Well, as a European, that's actually interesting to compare it to high speed train. Outside the US, high speed train is not only something we can do, it is something already done.
Note that the Northeast Corridor, the only thing approaching high speed rail in the US, is very profitable. Unfortunately Amtrak then has to take that surplus to subsidize unprofitable routes elsewhere.
But of course that's a complex issue, some say that the local service degraded as more resources were diverted to the TGV lines. I can't really imagine that having the center of Marseille 3 hours away from the center of Paris can be a net negative overall. It beats the plane every time, that's for sure.
The high speed train stops right in the city center.
So unless one of your endpoints is close to one of the airports it's 3 hours for both of them.
Also in my experience the TGV is much more comfortable than similarly priced airplane tickets. You can look at the landscape (unless you're traveling by night), you have more room, you can walk around etc...
This is IMO the biggest issue w/ Hyperloop - budget and/or politics will kill it well before engineering challenges.
We have the Acela which isn't quite high speed rail (it is higher speed rail - up to 150mph in some areas but a lower speed limits in others). The Acela is very popular and actually profitable. The Acela has the potential to improve speeds by improving tracks to be able to accommodate higher speeds safely in places as well as removing the remaining grade crossings and probably more infrastructure to ease some congestion. High speed rail has huge potential in some areas. Hopefully this potential can be realized!
https://bikeeastbay.org/rail/fra.html
And for various reasons rail construction in the US costs about 5 times as much as it does in France. And because it costs more we do less of it. The figures below are for subways but I believe long distance rail sees the same effect.
https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
Obviously you can't always go completely straight when you're building on the ground.
Edit: the closest comparison distance-wise is probably Barcelona to Madrid; 2:45, average 227kph.
The japanese shinkansen takes 2 hours and 22 minutes to go from Tokyo to Osaka (515 km).
Paris - Stuttgart - Nuremberg (580km) takes 6h51 including one hour between connections in Stuttgart.
Berlin - Stuttgart (591km) has a 5h34 direct connection.
Frankfurt - Bern - Milano (~700km) takes 7h47 including 30 minutes in Bern
OTOH, Frankfurt - Cologne (for which a dedicated high speed rail route was built nearly 20 years ago) is about 200km in 1h04.
The wait times are not the big problem - the problem is the time needed to decelerate and accelerate the train at each stop. E.g. a freight train of 1.200 tons needs 1km from 100 km/h to 0, and a high-speed passenger train, e.g. ICE 3, needs 3.3km from 330 km/h to 0.
New York to Los Angeles is about 4,000 km. London to Moscow is only 2,500 km.
Edit: the point here is that Europeans, in general, have no conception of the distances involved in the U.S. transportation network. Passenger rail (high speed or otherwise) works well for relatively short distances in relatively densely populated regions. The trouble is that we don't have very many of those regions.
Edit 2: so you're moderating down arithmetic now? Awesome.
I'm not sure what's worse, that you seriously think the longest high speed rail link in France is 106km, or that you think London to Moscow is reasonably compared to New York to Los Angeles. Why would you start from a city that's nowhere near the edge of the continent in question? The NYC->LA analog would be something like Lisbon to Moscow which, guess what! Is almost exactly the same distance.
There used to be a slow Quimper-Vintimille journey that was more than 1000 km, but it's been significantly shortened since then.
Your numbers show you have no conception of the distances involved in Europe. Thinking that the longest train link in France, a country that's 1000 km wide and 1000 km high, is 100 km long is completely ridiculous.
They do specifically mention "high speed" train lines.
Even if you somehow counted only >300km/h as high-speed, then the LGV Est is a bit more than 300 km long and rated at 320 km/h. I suspect a 100 km-long high-speed line would not even be competitive against cars, except maybe in dense urban areas where car traffic is often slow.
> So what?
Call me old fashioned, but I think it's worth responding to what's actually been said.
What did I fail to read, exactly? Is it that seszett didn't explicitly specify "high speed" in that one sentence? As I said in my reply, so what? The overall point, that the 106km figure is ridiculous, stands regardless.
http://www.renfe.com/viajeros/larga_distancia/productos/AVEF... (spanish)
Hyperloop is designed for medium distances transportation like between 300 and 1000. Over that, it probably make no sense against air travel.
So Europe is kind of the perfect place for hyperloop, and probably the reason why its traditional tech competitor, the high speed train, is successful. That's also the reason of my comment - if hyperloop can deliver cheaper, faster to build and plain faster connection for medium distance travel that could revolutionize transport in Europe even more than for the US.
EDIT: as another reader has noted, I missed the "106" km link. I suppose you mean 1060 or something ?
I'd say nobody has any conception of distances involved in the really big countries.