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Comment by Touche | Hacker News Reader

It's too bad the hyperloop idea is focused on city->city transportation. It could be an incredible tool to combat the increasing cost of living in cities. Imagine living this far away but getting to work in 30 minutes. Housing prices would return to sanity in cities.

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You don't need hyperloop. Existing train technology could easily provide this. With modern signals and a good track, high speed trains can deliver good throughput with high comfort.

The problem appears to be the old tracks (speed restrictions) and old signalling system which increases delays and lowers throughput.

EDIT: To use the route here as an example. According to google maps the distance is 83 miles on road, so probably around 80 miles for a train. This can easily be done within 45 min on a train. Have a look at the German cities of Cologne and Frankfurt. There's a high speed train running and I know some people commuting there. It's not nice either but a distance of 150 miles with <1hr commute each direction. The ticket costs ~$4,500 per year which includes free rides on all trains within Germany. There are 3 stops on the way and some people only commute half the way which makes it a 20-25 min commute for the same distance of Philipsburg to NYC.

> With modern signals and a good track, high speed trains can deliver good throughput with high comfort.

This exists in France where some countryside TGV stations have become Parisian commute towns.

E.g. Angers-Paris (296km, 1h15 by TGV) - http://www.lepoint.fr/villes/tgv-boulot-saint-laud-25-10-201... (French)

To give a point of comparison, Riverhead in Suffolk County is about 80 miles from Penn Station. Monthly tickets would add up to $6,000 a year. There's one train in the morning that you have to catch, leaving at 6:08 AM. It requires two transfers and gets to Penn Station at 8:23 AM. On the way back you again only have one train to catch, at 5:41 PM. It has one transfer and gets to Riverhead to 7:37 PM.

For not much more than 8 hours at the office (depending on how far away from Penn it is) you'd be away from your house for more than 14 hours every day.

At least it can serve to distribute the cost of living to multiple cities. Philly is incredibly cheap in comparison to NYC -- As mentioned in this article (and others) people are already commuting daily from their homes in Philly to their office in New York.

Yeah, good point. It could also serve to grow smaller cities. I imagine something like Albany would be an attractive option, if they could afford to build a hyperloop there.

Why bother with Hyperloop to Albany? The train right-of-way already exists (and it's beautiful), the terminals already exist. Plus, people want to go to Hudson, Poughkeepsie, Tarrytown, etc. Just make it very high speed rail and suddenly the full trip is <1 hour instead of >2.

That's a great start! A hyperloop would be half that (or more), so obviously it's more attractive for that reason.

A hyperloop terminal would probably be located in a vastly less convenient location than Penn Station. I expect for many NYC residents it'd be a shorter trip to take a high speed train through the existing right-of-way than to take a hyperloop, similar to how it's often faster to take the train from NYC to DC than to fly.

I really do not see the appeal of hyperloop in any situation involving high density land use, and I also do not see how it could work in locations without high density.

The appeal is speed. I think you see the appeal. You don't see the logistics. Which is fair.

This actually isn't anything new. Growing up, one of our neighbors in exurban Philadelphia commuted into New York City for the week. I think that's probably the more common situation. Doesn't work for everyone of course, but traveling somewhere and staying there for the work week is a pretty common pattern for a lot of consulting roles, for example.

It's common in consulting roles where the company you consult for is paying for your apartment/hotel. Probably not so common for W2 employees unless you are an upper level executive perhaps. I'm sure the people in this article would elect to stay in a hotel for the week if given the option.

Yes, but if you are taking Amtrak from Philly to Manhattan every day roundtrip you already have a pretty hefty commuting bill--probably $100/day fairly easily. This is admittedly less than a Manhattan hotel but there is a fairly significant financial cost associated with these extreme commuting situations.

Yeah, for sure, but the people in these articles were buying $350k homes so they are already pretty well off. I don't think any of these people chose the commute option because they couldn't afford a place in the city (just not as big/nice of a place as they have where they live).

I wonder how well you could do with a planned town and a hyperloop or high-speed rail line? Offering a 1-hour commute to somewhere 150 miles away from San Francsico sounds like a risky-but-worthwhile development.

Difficulty would obvious vary quite a lot by city, and I imagine NYC is basically irreparable since you can't even get a line into it. But it would at least have potential for less dense locations.

I'm not sure you could get a line into SF. CalTrain has been trying to electrify their line, and even that appears to have been a mini-nightmare, e.g., with Atherton suing.

It doesn't help that Caltrain is trying to take land via Eminent Domain. I just wish I could get a reliable internet connection on Caltrain.

Not just that, but in many ways a strange business decision. Traditionally, it's not uncommon for railways to build a line to the middle of nowhere where they own the land, then make their money developing and selling the land, rather than from fares.

i believe Hong Kong's metro uses that strategy.

They do build malls into their stations, but the HK metro is also profitable from just gate fares.

Cities are the only place that have enough potential passengers to make the high cost of building something like that worth it.

I know :) That's why I said "too bad". We can't fix the cost of living in cities problem if the only place it's convenient to live is already-big cities.

The Boring Company is planning 200kph for local tunnels and 1000kph for hyperloop between cities. This can be the biggest ever impact in commuting times at all distances.

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