Hype of The Hyperloop

Well, billionaire visionary Elon Musk unveiled his latest and greatest design this past Monday- for the 'fifth mode' of transportation, a system that would be known as a 'Hyperloop.'  Basically, it's like a gigantic pneumatic tube that would shoot people between Los Angeles and San Francisco so fast it could cut travel time down to as little as thirty minutes.   Futuristic flight of fancy, you say?  Not at all.  Per Musk, all this technology current exists and as a nice bonus, this could be built at a fraction of the estimated cost of the high speed rail link that's currently being built between the two cities.

There was some concern that this could be unworkable- as even higher speeds are possible if this is done underground.  (And how does that work?  You gotta dig, you gotta get land to dig on- just makes the whole idea seem even more expensive) but Musk seems to have worked around that saying that this could be built above ground and run alongside the I-5 between SF and LA.

This is kind of exciting to me...  it's new, different, could be be built- since we've got all the technology invented already and most importantly of all, it's really, really fast.   Don't get me wrong:  I'd love nothing more than a beautiful network of high speed trains all over the country but it's just not feasible.  Too many tracks aren't graded to handle genuinely high speed rail- too many routes have to be shared with freight rail service.  The problems are too many to count.  Hyperloop represents an investment that could be well worth making for the transportation infrastructure of this country.  (The fact that it's estimated price tag comes in at a fraction of what's estimated for the California High Speed Rail project should really make people sit up and take notice.)

In other words, all the right boxes get checked off with this idea:  it can be done right now with existing technology, it's cheaper than building a high speed rail line by a significant margin and it'd would be an incredible fast, efficient way of getting between point A and point B.

Do I think it's got a chance in hell of getting built?  I doubt it.  Too many vested interests are behind rail projects now and unless Governor Brown drops the high speed rail line like a bad habit and doubles down on this, I think this will get filed away under 'perfectly plausible and money saving ideas' and forgotten about.  Though if I'm a California GOPer, I'd be raising holy hell over pissing away so much money on high speed rail when you could build this for less and have it go a hell of a lot faster.

It'd be awesome if people did get their shit together and build it though.  Just a thought...