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What do you think of a Hyperloop between Edmonton and Calgary?

  • Total voters
    77
This is exciting news! I'm still not sure about hyperloop as a concept in of itself, but it's nice that TransPod seems to still be working on their proposal here in Alberta. I'm still wondering where the Edmonton station will be in the final design. It'd be cool if a downtown location could be identified but even Strathcona would be okay imo, however I recall reading somewhere that TransPod only worked out 4 stations from downtown Calgary to EIA. If this is really the plan then that is completely unacceptable. Edmonton can't possibly get the short end of the stick here and, as more info about the design comes out, the City and citizens need to push hard for a central-city station, no matter the cost.
 
I think the Hyperloop might work better as an Interstate-style rail. It could slow down at nodes like Red Deer if there's a stop, and can switch tracks or bypass the node.
 
I wouldn't invest a single penny into this project, this includes the high speed rail option. This technology will be obsolete soon due to self driving cars. Who wants to be cooped up in a box with strangers when they can relax in their own private vehicle.
 
itom987 said:
I wouldn't invest a single penny into this project, this includes the high speed rail option. This technology will be obsolete soon due to self driving cars. Who wants to be cooped up in a box with strangers when they can relax in their own private vehicle.
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Not everyone can afford their own vehicles. Some people don't want to be near strangers, but others don't want to deal with the hassle of owning a vehicle and paying for insurance, maintenance, etc. Plus mass transit helps to reduce traffic congestion. Maybe self driving cars could help avoid traffic jams, but they're still less efficient crowd movers.
 
You are now saying that this project caters to the small percentage of the population that doesn't own a vehicle, I will be generous and say 30%. The market has now shrunk from 3 million to 900,000 people living along the corridor, tourists might only add a max of 100,000. Let's take a look at freight, a self driving truck will be much cheaper to operate than using the hyperloop because it will go from any point to point whereas the hyperloop is stuck with going from station to station. Good luck in trying to make the hyperloop work, I don't see it happening.
 
CplKlinger said:
Not everyone can afford their own vehicles. Some people don't want to be near strangers, but others don't want to deal with the hassle of owning a vehicle and paying for insurance, maintenance, etc. Plus mass transit helps to reduce traffic congestion. Maybe self driving cars could help avoid traffic jams, but they're still less efficient crowd movers.
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You don’t need to own a private vehicle to ride in one. You could probably rent one to get to Calgary for less than $90 and if you took 2 other people slong for the ride it would only cost you $30 each instead of $90.
 
kcantor said:
You don’t need to own a private vehicle to ride in one. You could probably rent one to get to Calgary for less than $90 and if you took 2 other people slong for the ride it would only cost you $30 each instead of $90.
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That's a fair point, but I don't think that technology is at a point where we should be banking on it as the next big thing to connect the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Mind you, I'm not sold on the hyperloop either. I just wish we'd spend the money for a proper rail connection like so many other jurisdictions already do. It's like the transit situation here, I think @archited is the one who said it. Locally, LRT is the transit solution that makes sense here. The "next generation" could very well be something else, whether it be self driving vehicles or another technology we haven't conceived of yet. If we scale it up provincially, I think we need something in the interim while self driving technology commercializes and matures. Perhaps it'll become the norm later on, or perhaps something else will. But we need something now nonetheless.

If this hyperloop can really go ahead with private financing, great. If it flops and investors lose their money, cool. I'm ok with it because the province isn't an investor, and the company has provided a timeline that's relatively short-term. It doesn't mean we'll have hyperloop in a few years, but we'll certainly have an idea of how honest this company is with their promises. And if we get our answer that it's a failure, and self-driving technology isn't close to a point where it can replace a mass-transit service in this corridor, I truly hope that this hyperloop concept revitalizes the conversation of completing a rail connection in this corridor. I'm not against self-driving vehicles by any means, I just don't want to neglect infrastructure investment because there's a possibility of something different being used in the future.
 
CplKlinger said:
That's a fair point, but I don't think that technology is at a point where we should be banking on it as the next big thing to connect the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Mind you, I'm not sold on the hyperloop either. I just wish we'd spend the money for a proper rail connection like so many other jurisdictions already do. It's like the transit situation here, I think @archited is the one who said it. Locally, LRT is the transit solution that makes sense here. The "next generation" could very well be something else, whether it be self driving vehicles or another technology we haven't conceived of yet. If we scale it up provincially, I think we need something in the interim while self driving technology commercializes and matures. Perhaps it'll become the norm later on, or perhaps something else will. But we need something now nonetheless.

If this hyperloop can really go ahead with private financing, great. If it flops and investors lose their money, cool. I'm ok with it because the province isn't an investor, and the company has provided a timeline that's relatively short-term. It doesn't mean we'll have hyperloop in a few years, but we'll certainly have an idea of how honest this company is with their promises. And if we get our answer that it's a failure, and self-driving technology isn't close to a point where it can replace a mass-transit service in this corridor, I truly hope that this hyperloop concept revitalizes the conversation of completing a rail connection in this corridor. I'm not against self-driving vehicles by any means, I just don't want to neglect infrastructure investment because there's a possibility of something different being used in the future.
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Lets hope the City does not get stuck with the cost to clean up the orphan wells ... oh I mean the downtown station if it becomes an albatross ... after all they are not laying down rail tracks ... the elevated structure and transport tubes have only one use and can't be repurposed.
 
Edmonton should step in and prevent them from building a white elephant scar within the city. There is absolutely zero mention of what the maintenance budget might be like. They are essentially building the world's longest bridge between Edmonton and Calgary. A major catastrophe can happen if any of those supports were to shift ever so slightly. This is guaranteed to happen given our extreme climate. Even if they give allowances for shifting, that slight jolt on the ride will turn passengers away.
 
This seems to me like a fantasy. I mean really, we haven't even had any type of passenger rail service between Edmonton and Calgary for decades. This doesn't seem to indicate some huge unmet need to me.

Yes, the highway can be congested and increasingly so, but there are also flights between the two cities. It seems to me the province could add a lane or two where needed (not all sections of the highway are congested) for much less than the cost of this. Personally, I think we should look at other options other than expanding the road, partly for environmental reasons. I think we need to first revisit regular rail or high speed rail. Cost and ridership might determine which works best, but both are existing and proven technologies.

A few years ago, I took the train from Montreal to Ottawa (not high speed) and I really liked it. Montreal kept the downtown station, so it was very convenient to get to via the metro. Ottawa unfortunately made the mistake Edmonton and moved their station to a less convenient location, so I had to take a taxi to my downtown location. The train is more spacious than buses or planes, it was like I was riding in first class and paying economy fare. I think the trip was a bit longer than by bus, but not significantly so. Its too bad the passenger rail network was totally gutted in the west years ago.
 
L L
itom987 said:
Edmonton should step in and prevent them from building a white elephant scar within the city. There is absolutely zero mention of what the maintenance budget might be like. They are essentially building the world's longest bridge between Edmonton and Calgary. A major catastrophe can happen if any of those supports were to shift ever so slightly. This is guaranteed to happen given our extreme climate. Even if they give allowances for shifting, that slight jolt on the ride will turn passengers away.
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Tourists attraction? ”Come see our partially built unique hyperloop”
 
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