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Comment by bmcusick | Hacker News Reader

I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.

It's true that LA traffic sucks, but the only solution you need is good transit planning with existing technology. Throw in self-driving mini-busses (which I bet Tesla is working on) and you'd never be stuck in traffic again. Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. with just good transit planning.

The problems with US transit are political. We have political problems that makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long. Hyperloop can't solve those problems with better engineering. And if we fix those political problems, you don't need Hyperloop.

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I don't see what Hyperloop has to do with LA. It's a whole new transit technology for long distance. And it's funny you mention Japan, since they're working on developing new transit tech in the form of mag lev to link their biggest cities [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev#Japan

It's a transit technology for medium distance. Jets spend a significant portion of a trip from LA to SF ascending to and descending from cruising altitude, where they perform most efficiently. To my understanding, Hyperloop is specifically targeted at those distances where jets don't have much time at their efficient altitude.which is what makes it somewhat competitive.

To be fair, both "long" and "medium" are terribly imprecise. But yeah, I've always heard the Hyperloop proposed as a way to link the cores of nearby metropolises within a region, like LA-SF and LA-Vegas.

Tokyo's subways and railroads are privately owned and ticket costs are based on the distance traveled. Americans always seem to want to pay $2 whether they go 5 blocks or 5 miles, among other unreasonable expectations for public transport.

All true. But the base of the pyramid is that Japan doesn't have the legal and regulatory barriers to construction we do, so their infrastructure just costs a lot less. That makes everything else (like fares) more affordable, which increases usage. It's a virtuous cycle.

> I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.

Solar City wasn't viable and had to be "bought" by Tesla to avoid bankruptcy.

> The problems with US transit are political.

Absolutely. There are too many people with vested financial interests who throw roadblocks to sensible public planning.

The irony here is that so much of elon musk and his company exist out of political "help". I don't know how musk does it but he has access to levers of power to keep himself afloat. The guy must have been a smooth talker.

The guy must have been a smooth talker.

That one's pretty easy to disprove...

> I don't know how musk does it but he has access to levers of power to keep himself afloat.

A well run PR machine that keeps the constant hype going. The right misdirection at the right times (we totally need to worry about the mythical smart AI, oh but don't worry about the timeline or the dangers of self driving cars). The Hyperloop and Tunnels are totally amazing building blocks for Mars so we have to build them.

I think Musk is a brilliant guy, but the cult around him is pretty ridiculous.

> I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.

This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.

You seem to have a very narrow view of the technology being proposed - the announcement is about New York to Washington, USA - but presumably this is a proof of concept build with modest scope.

> Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. ..

> ... makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long.

One should be careful with throwing around orders of magnitude claims willy nilly.

Tokyo's population is is just shy of 10 million, Los Angeles about 4 million.

Thanks to good, cheap and fast public transport, people regularly commute to Tokyo from all over Japan. That is what 'manages' implies. I know that is difficult to imagine in the US, but please have an open mind.

> ... people regularly commute to Tokyo from all over Japan.

I feel like this is one of those things that sounds like it might be true, but isn't. It's four hours from Tokyo to Hokkaido by train, f.e., and not much cheaper than a flight.

> I know that is difficult to imagine in the US, but please have an open mind.

I do try to have an open mind, despite being an Australian living in Australia.

My work requires that I travel regularly - most major cities in Australia warrant air-travel, due to the distances involved, but price and (in)convenience of air travel reduce the appeal.

Sydney to Canberra is a curious exception - at around 300km it's actually slightly faster to drive than to fly, once you factor in intra-city commute (to / from airports) and usual security & check-in waits. I'd love a high-speed ground-based option, as short-haul flights offend my green sensibilities, and as much as I enjoy driving, I can get more done, have a safer journey, and be more relaxed if I'm not driving. There is a train service - but it's not terribly frequent, and takes more than 4 hours (plus the intra-city commute, as for air travel). There's been talk of high speed rail links along the east coast (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne) for decades, but still no actual commitment in sight.

I'm highly envious of what's happening in other parts of the world.

Populations depend very much on how you count, but I'd think density matters more and Tokyo's density is somewhere between 14 to 36 times LA (allowing for different ways of counting), and 40 million use just the rail system every day), so the parent's point is still very valid.

Parent said 'LA traffic sucks' and asserted all you'd need to fix it is 'good transit planning'. This doesn't sound likely, though I concede I've never been to Los Angeles, and do not know if all their intra-city transport problems are exclusively caused by poor transit planning.

Parent is also comparing intra-city transport of two different cities, despite TFA being about inter-city transport.

Ultimately trying to compare profoundly different cultures, economies, population numbers and densities, and public transport history & infrastructure, is always going to involve some amount of hand-waving and number-rounding -- I just think hyperbole like '10 x this, 10 x that' doesn't make for a stronger argument.

> This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think

I would say this is the only occasion that I read people telling others they shouldn't write their critical thinking about an issue because of the person who is behind.

I regret the tone - I should not have adopted n-gate's vernacular here, though parent's comment is the epitome of what they, and I, find most frustrating about these kinds of seemingly ill-considered, negative HN comments.

Parent questioned viability of hyperloop, claimed that transport problems in the USA are due to poor planning and/or politics, and then made up some numbers around population, infrastructure costs and construction times.

My point was that Elon Musk thinks this is worth his time to construct. It's possible he, and the people advising him, have not properly thought this through. In TFA there's mention of some concerns by several other startups looking to build Hyperloop systems, who've raised some US$200m. It's possible that they, also, have failed to understand that all the transport problems in the USA could be solved by fixing 'the politics' and that Hyperloop is 'not viable'.

But which is more likely?

> This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.

How dare I disagree with the Perfect Musk!

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