# Dade Official Proposes Hyperloop That Would Connect Miami To Orlando I



## Caesar La Rock (Apr 6, 2017)

Not sure if this is the right topic for this, but interesting.

*Miami to Orlando could be among the first Hyperloop routes in the country, with a travel time of just over 26 minutes.*

*The route was one of eleven announced as finalists today by Hyperloop One, which has hundreds of employees working on a prototype. Two or three will eventually be selected to build.*

*State and local officials are said to be a part of the proposal. Alice Bravo, Miami-Dade director of public works, told The Verge that the route would transport tourists between Miami and Orlando, as well as cargo from the Port of Miami.*

*The 26 minute trip time compares to 3 hours and 40 minutes by bus or 55 minutes by plane. Bravo also said that the hyperloop from Miami could eventually extend to Atlanta or Chicago.*

*“We think this is a corridor that could serve as a national stimulus,” Bravo said, “for this area of innovation and human capital intellect.”*

*A press release from Hyperloop One also said that Florida Department of Transportation officials are a part of the proposal.*

Read more:*Source*


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## A Voice (Apr 6, 2017)

Setting aside the extent to which Hyperloop is a boondoggle on an unprecedented scale, notice they compared trip times only to bus and plane - not a mention of rail - not even Brightline.


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## mfastx (Apr 7, 2017)

A Voice said:


> Setting aside the extent to which Hyperloop is a boondoggle on an unprecedented scale, notice they compared trip times only to bus and plane - not a mention of rail - not even Brightline.


Although it certainly would seem like a boondoggle since the technology is unproven, if that 26 minute figure is anywhere remotely close to accurate and wasn't prohibitively expensive, it would immediately dominate the market share between the two cities. I suspect they didn't mention Brightline times because they don't exist yet.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 7, 2017)

I looked at the idea of a hyperloop style idea once in my head. I concluded the materials needed to maintain vacuum on that scale would be not only prohibitive, but possibly unattainable. That being said, I once felt that way about electric cars and the same man who proposed this single handedly proved me wrong.

I'm taking a wait and see. I suspect that when steam powered rail vehicles were first proposed, everybody thought that was a boondoggle too.


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## XHRTSP (Apr 7, 2017)

Green Maned Lion said:


> That being said, I once felt that way about electric cars and the same man who proposed this single handedly proved me wrong.


Electric cars have existed for decades now. It was just a matter of enough small incremental battery improvements adding up to make them competitive with internal combustions for most consumer's use. This hyperloop is a completely new ballgame and I find it ludicrous that these lines are being considered as a proof of concept. How about a five mile track out in the desert first and make sure this actually works at scale.


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## Anderson (Apr 7, 2017)

XHRTSP said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > That being said, I once felt that way about electric cars and the same man who proposed this single handedly proved me wrong.
> ...


To say nothing of the issues evaluating Musk's suggested capacity levels.

I personally like a different title for this thread: "Dade Official Goes Hyperloopy".


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## VentureForth (Apr 7, 2017)

Such old 1870's technology.

To GML's point, a 500 meter test track is completely worthless. They need at least a five mile circuit with intermediate stops, curves, elevation changes, etc.

That being said, the vacuum can be segmented with bulkheads and multiple suction points. But my understanding is that this won't really be vacuum powered. It's supposed to be maglev, but with a vacuum to reduce friction.


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## Anderson (Apr 7, 2017)

VentureForth said:


> Such old 1870's technology.
> 
> To GML's point, a 500 meter test track is completely worthless. They need at least a five mile circuit with intermediate stops, curves, elevation changes, etc.
> 
> That being said, the vacuum can be segmented with bulkheads and multiple suction points. But my understanding is that this won't really be vacuum powered. It's supposed to be maglev, but with a vacuum to reduce friction.


The key difference is the speed that's being sold, and that has major implications. Even noting that it's a vacuum-based maglev, there's a very real issue of even _theoretically_ being able to stop a vehicle if a "technical issue" (e.g. loss of vacuum, loss of power, etc.) interferes with operation. You don't want a power hiccup to trigger a mass casualty incident, and IIRC in order to achieve the traffic density Musk was pushing for the CA system there would be a very real risk of this (since at those speeds you _need_ a certain amount of slowing distance or the G-forces you'd expose pax to in an "emergency stop" scenario start causing real problems themselves).


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 7, 2017)

VentureForth said:


> Such old 1870's technology.
> 
> To GML's point, a 500 meter test track is completely worthless. They need at least a five mile circuit with intermediate stops, curves, elevation changes, etc.
> 
> That being said, the vacuum can be segmented with bulkheads and multiple suction points. But my understanding is that this won't really be vacuum powered. It's supposed to be maglev, but with a vacuum to reduce friction.


It's not the vacuum power; it's the strength of material needed to maintain vacuum without causing implosion. Think the opposite of a Champagne bottle. That's not impossible, far from it. But possibly unaffordable.

And dude, the Tesla was not an incremental development. Each tech in it was, but the break through was actually designing an electric car, rather than adapting one. Even the GM EV-1 was an adapted Saturn platform. The unique platform is the breakthrough.


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## XHRTSP (Apr 8, 2017)

Green Maned Lion said:


> And dude, the Tesla was not an incremental development. Each tech in it was, but the break through was actually designing an electric car, rather than adapting one. Even the GM EV-1 was an adapted Saturn platform. The unique platform is the breakthrough.


Not sure which dude you're responding to, but no that's not correct. Range has, is and will be the challenge of electric cars, and that is most directly related to the battery's energy density, discharge and recharge capabilities. Building a new chassis or modifying an existing one will make not a lick of difference. Tesla is at it's heart a battery company that builds cars, not the other way around.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 8, 2017)

You are absolutely wrong. What the Tesla Model S does to make electric cars more practical is use the battery as a structural part of the chassis, only doable when you design the car around it. By designing the car and electriness together, they allowed a much larger physical battery to go into the car, without interfering with usable space- this is why it has 5+2 seating in a SWB S-class footprint and a "frunk" while the GM EV-1 was the physical footprint of a 5-Passenger Saturn, almost no cargo space, and cramped seating for two.

The EV-1 was a science project put into production. The Tesla was designed as a great car with an electric power train. Frankly (Sorry, Nate) a carphobe like Neroden owning such a piece of machinery is a waste.

Remember: Henry Ford innovated nothing about the car. Elon Musk did not invent the electric car. They both made a concept mass market viable, through all kinds of break throughs.


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## VentureForth (Apr 10, 2017)

Good analogy, GML. It's like the difference between the Prius and the Camry. The Toyota Prius (arguably the ugliest new car ever) was designed around the hybrid system and is now, by far, the most popular hybrid vehicle on the market. On the other hand, the Toyota Camry Hybrid installed batteries into an existing frame and the result was a Camry with no baggage space. Same with the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid. I have one of those. Wonderful, comfortable car with no room whatsoever - not even for a spare tire. Comes with a can of fix-a-flat.


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## Bob Dylan (Apr 10, 2017)

Have to say that the Pontiac Aztek and some of Nissan's Ugly ducklings might beat out the Very Popular Prius when it comes to looks. ( I live in Austin, the Prius,Honda,Tesla and Electric/Hybrid Capitol of America)


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## XHRTSP (Apr 10, 2017)

Green Maned Lion said:


> You are absolutely wrong. What the Tesla Model S does to make electric cars more practical is use the battery as a structural part of the chassis, only doable when you design the car around it. By designing the car and electriness together, they allowed a much larger physical battery to go into the car, without interfering with usable space- this is why it has 5+2 seating in a SWB S-class footprint and a "frunk" while the GM EV-1 was the physical footprint of a 5-Passenger Saturn, almost no cargo space, and cramped seating for twp.


In a way I agree with what you're saying, Tesla gets points for going all in and building an all around kick ass car. I don't dispute that. But that is insignificant to the importance of slow incremental improvements in battery technology over the decades, and a far easier engineering challenge.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 11, 2017)

Actually, rapid battery improvement made the Tesla viable. A much more profitable and battery reliant industry than cars needed incredible batteries, and poured the billions needed to develop them that automakers could never have afforded to spend- that being Samsung and Apple trying to figure out ways to get all day use out of palm-sized supercomputers/digital photo studios/video game player/navigational devices- oh, and I left out phone.


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## MARC Rider (Apr 13, 2017)

XHRTSP said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > That being said, I once felt that way about electric cars and the same man who proposed this single handedly proved me wrong.
> ...


They had practical electric cars 100 years ago.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 14, 2017)

Practical if you don't like traveling very far... which was practical then. I drive 35k miles a year- those vehicles would not qualify as practical.


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## jis (Apr 14, 2017)

Speaking of Dade officials, a favorite technique used by Florida officials to kick cans down the road is to promise the impossible at some unspecified future date, specially things they have no control over and hold off doing things that can be done today, and that they have control over. This IMHO falls in that category. Fortunately Government droids are not involved in Brightline (except in some cases in trying to block it).

These same Dade officials cannot get their act together to expand the Miami Metro system and actually figure out how to fund the Miami Beach LRT, both of which are entirely within their control. So of course they have to talk about Hyperloop to Orlando over which they have zero control.


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## MARC Rider (Apr 16, 2017)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Practical if you don't like traveling very far... which was practical then. I drive 35k miles a year- those vehicles would not qualify as practical.


Read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Vehicle-Burden-History/dp/0813528097

His point is that the reason the internal combustion engine prevailed over electric cars in the early 1900s was due to cultural forces, not the inherent superiority of the particular technology. (This should be a truism to all of us who do our computing on Windows platforms.)

In 1900, most Americans didn't drive 35k miles a year. They had no need to drive 35k miles per year. American cities and towns were walkable and good public transportation was available. The cities and towns were linked by an extensive railway system. The main advantage of motorized road transport was its potential to displace horse-drawn transport, thus eliminating manure pollution in cities and towns. In that context, electric vehicles with short ranges would work perfectly well. The actual deployment included taxis and delivery vehicles, which all returned to base on a regular basis, and thus could get charged or a battery swap fairly easily. One could even imagine (though I don't think it ever came to pass) a Zip-Car like service, where the general public could subscribe and have electric city cars available for short term rentals, which might e useful if they were visiting at odd hors in remote neighborhoods with few taxis or they were going to the store to pick up something too gig to carry home on the streetcar, or they just wanted to tool around for the afternoon. The only people who needed the range of the internal combustion engine were farmers, who did need to drive long distances and rich enthusiasts who enjoyed touring the countryside. (I suppose there were then, as there are now, people who have a psychological need to project power via the use of a noisy engine; read about the fake engine noise they program into today's quieter cars.)

Now, one curious cultural pattern among Americans is that even is they are urban proletariat or professionals, etc., they have a self image of bing farmers, pioneers, or lords of the manor. This is the cultural context that caused them to all desire the internal combustion car that was a better fit for farmers than for an urban apartment dwelling New Yorker (or Chcagoan, or whatever city they lived in). Once the public started buying the cars, the real estate developers were only too happy to sell them suburbia and a way of life where, yes, the additional range of an internal combustion car was a distinct advantage. The result is our current situation where nearly everyone, if they live outside a few neighborhood in New York, Boston. Phialdelpha, Washington, Chicago, or San Fransisco,_* needs*_ to have a car for daily mobility needs, and in most cases, needs the extended range provided by an internal combustion engine. Mr. Musk's contribution is that his team developed an electric car that could compete on the basis of range with internal combustions cars. But had our culture been different, such competition wouldn't have been necessary, and we'd have perfectly good mobility with circa 1900 electric cars as part of a balanced transportation system in cities that are configured completely differently than they are today.


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## jis (Apr 16, 2017)

Actually early suburbia was developed using rail, way before cars came into vogue. Look at the history of development of the New York Subway system for example. They were developed to connect what then was suburbia to the urban core. Same with LIRR. IC engine cars came in to give an additional sense of freedom of being able to go wherever - that is wherever there is a road or motorable tract. hence the positive feedback between the two in the creation of many roads and development of suburbia that became incompatible with transit.

BTW, this is not just an American phenomenon now. This sort of thing is pretty much what anyone with enough money strives for almost everywhere in the world, even if they have the best public transport system.


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## me_little_me (Apr 16, 2017)

VentureForth said:


> Good analogy, GML. It's like the difference between the Prius and the Camry. The Toyota Prius (arguably the ugliest new car ever) was designed around the hybrid system and is now, by far, the most popular hybrid vehicle on the market. On the other hand, the Toyota Camry Hybrid installed batteries into an existing frame and the result was a Camry with no baggage space. Same with the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid. I have one of those. Wonderful, comfortable car with no room whatsoever - not even for a spare tire. Comes with a can of fix-a-flat.


As an owner of a Prius and a Camry Hybrid, I disagree that the Camry has no room. Yes, there is a considerable difference between a car designed as a hybrid from ground up and a retrofit into an existing design, but let's not exaggerate. As to ugliness, you never encountered an AMC Hornet, did you?

With two hybrids, I pass all gas stations but have to stop at every tree for a hug.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 17, 2017)

I personally think the Hornet was a rather attractive car. You sure you don't mean the Pacer?

And seriously, the new Prius isn't ugly. It's gratuitously ugly. It's like Toyota sat down and said, "it's very important for our car to stand out, but stunningly beautiful is too hArd and will be copied. How ugly can we make this car?"


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## jis (Apr 17, 2017)

As they say, beauty (and hence ugliness) is in the eyes of the beholder


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## neroden (Apr 18, 2017)

Green Maned Lion said:


> And dude, the Tesla was not an incremental development. Each tech in it was, but the break through was actually designing an electric car, rather than adapting one. Even the GM EV-1 was an adapted Saturn platform. The unique platform is the breakthrough.


Of course, there were electric cars "designed from the ground up" as electric cars back in the 1890s, so that wasn't a breakthrough either.

There's actually a subtle point here. Musk's genius is in an area way more specific than most people think. He's very good at figuring out how to make a product affordable *and* marketable: which pieces are essential and must not be skimped on and which pieces are inessential and can be cheaped out on or eliminated technology. He's very good at putting capital to good use: spending money where it gets a payback and not where it doesn't. He has applied this talent at Tesla and he has applied it at SpaceX.

He has not applied this talent to Hyperloop, which he sketched on a napkin one day. He said he did it because CAHSR was expensive, and promptly sketched something much *more* expensive, because he was *solving the wrong problems*. If he actually takes the time to seriously apply his talents to Hyperloop (which he didn't), he will end up with conventional HSR and find some way to make cheaper bridges, tunnels, cuts, and fills.

He's actually slowly inching in that direction. He started the "Boring Company" and started trying to redesign the tunnel boring machine, which was another "solving the wrong problem" mistake.

Then he went to an *actual tunnel boring site* and started asking them what the limiting factor on the speed was. Usually, it's spoil removal. At which point he was clearly surprised. But maybe now he's actually got his mind on speeding up spoil removing, he might be able to figure out how to do that.


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## neroden (Apr 18, 2017)

MARC Rider said:


> Read this book:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Vehicle-Burden-History/dp/0813528097
> 
> His point is that the reason the internal combustion engine prevailed over electric cars in the early 1900s was due to cultural forces, not the inherent superiority of the particular technology. (This should be a truism to all of us who do our computing on Windows platforms.)


It wasn't just cultural; I've listed out the reasons before. They don't apply any more.(1) There was no electricity in rural areas until the 1930s when FDR implemented rural electrification. So electric cars simply couldn't be used outside of town.

(2) Electricity, where it existed, was expensive. I have lost the link and it's hard to find, but electricity was *expensive* back in 1900. The price has continuously fallen in real terms.

Ah, here's a partial example. A DOLLAR per kilowatt-hour as late as 1930? I pay 11 cents now.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/history-electricity/

(3) Gasoline was *extremely cheap*. It was a waste byproduct of kerosene refining and was being *burned in open pits*. Even after they started deliberately refining it, it was still incredibly cheap.

I can find historical oil price charts, but these don't really capture the fact that gas was extra-cheap before the gasoline car took over in the 1910s (because kerosene was the main product):

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-14/150-years-real-oil-prices

I can also point out the reasons the gasoline car beat out the steam car. Again, gasoline was cheap, while coal was expensive (because coal was used for *lots* of stuff at the time, and gasoline wasn't).

And the steam car took an hour to heat up in the morning.

But despite this... go look in the World Almanac of 1890 (which I did when they were deaccessioning them from the library... before I threw them out, I'm sad to say). There was a big discussion of what sort of automobile would win out. The consensus opinion was that it would be steam for the countryside and electric for the city. Gasoline was discussed but considered unlikely, as it was too unreliable. You'll see a pretty similar assessment in the 1900 World Almanac, but by then steam was declining and gasoline was gaining, and there is mention of gasoline being cheaper to operate than electric but not as nice....

---

The price of electricity in real terms has been slowly creeping downward over the 20th century.

The price of gasoline stayed really low through the 1950s, but then started going up.

The relative prices of electricity and gasoline for transportation crossed over in the 1970s during the Oil Crises. In the late 1980s and 1990s they were actually pretty much equivalent in price, and since then electricity has been *definitively* cheaper.


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