urbanSTL

KansasCitian wrote: St. Louisans saw how long it took to get the Delmar Trolley up and running, and even just the other day it had to be shut down momentarily. 

Can you imagine what would happen with this thing? 

I maintain that even if this technology works, you don't want your city or state to be the first to have it. I think you'd rather see the technology work, or not, somewhere else before you spend loads of money on it in the name of being a pioneer, only to die on the trail. 

STLinCHI wrote:
The system does not employ new untested technology. It's simply a scaling up of technology that has been around for decades.

KansasCitian wrote: St. Louisans saw how long it took to get the Delmar Trolley up and running, and even just the other day it had to be shut down momentarily. 

Can you imagine what would happen with this thing? 

I maintain that even if this technology works, you don't want your city or state to be the first to have it. I think you'd rather see the technology work, or not, somewhere else before you spend loads of money on it in the name of being a pioneer, only to die on the trail. 

kipfilet wrote: I am not a civil engineer, but I read in the WSJ article that was posted here some months ago that building conventional high-speed rail along I-55 from St. Louis to Chicago was not feasible because of some sharp turns. I-70 also looks very wiggly in some parts, particularly between St. Louis and Columbia. I would imagine that you need much less turns for this than for conventional high speed rail, no?

The regional geography along I-70 was a significant plus for the proposed Missouri Hyperloop, Thompson noted.

“We looked at a variety of routes: Highway 50, the Katy Trail, I-70,” he said. “[The chosen route] has a wide right-of-way — in fact, the Missouri Department of Transportation owns the whole right-of-way from St. Louis to Kansas City through Columbia. One of the biggest challenges in doing new infrastructure projects in the U.S. today is acquiring right-of-way to use the land and also the regulatory hurdles that different jurisdictional authorities put on you.”

“The fact that this is one piece of land that is fairly flat, fairly straight, and controlled by one entity was a huge advantage,” Thompson added.

While I-70 route isn’t a perfectly smooth or unbending stretch through Missouri, a potential Hyperloop setup could be adapted to fit its features, he said.

“With Hyperloop — when you’re traveling at airplane speeds — you cannot have lots of movement up and down, or side to side, otherwise you have the ‘rollercoaster effect,’ which is not what you want,” Thompson said, noting the proposed route would weave its way around obstacles along the existing I-70 roadway. “[The path] moves to try to straighten out the curves, and up and down to try to straighten out the hills and the valleys. There will be spans where it will cross the interstate and there will be spans where it will cross the overpasses, keeping it as flat and straight as we can.”

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Oct 28, 2019

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... op-story-1

LOL.  The test track alone would cost between $300 and $500 million.  Imagine if Missouri could come up with that for MetroLink.

The report puts the price tag on the test track at between $300 million and $500 million. The cost to build a track linking St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City is estimated at $10.4 billion.

The report does include some caveats. For example, it says the system faces the risk of not being certified for human safety by federal regulators. It also might not work as intended over a long distance. And, it might never be commercially self-sustaining, requiring governmental entities to chip in to pay for its operation.

So stupid.