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Transportation

Virgin Hyperloop One is Coming To India (cnet.com) 89

Hyperloop is coming to India. From a report: The western-central Indian state of Maharashta plans to build a Virgin Hyperloop track between Pune and Mumbai, British entrepreneur and Virgin boss Richard Branson announced on Monday in a blog post. Virgin Hyperloop One will start by building a demo track, with the aim of eventually supporting 150 million passenger trips per year. It should reduce the 2.5-hour car journey or 3-hour train journey between the two cities to just 25 minutes, and will also stop off at Mumbai airport.
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Virgin Hyperloop One is Coming To India

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  • In India? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19, 2018 @02:08PM (#56153480)

    How are they going to have all those people hanging off the outside of the train in the vacuum?

    • by TWX ( 665546 )

      How are they going to have all those people hanging off the outside of the train in the vacuum?

      Just a theory, this is a way to put a stop to that and to make a form of longer distance mass-transit more appealing to middle-class Indians that might currently avoid it specifically due to the conditions on the conventional rail lines...

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Cedillas ( 879378 )
        I agree. Being an American that spends several months of the year in Mumbai, I understand the frustration of using the conventional rail lines and the greater frustration with traffic during peak hours. This will be popular with the middle-class. I would expect it to be a win for Pune as well.
    • Space suits
    • They'd thwang off the side of the compression tubes. That'd learn 'em. Maybe that was the plan?
  • And Virgin trains. Branson is great at bullshit, hype and deal-making. Large engineering projects ... not so much.

    • Branson hasnt got a lot of involvement in Hyperloop one. He just put an investment in last year of reasonable enough size to warrant whacking Virgin in front of the name

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Branson, eh?

    How's Virgin Galactic coming along?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    One of the problems with infrastructure development in India is that your planned capacity will always be exceeded due to population growth.

    Hyperloop has an estimated capacity of 840 passengers/hour
    http://www.uschyperloop.com/hyperloop/

    Mumbai's suburban rail currently carries 4500 passengers/hour peak
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway

    • Regardless of what the hyperloop website says, if you look at the actual press release whatever they are doing claims to support 150 million passengers a year, way more than 840 per hour.

      Obviously capacity may be increased by larger cars, a larger tunnel, or simply more tunnels and cars running simultaneously (more likely).

      Just like when building websites for the web you want to make sure you are building "webscale", when building transportation in India you want to make sure you are building it "India-scal

      • Wording of that press release is a little loose, but what it implies is that this is just a demo track, which if successful, will permit [nationwide?] buildout to a larger network that will eventually handle 150M per annum.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      From a financial perspective, this isn't a problem, unless your plan is to ditch every other form of transportation in favor of Hyperloop.

      If you have 2000 passengers/hour who *want* to ride Hyperloop at the price you're charging, and you can only take 840/hour, you simply raise your prices until demand equals supply. It's basic economics.

      • Where in your plan is there room for bureaucrats to take bribes for the available seats? This is India we're talking about, their basic economics are just different.

  • Every video of trains from India, has almost as many people ON TOP of the train cars, that ride in them, not to mention the ones that get BBQ'd. ;)
  • by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Monday February 19, 2018 @06:46PM (#56154900)

    Mumbai and Pune are 161km apart. A regular euro style high speed train could make it in half an hour.

    It would mean upgrading the track, adding electrification and controlling how the track is accessed / crossed, but it seems cheaper than building and maintaining an evacuated tube and the regular train could carry far more people and goods.

    • Sure, but of course that's not the point. The point is to prove it can be done now. If there's already an obvious corridor that doesn't require a lot of expensive land acquisition or tunnelling or something else that would get in the way of actually building the thing, it makes sense.

      And yes, the TGV would be cheaper, but enough people travel on this route that it won't make a loss if it works.

  • How will a high speed Vindaloop traveling through a tight tunnel Curry favor among riders that prefer sitting on the outside of the rail cars? Let's face it, India has a big population with transportation challenges. In dense urban areas, people can practice Pakora, running obstacle course style through the crowds, but that only gets you so far. Elsewhere in the world, small buses and shared taxis known as jitneys can transport small groups, but the Indian version, Chutney's, can hardly keep pace with th

  • What percentage of the comments is not racist or ignoramus flavored?

  • Why are they investing in building these things when their feasibility has yet to be demonstarted. Not to mention the safety and security issues that its proponents haven't even acknowledged.

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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