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.
How many dollars per foot does boring and lining a tunnel through granite and shale cost? Never going to happen and people that think it will are deluded. Just because it was Musk’s idea doesn’t make it a good one.
I look forward to the huge liability bills when the first shipment of cargo breaks it’s mooring in the acceleration stage, crashes into everything behind it, and an entire car full turns to rubble. If it is supposed to be a half-hour trip Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, they are looking at some hellacious acceleration profiles.