I'd love someone to actually do a credible cost analysis of an evacuated tunnel train. Unfortunately I don't think Oster did.
[1] http://secondavenuesagas.com/2010/01/14/the-costs-of-second-...
1988 $3.6 billion = ~$7 billion today[3].
1994 $21 billion = ~ $32 billion today[4].
Put it altogether, the tunnel itself would be around $3.5 trillion[5]. Maglev + vacuum stuff would cost more.
(BTW, I love WolframAlpha for stuff like this.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel
[2] http://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/Art...
[3] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24US3.6+billion+1988+d...
[4] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24US21+billion+1994+do...
[5] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28%2432+billion%29%...
A better comparison is an actual underwater tube: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Tube
3.6 miles cost about $1 billion in 2012 dollars. Closer to $55k/foot.
Don't get me wrong. This is still impossibly expensive even at that lower rate: $22 trillion.
Even at using costs of the propsed high speed rail in California ($80M/mile), nyc-london would cost $280 billion.
Which is roughly 1 / 14th the cost of the Iraq war. Not bad if you think about it.
The nice thing about a transatlantic tunnel is that crustecaeans can be bought off cheaply
I can't imagine it'd be more expensive than tunneling 3000 miles under an ocean.
(San Francisco's rail connection across the bay uses this technique)
Which is enough to drop drag a lot, and still maintain lift in, say, commercially viable air transportation vehicles.
Lowest costs I've seen to LEO are about $1,000/lb. Suborbital flight isn't much lower than that, and we're still looking at something on the order of $10k - $1m per passenger at rates like that. Affordable to some, but (considering you've likely got a baggage, life support, and related allowance) pretty pricey all the same.
$10k is comparable to Concorde, as I recall. I consider that a very optimistic estimate.
In other words you're talking about sinking 3 meters of tube that would weigh 76 fewer pounds than if there were air. This is probably a small effect compared to the weight of the strong metal casing that would need to surround such a vacuum.
So since we can sink normal air-filled subways quite normally (e.g. the BART in San Francisco) this must be a well-established technology.
It will _want_ to collapse. It's not sitting there doing nothing.
Who knows what this claim is based on, but it is there.
The firm fixed bid for the 96-mile (154 km) Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) system was $253M, this was less than one tenth of the cost of the bid by Global Rail Consortium to build electrified double track High Speed Rail for $2.6B. The bid by et3 contained letters of support by three entities in China to supply IP and key materials for the project. The engineering consultants hired by the authority did not dispute the validity of the et3 bid price or ETT technology, but recommended to eliminate the et3 bid from consideration for other reasons.[1]
This comment doesn't pass judgment on whether Daryl Oster is a patent troll or not, but that's also a discussion worth having.
Edit: add this update --
Interestingly this link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/843626/posts claims that the ET3 bid was 1.2B$ which is $12.5M/mile which is a lot more credible (still low though since the surrounding infrastructure to keep the tube evacuated, the mag lev stuff, etc all add cost over regular fused rail electrified service (which California is considering for its fast rail) and that is looking closer to $25M/mile in the current state of the art)
Also, easy terrorist target.
What a shame this determination is made on so many "advancements" now.
(I think it's complete nonsense to even mention)
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee."
If al Qaeda blows up a pressurised train tunnel, then yes they can kill lots of people, heap a big cash cost on the tunnel operator... but they don't get any impressive pictures to put on TV.
If the IRA/ETA/etc blows up a pressurised train tunnel, they impose a big cash cost on their target, plus cause lots of disruption... but in terms of effort/risk/reward it's probably better for them to blow up conventional rail/road infrastructure in London/Madrid/wherever.
Look over a list of who the victims of the Titanic disaster were -- comparable in that it was the luxury travel alternative of its day. Jay Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, Ida Straus (founder of Macy's), just to name a very few. The societal impact of the Titanic's loss was ... titanic.
You wouldn't even need an explosive to foil the tube. Simply something to perturb the system slightly would disrupt it in a bad way. Even if only a single small transport were in the vicinity, any others in the tube would also be doomed (granted, at 1 hour/trip, headways would likely limit this to a very few instances).
Trains are very robust. Conventional high-speed rail is a bit riskier, but even accidents such as on the German Eschede rail disaster (at 200kph) saw over 60% of the passengers survive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster
It sounds pretty cool - it's the kind of sci-fi thing I'd love to see in the real world, but I can't believe it's as easy or as cheap as they're making it sound here.
My own comment on this article: "getting to, from and through airports is very time consuming"
I don't see how this would be any less time consuming. Security would be an equal nightmare - the only benefit would be that the citizens can utilize NYC/Londons existing transport infrastructure much like it's easier to get to the Chunnel departure station than it is to get to Gatwick.
You have your answer right there.
Start a campaign for people to only use their cars if they i) Have to or ii) are travelling over 10 miles.
Make workplaces have facilities for cyclists. (Perhaps going as far as treating car-parking spaces as a taxable perk). Make schools have facilities for cyclists. Make shops have facilities for cyclists.
Persuade the bad cyclists to stop being idiots. etc.
4 miles? Why don't you walk or cycle?
I live in NH and walk to work every day. 4 miles would make a good jog/walk too if you are looking for more exercise time (depending on what you take to work with you).
a. move your home closer to work
b. move work closer to your home
c. move both
I, for one, think this technology is awesome and think it could follow the progression that the train system went through in the US (transcontinental railroad, expanding, webbing out, lightrail, subways, trams, metros, etc) and see this as a possible next step in the evolution of transportation.
Acceleration is perceptible, because it is felt as a force. So it really depends on how quickly people are accelerated to 2500mph. If you accelerate at 22mph per second, this is equivalent to 1G, which could be relatively comfortable. It would take 2 minutes to reach 2500mph.
The player characters in their post-apocalyptic world come across a abandoned series of tunnels they can't explain, but which are described for the game master in the notes:
The system once spanned the North American continent and was used primarily as a method of high-speed transportation of freight. The sub-train system is something like a 20th-century subway system, in that it consists of a self-propelled train moving through an underground tunnel. Unlike the 20th- century system, however, the “trains” moved through a vacuum while being supported on super-conducting magnetic rails at very high speeds.
Many posts below are trying to prove how smart they by focusing on near term impracticalities. Sure it's impractical today. That's already proven by the fact that it is not already under construction.
The surest way to be wrong is to say something can never be done. I'm not even advocating this is a good solution. I have no idea if it will ever be possible. But I enjoy seeing that some people are thinking big.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_sub-orbital_spac...
In theory setting this up should be much cheaper than high volumes of suborbital flights.
Of course neither is actually feasible.
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel, including reference to Goddard patents on the subject.
I saw it when I was a kid and I thought it was awesome!
The sci-fi of the past was way too optimistic about giant-scale engineering projects at the same time it was blind to advances and trends in communications and computer-mediated collaboration.
In a quick Google Scholar search, I turn up a 1974 article on "Surface-guided transport systems of the future" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/piee.1974.0277, unfortunately not open access), where evacuated-tube transport gets a mention, but under this less-than-enthusiastic banner:
A brief mention is given of other less likely transport systems, such as travel in an evacuated tube beneath or above the ground.
General: http://www.swissmetro.ch/en/home Technology: http://www.swissmetro.ch/en/content/technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frYWTrEfPRs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKaVQ5Tt_Zk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zci_6AOCAo
sounds a lot like my research group meetings. Lots of fascinating stuff. Zero chance of ever making it out of the lab in the near future.
Haha! No chance. We might not even see the new link between London and Birmingham (HS2) before 2035, never mind one to New York!