How human mobility has changed over time, distance and energy use | Hacker News Reader

How human mobility has changed over time, distance and energy use

thebreakthrough.org

35 pointssien6 comments

"Because the maglev system is a set of magnetic bubbles moving under the control of a central computer, what we put inside is immaterial. It could be a personal or small collective vehicle, starting as an elevator in a skyscraper, becoming a taxi in the maglev network, and again becoming an elevator in another skyscraper. The entire bazaar could be run as a videogame where shuffling and rerouting would lead the vehicle to its destination swiftly, following the model of the Internet."

Well, I have to say I love that image. A national, physical implementation of something like TCP/IP.

Very interesting read. However, I was a bit disappointed that it didn't take neither cost nor flexibility of transport mode. Airplane tickets are much more expensive than a car trip, and road network is much more dense than railroad, airport or maglev is or ever will be.

> Airplane tickets are much more expensive than a car trip

In Europe it is opposite, thanks to petrol taxes and road tools, flight is often cheaper than car, and always cheaper than train.

Flying from my city in Poland to where I live in the UK costs me 50-100 pounds,depending on the time of the year. Taking a car costs 300 pounds in fuel alone + ~150 pounds to take the ferry across the sea. Of course the car works out better than plane if you have it filled with people,but that is not always the case.

>>and always cheaper than train.

That is the only thing where I will disagree with you - Europe is not one large country with the same rules everywhere. In the UK trains are absurdly expensive and sometimes it's cheaper to rent a car, fill it up,drive to where you need to be and back than to take the train. But again, in some countries, like Poland, the trains are state-owned and cost tiny sums(taking a 2 hour journey costs literally a pound, taking the longest, 10 hour journey from the mountains to the seaside costs slightly more than 10 pounds).

But that's just for you, alone. If you would travel with family, the picture would be the opposite.

There is interesting picture of hyperloop in article: http://breakthrough.turing.com/images/elements/A26.jpg

I wonder, why not just build regular bullet train? 380 miles seems like ideal distance. 1:30 minutes (center to center) would be great improvement. And it could be done in a few months.

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