Posted on 10/13/2019 8:19:47 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Will a hyperloop work in Pennsylvania?
That’s the question officials from legislative and executive branches, statewide agencies, organizations and departments, as well as a handful of private business leaders are trying to answer.
Fifty people, invited to a workshop at Dixon University in Harrisburg on Wednesday, met to talk about the possibility of building a hyperloop system in the commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has until April 2020 to complete a $2 million state-legislative commissioned study on its viability.
Media wasn’t permitted to attend the invitation-only meeting.
According to the turnpike’s research, a hyperloop combines a magnetic levitation train and a low pressure transit tube to propel “pods or capsules” at high rates of speed. It can travel up to 700 mph.
There are currently no hyperloop systems constructed worldwide, but the first to-scale hyperloop is expected to break ground in 2020-21 in either India or United Arab Emirates. The challenge here is how well it will work on Pennsylvania’s terrain, said Barry Altman, the state’s hyperloop project manager, during a phone interview before Wednesday’s workshop.
"We recognize that on the front end, geography is a key issue,” Altman said. "Pennsylvania is not ideal for hyperloop, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be built.” He acknowledged those factors could make building one in the state more expensive and longer to complete than in other states. No cost estimates have been discussed publicly at this point.
State Rep. Aaron Kaufer, a Luzerne County Republican, attended the meeting. He spearheaded and co-sponsored House Bill 1057, legislation that directed the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to conduct the study. AECOM, a Los-Angeles, California-based engineering firm, is analyzing what it would take to build a hyperloop tube that would run from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg to Philadelphia and then north toward Luzerne County.
(Excerpt) Read more at pennlive.com ...
Sure. Why should California have all the fun?
PING.
Wonder, joy, and glory! Now PA can go broke along with CA pursuing a fraudulent boondoggle.
How about one from DC to Gitmo?
The only reason these loony ideas have any traction is that the criminal class (aka: politicians) are quite willing to waste OPM (other peoples’ money) on it irregardless of the idea’s merits.
So you could vote in 4 counties on Election Day ...
Bingo!!! Best post of the day. You have won the seven exclamation mark prize. !!!!!!!
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has done such a wonderful job on the turnpike that it only makes sense to put them in charge of this project.
A choo choo! We libs love us some choo choos!
Hey for 2 million bucks I’ll study anything!
So how many people will need to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in half an hour?
How much will it cost to travel?
How in the heck can I get this “study” money for so many government things.
For just $1 million I can hit google over a week or 2, go visit some cool places and contract a few engineers I know from college, then write a 600 page report no one will read.
And that is just for this one.
Climate Change pays very well.
LOL!
>>So how many people will need to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in half an hour?<<
Worse, how many people WANT to go from Pittsburgh to Philly in ANY length of time?
It’s actually going to be a freight-only system, as currently envisioned.
Driving across PA is an experience in east coast geology. Flat piedmont, up to hills and mountains. Then back down across glacial valleys, down to the Great Lakes. Yeah, zipping across that at 700 mph would be a thrill ride.
If you could actually move bulk freight from Philly to Pittsburg in a half an hour for a cost orders of magnitude less than it would cost for air travel, it would be a big win. If you could link in hooks in Scranton and Harrisburg, this hypothetical hyperloop could change the state of freight and logistics across the east coast. That is a fact.
Also... another fact: If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle. There’s just no way to eminent domain that much territory through over and under existing towns, mountains and established infrastructure to build up to the potential, much less incorporate a complex system of transfer terminals into existing logistics facilities and establish competitive freight rates. Even if the territory could be allocated for an efficient route and the Boring company be able to efficiently carve out tunnels through mountainsides and across rivers without causing a calamity for crackers, some politician would get elected on a promise that seriously this time property taxes would go down if we just passed a hyperloop tax. Since it would take years to build such a project, any tax would be imposed, raised, and then earmarked to be diverted to the turnpike commission pension fund well before the first dollar was collected.
In a state as gleefully corrupt in it’s transportation sector as PA, there will just be too many hands grabbing at the cookie jar to allow it to work.
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