If this works, I wonder about the logic of making it a SF-LA thing? At least, there should be another use case.
Why not go from Silicon Valley to a mountain area where you've bought a large area of land, ready to build on?
You could get investments from all over the tech industry, since it would lower living costs (and increase the maximum number) of the people that Silicon Valley can have (less infrastructure and living area "load").
Use the sales slogan "let's supersize the Silicon Valley!" for this new commuting solution.
Here's a crazy thought: Let's get outside the West Coast bubble here and think about this in a vastly more practical manner when it comes to population density and distance between urban cores.
Every time I hear this project spoken of, I have to hear people who live in the Bay Area talking about "SF to LA in half an hour"
I think what would be much more sensible would be "NY to Boston in 15 minutes" and then extending it to Philadelphia and DC. Where would the line go after it hit SF? Portland and Seattle? Denver? The populations of these places don't support the cost of the infrastructure. The east coast makes much more sense for this project.
You are assuming that there are not millions upon millions of people who can't justify flying from Boston to New York due to the fact that the car trip (when you factor in arrival at airport 90 mins ahead of time) isn't drastically slower than flying.
I say this as a seasoned east coast corporate whore. Many, many business travellers are forced to just drive from New York to Boston due to the fact that the trip is 3 and a half hours long in a car. NYC to DC is about 3 hours 44 minutes by car. These are distances which are just short enough to make a company tell an employee to drive instead of fly, but long enough that nobody in their right mind would want to commute this way on a semi-regular basis.
Not counting Baltimore, the East Coast corridor has over 35 million people in the big city's metro area.
If the price of this service is expected to be similar to air travel, then I get it (SF-LA), if this is simply about selling speed for a premium price...... but I think this is really about doing it faster AND cheaper. If its efficient enough, this could lead to a decoupling of workplace from home location, the way telecommuting was supposed to.
This makes much more sense. Perhaps I am biased from my East Coast viewpoint, but these things have to be built for everyone, not just tech enthusiasts. The East Coast has many more destinations that could benefit from this. For me right now, it's an hour to Boston and five to NYC. Philadelphia is maybe seven, DC a little more. If the hyperloop performs as Musk says it will, it would be 40 minutes from Boston to DC - commuting distance. That would completely revolutionize this side of the country. I could work in NYC but enjoy all the comfort of New England.
>>I could work in NYC but enjoy all the comfort of New England.
The station cost will probably be high; it will be hard to have "side tracks". (No fan-out, you could say.)
So if there is a station in e.g. NY/LA, the housing costs for the other end station(s) ought to rapidly close with the big-city end station. It is just a way of opening a larger area for commuting.
So, there won't be that much comforts of New England.
My point was that with a HL the areas with high people pressure could continue to grow (I selected Silicon Valley because HN is a California-centric place, for good and bad. I'm in Europe.)
True. It will probably be relatively expensive, at least at first. Still, if it's moderately priced (<$100) I would be much more willing to take long-distance trips down the coast. As it is, I rarely go to NYC or Philadelphia because of the time and/or cost. Maybe not commute, but certainly visit with some regularity.
2 reasons nobody has (surprisingly) mentioned yet:
- Trains: the Acela is established and successful, already taking about half of the passengers on the Eastern corridor.
- Right of way: (to borrow one of your sentences) the population density of thses places [East Coast] drives up the cost of the infrastructure.
Another factor might be that the design is better optimized for 400 miles than for 200. The capsule acceleration phase is necessarily long and energy-intensive, so you want to optimize that over longer distances. It's the same reason that high-speed trains don't have stops every 20 miles.
Well, he lives on the West Coast, and likely prefers to solve problems he faces more often first. If it works, there is nothing stopping one being built on the East Coast, but as long as the West Coast is thinking of, designing, and building the thing, I see no problem with it starting out here.
Putting on my well-worn cynic hat, I wonder how much SV's anti-remote attitude is influenced by people whose inflated property values depend on SV's anti-remote attitude.
Building this thing will be expensive. SF-LA is probably best place in US if you optimize for traffic volumes and capital needs.
I seriously doubt that this is going to happen between SF-LA first. If this is feasible idea, he will be able to sell it to Japan, China and EU countries first.
Why not go from Silicon Valley to a mountain area where you've bought a large area of land, ready to build on?
You could get investments from all over the tech industry, since it would lower living costs (and increase the maximum number) of the people that Silicon Valley can have (less infrastructure and living area "load").
Use the sales slogan "let's supersize the Silicon Valley!" for this new commuting solution.