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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Even the HSR that operates in Switzerland, the TGV, doesn't get up to speed until it is well within France. Switzerland tracks aren't straight enough for HSR, and it would cost a lot to straighten them out.

There also isn't a lot of demand for Geneva to Zurich in an hour.

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I think the demand would come after it gets built. Even bigger would be demand for Bern/Zurich and Basel/Zurich in 30min, bringing these cities comfortably into commute distance. People do that today but only if they really must.

There is an aspect of Swiss economy that makes HSR attractive: high degree of decentralization.

Those cities already feel close enough together. More to the point, I don’t think Switzerland probably wants the kind of growth that HSR would enable and encourage.

No they really aren't close enough together. For example, I know someone who moved from Zurich to Olten so that their girlfriend's commute to Bern would be reasonable. Now you have 2 people with 50 minute commutes instead of 1 person with 1h45 and another person with 15min. If there was a 30min connection from Bern to Zurich it would be perfectly reasonable to live in one and commute to the other.

Again, does Switzerland really want to become one big mega city? It is up for the Swiss to decide, but a huge commute draw between Bern and Zurich (or even Bern and Lausanne) would lead to something more like Japan.

Maybe that’s just me but I don’t think of Japan as a bad model in how to have a dense population that is prosperous. If anything their biggest problem currently is depopulation of remote areas.

The question is about density and whether that's something to pursue even if it's prosperous.

It's an incongruous question. Hyperloops between Basel, Bern and Zurich would make them into one virtual Mini-City. The loops would also reduce density in the travel corridors preventing a California catastrophe kind of sprawl inbetween.

On the mountains that the hyperloop would traverse? ok dudes

Basel<>Bern (direct) would need tunnels.. The other 2 routes are pretty flat. Most of the Swiss economy is in the valley between the Jura range and the Alps.

The necessary tunnels for Basel would probably cost less than this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

But Bern<>Zurich is the SBB's bottleneck.

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