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Comment by perardi | Hacker News Reader

Let’s look at the actual text of the article.

“Toronto-based startup TransPod has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government to study the potential of a high-speed hyperloop system and help it attract investors.”

And let’s translate that from polite Canadian PR speak: this will never, ever, ever happen, but it sounds nice, so we’ll put it out there.

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And before you say “you’re just a cynic, you have to believe in the power of disruption”, I want you to study the vast cost overruns and cost-disease of every public transit project of note in Canada in recent memory, and then tell me how magic startup fairy dust will cut through sclerotic governments both municipal, provincial, and federal.

We barely made Presto cards work.

My only question is if MoU is necessary step for any project like this. My expectation is that government bureaucracy requires each laborious step be taken in order for the project to even get to a state where it can start to fail.

It is so sad, but true. Canada is such a fantastic country in many ways, but the corruption on every level makes everything so expensive. Leaves nothing for good projects that are so badly needed to make it first class.

It took Ottawa 20 years to roll out first stage of light rail.

And of course, the Relief Line in Toronto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_Line_(Toronto)

Better translation: “We’ll let this startup expend its resources to study this, and then award the contract to Bombardier for political reasons.”

Only if SNC-Lavalin does the final study for provincial approval.

For non-Canadians: the “we must buy Canadian” (or to be fully cynical “we must buy Quebecois”) has not gone super well for our transit needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity_Outlook_(Toronto_stree...

Projected 8 to 10 billion? , will end up being 25-billion at the low end.

In a province that is quite broke, and led by a retrograde politician who only thinks of oil. Unless this also happens to transport heavy crude, this will not happen.

I suspect in the end it's ... they can test development of this in Alberta because it's a locale which is super "business friendly" (read low taxes, low regulations). Doesn't mean it will ever actually get built, though.

an MoU lol

A memorandum of understanding from a startup to create a capital-intensive public transit system in a time where existing public transit is in severe financial distress, in a province that is in severe financial distress, and also one that loves its pickup trucks. Sure.

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