plan is currently not planned to reach Longmont until 2042.

Doubtless they're planning on finishing the Great Colorado Hyperloop sometime in the latter part of the aeon.

Re:Explosive Decompression

[nospam007]

'Good YouTube videos on why this will never work. One rifle round or a modest dent can detonate your $60B investment and kill everyone inside instantly. '

Huh? You seem not to understand near vacuum. A hole or a dent will just get to get fixed, just like when a stone, a cow or a tree is on a railway line, with the difference, that a failed vacuum will instantly and automatically reduce the speed of the 'train' and prevent any 'accident' of "running into the bullet-hole" or whatever you think will happen.

Re: Explosive Decompression

[JaredOfEuropa]

The organisation that commissions most of our roads and rail (Rijkswaterstaat.nl) quotes around €10M-€50M per km of rail, and €10M-€100M per km of highway (3 lanes), including all the required infrastructure. The price varies a lot depending on the soil, nr of bridges or tunnels required etc. This is in a densely populated area by the way; the price difference may well be a lot higher if you're just crossing empty countryside. But the 1 mile to 1 meter ratio (nice mixing of units there) doesn't seem to be anywhere near reality.

Non Sequitor

[nsuccorso]

"Why a hyperloop? State officials estimate Colorado's population will grow by nearly 50% in the next 20 years."

Why a duck? The state flower of Colorado is the Venus Flytrap.