Hyperloop’s loss is high-speed rail’s gain | TechCrunch
Finally everyone sees the hyperloop as a massive Elmo grift.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/22/hyperloop-one-elon-musk-high-speed-rail/Open linkView original on lemmy.world149
Comments15https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/22/hyperloop-one-elon-musk-high-speed-rail/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
They just opened the Brightline connection between Orlando and Miami. It's cool that we have a rail connection now but for my girlfriend and I to go down it would be $300 round trip. And it would take just as long to drive. It's really not very "high speed" at all. Maybe compared to Amtrak.
Oh for FUCKS sake
I don't see the issue?
I think it might be my poor reading comprehension, but it sounded like brightline was some hyperloop nonsense that was getting federal funding
Nope, they're for real!
for rail!*
I really, really think high-speed rail is the wrong direction to take. I'm very much in the "maglev" camp
See, I'm more of a teleporter guy myself
I too am for murdering the original.
Difference is that there are multiple working Maglevs around the world right now (which you can actually ride)
Yes. Six of them. Only one of which exceeds 150km/h in speed and none of which exceeds 30km in length. So impressive and totally better than high speed rail that routinely exceeds 250km/h over distances measured in hundreds to thousands of km.
Maglevs are economically unviable in the absence of room temperature superconductors. So being in the "sci-fi" camp isn't really the flex you think it is.
The Shanghai Maglev train has a top speed of 190 mph and is in active daily use. Please tell me more from your "research" how it is unviable despite already existing in one of the densest metro regions in the world
Read this, maybe you'll learn something:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev
Dude, I live in China. I've taken the Shanghai maglev a few times. It's a white elephant. It only exists because it's "face" for them to have it. It's heavily subsidized and is still ridiculously expensive (40RMB cheapest one-way ticket, with peak price of 100 one-way).
Perhaps you should have read a bit further along in your little article here:
Of these:
(I can't find a reference to a second commercial maglev in South Korea, so if you find it, you can place it in that list.)
For reference, the Jinghu high-speed railway between Beijing and Shanghai operates at 350km/h cruising speed over a length of more than 1300km. And 250km/h rail lines are now common like borscht here in China.
So, yes maglev trains exist, but this does not make them economically viable. The evidence shows that most of them are slow (even by traditional rail standards, not to mention HSR), expensive, only run short distances, and in the case of the single high speed one runs only because it is heavily subsidized (despite the ludicrously overpriced tickets).
So read¹ these² and maybe³ you'll⁴ learn⁵ something⁶.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incheon_Airport_Maglev
⁴ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo
⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1_(Beijing_Subway)
⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changsha_Maglev_Express
It's far more expensive than traditional rail. You can get pretty high speeds with traditional rail too, in western Europe there are trains reaching 300-350 km/h.