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Hyperloop One Says It Can Connect Helsinki To Stockholm In Under 30 Minutes (theverge.com) 175

Posted by BeauHD from the hefty-price-tag dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Hyperloop One released a new study today that says a hyperloop connecting Stockholm, Sweden, and Helsinki, Finland, could turn a 300-mile trip that would normally take 3.5 hours flying into a breezy 28-minute ride. How much would they need to accomplish this? Only $21 billion (19 billion euros) to build it. That price includes $3.3 billion (3 billion euros) for one of the world's largest marine tunnels through the Aland archipelago, a chain of islands in the Baltic Sea. But the company did say the total cost would be offset by the rise in property values and productivity as facilitated by the new, super-fast transit system. Homes built nearby would be worth more, freight shipments would arrive sooner, and workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working. The study claims the Nordic Hyperloop would start generating a surplus after 10 years thanks to its economic benefits. As for where it expects to receive the money, Hyperloop One envisions a combination of public funds and private investment, with the study authors recommending capturing some of the value from increased property values. Hyperloop is expected to generate somewhere between $969 million (875 million euros) and $1.1 billion (1 billion euros) in ticket sales annually. "We've said that, generally speaking, a Hyperloop system can be built at 50 [percent] to 60 [percent] of the cost of high-speed rail because Hyperloop technology requires less intensive civil engineering, its levitated vehicles produce fewer maintenance issues and its electric propulsion occupies far less of the track than high-speed rail," the company says. "With Hyperloop, passengers glide most of the way above the track in a near-vacuum tube with little air resistance." A hyperloop between Sweden and Finland would take up to 12 years to complete. Hyperloop One conducted the first successful test of its high-speed transportation technology in the desert outside Las Vegas in May.
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Hyperloop One Says It Can Connect Helsinki To Stockholm In Under 30 Minutes More

Hyperloop One Says It Can Connect Helsinki To Stockholm In Under 30 Minutes

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  • and it will be a Beautiful Tunnel

    • Re: a YUUGE tunnel (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And apparently they can build it in under 30 minutes!

    • Re:a YUUGE tunnel (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2016 @08:47PM (#52453575)

      And we're gonna make Norway pay for it!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Nobody has told me why it is going to be built. Considering the sorry state of rail infrastructure in Sweden it's not really going to provide much benefits.

  • 3.5 hrs flying? Something's wrong with the analysis. I put up with TSA in the US and can get from my garage to an airport slightly farther away than that (not enough to matter) in - tops - two hours. It doesn't take an hour and a half to pick up your bags and get to the city center, does it?

    • It doesn't take an hour and a half to pick up your bags and get to the city center, does it?

      Yes, in a lot of cities it takes that long. But then there's also the question of what you're going to do with your car when you get to that airport or city center.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The analysis is way off. Actual flight time is only an hour (Stockholm to Helsinki). So they're presumably banking on an hour and fifteen minutes at each end to get through security etc and then conveniently ignoring all that with the Hyperloop.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        And don't forget the time to transit from the city center to the airport.

      • "conveniently ignoring all that with the Hyperloop."

        Hyperloop pods are small and the nature of the beast means any passenger-borne explosive is unlikely to damage the transportation system. An explosion into a partial vacuum isn't going to have much effect.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      You will have to consider the process of travel to/from the airport as well, Stockholm/Arlanda is quite a distance from central Stockholm, then a lot of time is wasted before boarding and then on the airfield to get into position to take off. Both Arlanda and Helsinki sees quite a bit of traffic so it's not as simple as you make it.

      You easily waste an hour before boarding just on procedures like check-in, security and walking.

    • They're probably assuming the worst for flying and the best for hyperloop. Ie waiting for boarding, baggage claim, things like that. Their diagram shows the trip from the downtown to the airport which is an amount of time, and then from airport to downtown Stockholm, a much larger chunk of time, distances not included in their hyperloop numbers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The flight is 1h 10 minutes when flying BMA->HEL. At BMA you can check in 15 minutes before departure and it is a 10 minute taxi ride from the city. But it was usually a just over 2h trip city center to city center when I did this a couple times a few years ago.

      My guess is that they forgot that Stockholm and Helsinki are in different time zones, just looking at the timetable it looks like you land 2h 10 minutes later.

  • A likely story (Score:4, Interesting)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2016 @09:02PM (#52453617) Homepage Journal

    The study claims the Nordic Hyperloop would start generating a surplus after 10 years thanks to its economic benefits.

    So, it might pay for itself after 30 years (taking into account the construction will be late and over budget). And that's if nothing goes terribly wrong with the 300 mile vacuum tube with the 650 mph, multi-ton projectile hurtling through it.

    • The plan is that if it stops being profitable then Microsoft will buy it out.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      What a waste, spending on infrastructure. That money should go into the private pockets as profits, so that more can be wasted 'er' used on, bigger mansion, more super cars, bigger yachts, larger private yachts. Consume and burn, the more you waste the better psychopathic capitalist you are. Consume the resources and generate the pollution of an entire town and do this individually, literally on you own consume like you and tens of thousands of people and you are a big winner and those tens of thousands of

      • I agree with most of what you said, but I'm pretty sure the Hyperloop is, ahem, a pipe dream. At least for now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Stripe7 ( 571267 )
      I think it will take longer to pay off. This is adding in the cost and time delay of adding anti-terrorism measures into this transportation medium. You have to build in safeties for an internal explosion from the passenger compartment or cargo area. The same inspections may have to take place before passengers get on as in airports. What happens is someone tries to blow the tunnel from outside by dropping an improvised depth charge onto the tunnel?

    • taking into account the construction will be late and over budget

      Why would it be either of those? The $21 billion equivalent Crossrail project appears to be coming in on time and on budget.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They do seem wildly optimistic. Compared with the Japanese maglev high speed line being built it seems incredibly cheap. Their stated reasons for the low cost don't really add up. Elevated or buried track, a near vacuum tunnel and extreme levels of engineering required to keep it in precise alignment (try hitting a 20mm bump at 1000km/h) and offset the inevitable movement of the ground.

      The Japanese line is expected to hit 1000km/h in time, but with trains that can carry much larger numbers of people and the

      • Every foot of maglev is functional. Most of hyperloop is just inert metal pipe with the occasional maglev booster. And the pods are dramatically smaller than a train so the engineering is reduced on pylons etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          No, the entire pipe is functional. It needs pumps placed along it to keep pumping air out (it's not a perfect vacuum, and it won't be perfectly sealed, and would be insanely dangerous if it was). Therefore it will also need sensors (pressure, temperature, occupancy, alignment in case the ground shifts) and a network to keep them all in communication.

          You are going to need more than the occasional booster to maintain that kind of speed, even with reduced air resistance. The further the distance between booste

    • What does payback even mean when bond rates are almost zero, and even negative in some countries? You could pay people with shovels to level every hill and valley between the two cities, and provided cars saved a non-zero amount of petrol over the journey it would be an economical investment.

      I'm not saying this hyperloop thing is the best thing to do, but right now any sort of infrastructure investment is better than having hordes of unemployed Europeans sitting around twiddling their thumbs because everyon

      • Bond rates are zero or negative, yes, so you are saying: load up. That is right, that is why the *governments* pushed towards 0 or negative, so that you would load up.

        You are also very right when you said: *right now*.

        Here is where you are wrong: it is better to take on gigantic debt for a public project rather than let the economy restructure and get rid of debt. It *is* the government that pushed the interest rates down, not the markets. The markets will push interest rates up and this happens very une

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )

      So you don't understand what the hyperloop concept is. Thanks for clearing that up.

  • ... Oh, wait. They're talking about the time the trip will take after the project is completed.

  • Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2016 @09:22PM (#52453695)

    FTS: "...workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working."

    If I have a chance to cut my commute time significantly, why would I spend the extra time working instead of with family and friends, or on hobbies or other leisure activities? Hell, even when I had a job in which I worked overtime without pay just because what I was working on was interesting, any time saved off my commute wouldn't have been donated to the company.

    • or on hobbies or other leisure activities?

      So what you're saying is that you'd spend more time doing other things that generate income for other parties? Don't assume you being at work is the only form of economic benefit. Economic benefit is measured in usable time, it doesn't take into account what you use this time for.

  • Hyperbole (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 05, 2016 @09:33PM (#52453743)

    Forget about the hyperbole of the 500km rail line in Scandinavia. Just focus on that last sentence:

    Hyperloop One conducted the first successful test of its high-speed transportation technology in the desert outside Las Vegas in May.

    Whatever that was in May, it was not a "successful test of its high-speed transportation technology" in the sense of any kind of working prototype. Perhaps they successfully tested the ball bearings intended for use in part of the system. Maybe they were testing a design for part of the brake system. Maybe it was a battery prototype. Whatever it was, it was one very small piece of a very large and complicated system. There was no tube, no vacuum, no elevated rail, no proof of concept for anything that really marks the hyperloop.

    It will not take 12 years to build the Sweden-Finland connector. It will take 12 years to finish designing and testing the concept so that we can confidently finance a 500km experiment.

    I'm personally interested in the Hyperloop. I'd like to see it progress. But to succeed, we have to proceed with reason, grounded in reality. Hyperbolic claims of accomplishment won't help.

    • Mod parent up.

      The "first successful test" appears to have been a small test sled on a short, low-speed test track. Yes, they showed they could drive a piece of metal with a linear induction motor, but that's just demonstrating an application of known technology. Vancouver's SkyTrain has been using linear induction propulsion since 1985 as part of a regular, boring, functional public transit system. Similar technology appears in Toronto (the Scarborough Rapid Transit line), New York (the AirTrain JFK airp

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I personally don't believe that this particular project in its described form will ever be done (STO-HEL). But regarding their testing, it was certainly a small scale test of known technology, but you underestimate the value of such tests. There's massive amounts of theoretical aspects they have to plow through first, move gradually to small scale live tests and finally piece it all together in one big PoC. After the small pieces are theorized and tested, it takes exponentially less time to piece them all t

        • But regarding their testing, it was certainly a small scale test of known technology, but you underestimate the value of such tests. There's massive amounts of theoretical aspects they have to plow through first, move gradually to small scale live tests and finally piece it all together in one big PoC. After the small pieces are theorized and tested, it takes exponentially less time to piece them all together in the end.

          I wouldn't say I underestimate the value of small-scale tests so much as I would say that Musk and company have been deliberately obscure about exactly what they were testing, and have been downright misleading about the distance between where they are now and what they claim they will be able to deliver. We were shown a dog-and-pony show constructed to meet an artificial publicity deadline, not a well-explained demonstration as part of a clearly-elucidated development roadmap.

          When I read comments like yours, it reminds me of anti-innovation corporate voices I have to battle against on a daily basis.

          Hmm. Do you misrepresent y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      It will also take 12 years to do all the paperwork needed.

      And considering the Hallandsås Tunnel [wikipedia.org] it will be over time and over budget before completed.

    • Re:Hyperbole (Score:4, Interesting)

      by C4st13v4n14 ( 1001121 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @03:10AM (#52454735)

      Whatever that was in May, it was not a "successful test of its high-speed transportation technology" in the sense of any kind of working prototype. Perhaps they successfully tested the ball bearings intended for use in part of the system. Maybe they were testing a design for part of the brake system. Maybe it was a battery prototype. Whatever it was, it was one very small piece of a very large and complicated system. There was no tube, no vacuum, no elevated rail, no proof of concept for anything that really marks the hyperloop.

      It will not take 12 years to build the Sweden-Finland connector. It will take 12 years to finish designing and testing the concept so that we can confidently finance a 500km experiment.

      I'm personally interested in the Hyperloop. I'd like to see it progress. But to succeed, we have to proceed with reason, grounded in reality. Hyperbolic claims of accomplishment won't help.

      This. I'm also very interested in the hyperloop and would like to see it become a reality. But this article....

      How did they calculate a flight duration of 3.5 hours? And the distance? It's a 400 km (250 mi) journey by air. Flight duration is less than an hour (around 50 minutes depending on the wind). All of this you can easily look up. From the PDF, it looks to me as though the hyperloops will have several stops between Stockholm and Helsinki. That adds to the time. And what sort of ticket prices are we looking at? A last-minute flight leaving now with SAS costs around 70-100 USD (to put it simply as the Finns have the Euro and Swedes have the Swedish krona). Booking ahead of time can cost 50 USD and much less when there are sales and deals. Your average person making this journey will be one who probably makes it often and travels light, e.g. for business or commuting for work so the time required to drop off and pick up luggage doesn't need to be factored in. Checking in on the flight is usually done online or via an app with electronic boarding pass. Boarding starts around 20 min before departure, which is when they say you absolutely need to be at the gate by. Security (another topic Slashdotters love) in Sweden and Finland is generally more professional, respectful and streamlined than what you'd find in the US and thus doesn't take very long (but don't take my word for it, go and experience it for yourself). So let's say you arrive at the airport 30 min ahead of departure and the flight is 60 minutes, then we're talking an hour and a half for the journey at a cost of about 50 USD. That's not bad all things considered in the wide world of air travel. Note that I purposely did not factor in transportation to and from the airports because where the actual hyperloops stations will be is still a huge unknown.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      I question can Hyperloop scale up like highspeed rail? Hyperloop may be able to carry thousands but HSR can carry tens or hundreds of thousands. Kind of like SST cannot scale up like subsonic airliners from 707, DC-8, to current models of today.
  • 1. Takes 12 years (estimated) to build the thing. By the time it's available for public use, its design is likely obsolete. The newer designs take precedence in investment and this system will die mid-construction.

    2. It takes 30 years for RoI (return of investment). During that time (after 12 years of construction), we'd probably be hovering above ground with our own vehicles called HoverCraft using autopilot. We wouldn't give a damn about the loop.

    Anything else I missed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mi ( 197448 )

      Anything else I missed?

      3. Russia realizes, its "spiritual legacy" lies in the North rather than (or in addition to) the South [bbc.com], and occipies the entire Scandinavia [telegraph.co.uk] in a couple of months.

      As long as Russia remains a mad dog, money and efforts should be spent on putting it down, unfortunately, not on the niceties, that only excite and attract it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dave420 ( 699308 )

        Ha! You really believe that? You are paranoid beyond belief.

      • "As long as Russia remains a mad dog"

        Russia never was. After centuries of being invaded they have a nationalistic tendency to assume the porcupine theory of defense.. It suits Putin and friends very well to play up the western threat to keep the russian population pliable (they myth of the strong man keeping the much richer and more powerful west at bay) and it suits the west to play up the Putin threat to keep us distracted from the hands raiding our pocketbooks.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mi ( 197448 )

          After centuries of being invaded

          They haven't been invaded any more than others. Poland, for example, had it much worse than Russia over the centuries. Also, Russia has done many more invasions of their own to compensate — including some very recent history...

          If they can invade Ukraine and grab land because "it was always Russian", why can't they invade Finland under the same excuse? Finland used to be a Russian province too until 1917. If Kyiv fights them, Helsinki should too...

    • "During that time (after 12 years of construction), we'd probably be hovering above ground with our own vehicles called HoverCraft using autopilot. "

      You missed:

      Energy consumption. Aircraft and most vehicles have to carry their own energy sources. Hyperloop (and HSR) can have the energy fed in along the length of the line.

      Hyperloop is expensive to setup but cheap(ish) to run and FAST. Rail is expensive to setup but expensive to maintain and would be intermediate speed

      Air transport is cheap to setup (runways)

  • ... authors recommending capturing some of the value from increased property values.

    In other words, we want to do this and get rich of this, but in order to do it we are going to build near your homes and then tell you that your property value went up and have the state tax you more (giving that money to us). Even if you never use the damn thing and just want to live in your home without selling it, you owe us tax money so that we can pay ourselves a lot for this unproven fiasco.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      They could also just buy property for the current low (compared to their own predictions) prices and sell them with massive profits when the property values increase; much more than any tax could provide.
      But then again, why gamble when you can have other people take the risk for you and still reap the benefits if it goes well.

      • But then again, why gamble when you can have other people take the risk for you and still reap the benefits if it goes well or even if it doesn't go well.

        Fixed that for you!

    • "but in order to do it we are going to build near your homes and then tell you that your property value went up"

      Bollocks.

      If you build a railway line across open countryside, businesses and homes will be built where they have access to the line and property prices go up from "unimproved" values. Most american railways made more money selling off parcels of land along the lines than from the lines themselves. This method was used in many other countries to incentivise line building (In most cases as soon as t

  • The link goes to a presentation, which is quite light on detail...

    ...the company did say the total cost would be offset by the rise in property values... Homes built nearby would be worth more

    Property values will only rise in the immediate vicinity of the station. Properties further away may also rise in value, but it depends on accessibility - and that will almost certainly require additional transport infrastructure, which is a cost on the city.

    ...freight shipments would arrive sooner...

    Freight and people on the same line? Pretty sure Amtrak does that in the US, and it doesn't work out very well.

    ...workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working.

    Yeah, whatever.

    "We've said that, generally speaking, a Hyperloop system can be built at 50 [percent] to 60 [percent] of the cost of high-speed rail because Hyperloop technology requires less intensive civil engineering, its levitated vehicles produce fewer maintenance issues and its electric propulsion occupies far less of the track than high-speed rail," the company says

    Spoken like someone who's never built anything.

  • ...in which case we may finally verify what happens when a near sonic hyperloop car encounters a sonic flow of atmosphere going the opposite direction.

    Hilarity ensues.

  • This is assuming, of course, that Helsinki and Stockholm *want* to be connected.

  • Higher property values, that is also higher property cost, benefits only a few: those who own a lot of property to sell. It does not benefit most people, who only buy the property they have for its utility - their house, their company office, etc. They just have to spend more of their money on something they need anyway.

    You should not seek to "increase property values" and "increased property values" as a reason to do something is "to make a few people richer".

  • The problem with a roller coaster - which is what a high speed train is - is the lateral accellerations due to small imperfections in the rail/pipe that can bruise and injure the passengers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      The problem with a roller coaster - which is what a high speed train is - is the lateral accellerations due to small imperfections in the rail/pipe that can bruise and injure the passengers.

      If only there was some technology combining springs, dashpots, and inertial mass to decouple wheels from the passengers.

    • You know roller coasters already exist, right? It is not an unsolved problems. Maglev trains exist too.

  • Technology like that takes 20-50 year to mature from its "first successful test". That is a historic fact and things have not changed in that regards. What you find however today is a lot of failed technologies where people tried to cut that time short. It does not work.

  • monorail...Monorail...MONORAIL

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Does Hyperloop even understand Stockholm? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @01:33AM (#52454505)

    This story was posted on Slashdot when Stockholm and Helsinki were asleep. It is morning here now so not many posts yet..

    I don't see how it would be possible to build the tunnel for only 3.3 billion Euros, when a much shorter road or railway tunnel inside Stockholm could easily cost more than that amount. There is not a straight route through the sea from Stockholm towards Finland. Shipping lanes are already squiggly route through the archipelago where there are several nature-preserves. Either straight or following the shipping lanes, the multi-decade construction project of a Hyperloop would be very disruptive both to shipping, to nature and to the people living in the archipelago. It would likely hurt the local, if not national economy, disturb people's lives and would certainly not help property values in the affected areas.

    Increased property values... that could only be a short-term benefit, to some and only if would come at no cost, and if the properties are not already overvalued.
    There is a housing shortage in Stockholm and residential property values are already through the roof. They were considered high a decade ago already and conditions are not expected to change very quickly. There is a lending bubble. Increased property values is not what we need.

    The most common way to travel between Stockholm and Helsinki is not by plane, but on a overnight ferry. And these already go from city-centre to city-centre. There are a couple of competing companies providing ferry service, with competition working to keep prices down.
    You can bring a car on the ferry. Could you bring a car on the Hyperloop? The ferries provide dining, bars, nightclubs and accommodation at several price-points on the same ferry.

    I don't see any place in the already congested city centre where a Hyperloop station could be established. There is already very expensive, deep tunnel being constructed only for commuter trains because of congestion in surface traffic between north and south.
    The only place for a Hyperloop terminus would therefore have to be outside the city, with added travel time to and from the Hyperloop. And then how would that be better than the plane or the ferry?

    • I don't see any place in the already congested city centre where a Hyperloop station could be established. There is already very expensive, deep tunnel being constructed only for commuter trains because of congestion in surface traffic between north and south.
      The only place for a Hyperloop terminus would therefore have to be outside the city, with added travel time to and from the Hyperloop. And then how would that be better than the plane or the ferry?

      I don't know much about Stockholm (though I visited it half a dozen times), but at least for Helsinki there is plenty of room for a Hyperloop terminus in Vantaa, near the airport. And the airport is now connected to the center with a fast local train that takes less than 30 min from downtown Helsinki. A Hyperloop terminus could easily be built near Aviapolis which is even closer to the center than the airport. If you want even closer to the center, you could do what the Japanese have done with several of th

    • They do understand Stockholm. They did a proof-of-concept in Nevada in which the drank some Svedka. /s

  • Commuting (Score:4, Funny)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @02:22AM (#52454645) Homepage

    and workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working

    All one of them? That must be daily savings of millions of dollars easily.

  • Not *quite* as fast, but the Shanghai maglev manages over 300mph so that gets the journey down to an hour.

    In addition, you have much greater capacity and a more established platform.

    • "the Shanghai maglev manages over 300mph"

      And spends a huge amount of energy pushing air aside.

      As do the newer Japanese HSRs and maglev systems.

      Nose shape doesn't actually matter (except to keep the ends on the ground). The vast majority of HSR energy losses come from skin friction along the sides of the train (At 200mph+ it's a very real phenomonenon for HSRs)

      If you can partially evacuate a tube and _keep_ it partially evacuated for far less energy than running HSR then the speed is a bonus.

  • Why endure neighbors dogs and lawn mowers as well as dull daily transportation when you can be free like a Gypsy with mobile Internet?
  • 30 minutes does not seem like enough time to get sufficiently drunk. Or are there other reasons people go to Finland?

    • From Stockholm to Helsinki to get drunk? Helsinki is just as expensive, online trackers put it at just about 5% cheaper. Both Finns and Swedes prefer Tallinn, Estonia. Everything is half the price in Tallinn, compared to Stockholm, Helsinki.

  • If all the facts are as truthful as the ones that are obviously false, this whole presentation is a fraud and real fraud in the legal sense. Dear KPMG are all your fundraising campaigns of this caliber or have you just recently started hiring scam artists from the MLM sector?

  • Dammit, then you got even less time to find an excuse to go there.

  • I have questions (Score:3)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @08:06AM (#52455551)
    I have questions about the claims here. Just how many workers commute this way? I've heard of some bad commutes in Japan and California, but the current ferry boat or plane options for Helsinki-Stockholm don't seem to be likely to have a lot of people who regularly do that. I have to ask - Couldn't some kind of bullet train maybe do this job for a lot less money? I've been to Taiwan and within the past decade they put in a fast train that goes between Taipei, the capital in the north, and Kaohsiung, the 2nd biggest city which is in the far south of Taiwan. The normal speed train or driving a car took about 6 hours to go between the cities. The fast train (not really a bullet train as it's not quite that fast) now does it in about 2 to 2.5 hours. I've ridden on this route and it's nice and comfortable. The domestic airlines complained bitterly when the fast train system was built as they knew that almost nobody would choose to fly between Taipei and Kaohsiung once the train opened, but they've had to accept it. Business people say it makes it possible to go to Taipei for meetings and they can go by train for less money and less time than by plane. Some of the trains make stops at various cities between Taipei and Kaohsiung, making it a very convenient and fast way to travel in Taiwan. I am not sure that it raised property values any but the service is very popular. Maybe something like this that gets a fast train to do the Helsinki-Stockholm run in 2 to 2.5 hours would be a better approach than the Hyperloop.

  • Where is the proof-of-concept? (Score:3)

    by cyn1c77 ( 928549 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @08:31AM (#52455683)

    Am I the only one who thinks that the Hyperloop PR is getting a bit ahead of their actual potential?

    Is it too much to ask to see a short section of Hyperloop actually built before talking about building a long section underground or the ocean?

    As a child, I thought that those pneumatic tubes in the supermarket were the most awesome thing ever. (I still think that they are really cool!) And I think the hyperloop is a fantastic idea, but I would like to see concerns credibly addressed: (1) how will shifts in the tube alignment due to ground motion be addressed, (2) how will you pull a vacuum over a 1000-mile length of tubing, (3) what will it really feel like to be confined in a small windowless tube?, (4) instabilities are a big problem with aerodynamics - how much will the passenger be shaken around? (5) If there is a problem during transportation and the passenger-section of the tube gets stuck and loses pressure, the passengers will die in a vacuum right? (I know this is similar to an airplane failing, but dying underground, strapped into a dark tube seems even more unpleasant!)

    My opinion is that the Hyperloop people are really doing their concept a disservice by not verifying that this concept will actually yield something usable for people at a small scale (either a short full-scale length or a sub-scale model) before proposing a huge investor-driven concept. It makes it seem like more of a boondoggle than an actual engineering concept.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )

      Am I the only one who thinks that the Hyperloop PR is getting a bit ahead of their actual potential?

      Is it too much to ask to see a short section of Hyperloop actually built before talking about building a long section underground or the ocean?

      As a child, I thought that those pneumatic tubes in the supermarket were the most awesome thing ever. (I still think that they are really cool!) And I think the hyperloop is a fantastic idea, but I would like to see concerns credibly addressed: (1) how will shifts in the tube alignment due to ground motion be addressed, (2) how will you pull a vacuum over a 1000-mile length of tubing, (3) what will it really feel like to be confined in a small windowless tube?, (4) instabilities are a big problem with aerodynamics - how much will the passenger be shaken around? (5) If there is a problem during transportation and the passenger-section of the tube gets stuck and loses pressure, the passengers will die in a vacuum right? (I know this is similar to an airplane failing, but dying underground, strapped into a dark tube seems even more unpleasant!)

      My opinion is that the Hyperloop people are really doing their concept a disservice by not verifying that this concept will actually yield something usable for people at a small scale (either a short full-scale length or a sub-scale model) before proposing a huge investor-driven concept. It makes it seem like more of a boondoggle than an actual engineering concept.

      I agree it is a boondoggle, but they need to talk about long-distance travel from the beginning because that is the only use case that makes any economic sense. The time spent stopping at stations, even for just 1 or 2 minutes, really kills the average speed.

      Having spent considerable time in Japan, where high-speed rail is very common, hyperloop is a solution to a problem that has already been solved. High speed rail in Japan competes directly with domestic air travel. Pricing is very similar and tot

      • "High speed rail in Japan competes directly with domestic air travel. Pricing is very similar and total transit times are roughly the same."

        On the east coast of the USA, even Amtrak competes directly with domestic air travel.

        The creation of the Boston-Washington rail corridor put a number of shuttle airlines out of business.

        In the USA (and canada), your transcontinental railroads are for freight. Everything is geared for freight and that means the lines are unsuitable for passenger use. If you have to build

  • Flying Stockholm to Helsinki takes 50-60 minutes, about an hour. I wonder how they got the 3.5 hour figure? Maybe if you fly to Copenhagen first, then to Helsinki.

  • Japanese SCMaglev (Score:3)

    by luis_a_espinal ( 1810296 ) on Wednesday July 06, 2016 @09:03AM (#52455831)

    could turn a 300-mile trip that would normally take 3.5 hours flying into a breezy 28-minute ride

    Japan's SCMaglev clocked a speed record of 375 mph in 2015. So that same 3.5 hour flight can be turned into a 1 hour trip. Yes, 28 minutes is better, but economically speaking, a nation could take the 1 hour trip instead with proven technology that already exists.

    Sooner or later, maglev trains will achieve speeds over 500 mph. They'll never break the sound barrier (which is Hyperloop's promise), but, economically, they do not have to. One cannot justify the expense, at this time, to create a hyperloop to make a mere 300-mile trip in 30 minutes.

    This is also why I wonder the economic sense of building one between Los Angeles and the Valley instead of building a "bullet" train that could make the trip in 1 hour. A hyperloop makes sense for transcontinental travel, to connect distances of over 1,000 miles, and in some cases, to connect sufficiently distant end-points in a country (say, making a 2k-mile trip connecting Kyushu with Hokkaido.)

    Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of a hyperloop. We should push our technological capabilities. But we should also see what things make economic sense. I do not see the Hyperloop making sense for a 300-mile trip.

    • Sooner or later, maglev trains will achieve speeds over 500 mph. They'll never break the sound barrier (which is Hyperloop's promise), but, economically, they do not have to. One cannot justify the expense, at this time, to create a hyperloop to make a mere 300-mile trip in 30 minutes.

      The current technology could already produce a maglev that could achieve speeds well over 500mph. The problem is not the technology but the effect of the sudden acceleration and deceleration on the average person. I don't see how the hyperloop will change the physics on the human body, but who knows, maybe everybody will put on a g-suit before the thing departs.

  • How do you ISIS looks at this?

    Being able to move their people across Europe in minutes without anyone batting an eye?

    I bet they're celebrating this.
    • I suppose that transportation will stand high. Even for Europeans. If this argument isn’t weighty, think about Hyperloop security. The construction will be finished round 2030. Meanwhile security measures could up the ante and become stricter. Furthermore, global policy could change the direction. And we’ll need to guard against spaghetti monster or anybody else.
  • A hyperloop on the east coast would be very popular I would think.

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