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Hyperloop’s loss is high-speed rail’s gain | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Finally everyone sees the hyperloop as a massive Elmo grift.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I really, really think high-speed rail is the wrong direction to take. I'm very much in the "maglev" camp

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

See, I'm more of a teleporter guy myself

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I too am for murdering the original.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Difference is that there are multiple working Maglevs around the world right now (which you can actually ride)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

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:

Despite over a century of research and development, there are only six operational maglev trains today — three in China, two in South Korea, and one in Japan.

Of these:

The Shanghai one operates at 300km/h most of the time. It's about 30km long.
The Changsha one runs at 140km/h over a length of about 19km.
The Beijing one runs at 100km/h over a distance of about 10km.
The Linimo one runs at 100km/h over about 9km.
The Incheon one runs at 80km/h over about 6km.

(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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

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.