“L.A. to S.F. in 30 minutes?” the front page of the Los Angeles Times asked this morning, reporting on the promise of Hyperloop, the conceptual super-fast, solar-powered, tubular transit system that Elon Musk unveiled yesterday. The news came just a day after another LAT piece on speedy travel up and down the state, that one titled: “‘Shovel-ready’ bullet train construction delayed again.” As the blog Curbed Los Angeles put it, “Nice timing, Musk.”
The contrast between Musk’s futuristic option for bridging Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and the much-delayed, over-budget, fast train that the state already has in the works, couldn’t have seemed starker or more striking. And that’s the point. Musk deliberately hopes Hyperloop will disrupt the current plans for the $68 billion railroad. “I don’t think we should do the high-speed-rail thing,” Musk told reporters. “It’s basically going to be California’s Amtrak,” he said. He didn’t mean that as a compliment.
California’s high-speed rail authority was not amused. Dan Richard, its chairman, told the San Francisco Chronicle that while Hyperloop sounded “great,” it won’t be competition any time soon: “It’s sort of like me saying, ‘Don’t buy a Tesla, because the Jetsons’ flying car is right around the corner.’”
Richard said Musk greatly underestimates the costs of Hyperloop, not to mention how hard it is to secure funding for mass transit and convince neighbors and environmentalists that such a system wouldn’t be harmful. “While we have a lot of respect for his inventiveness, I think we could tell him a few things about the realities of building in California,” Richard said.
Hyperloop might just be a drawing, and a farfetched one at that, but as Southern California Public Radio points out, it’s already working in one way—by reminding residents that California’s existing bullet train plan has plenty of shortfalls. Californians approved about $10 billion in bonds for the project back in 2008. The costs have multiplied since then, but the state hasn’t secured all of the additional funds needed. It’s also behind schedule because of delays in engineering the project and acquiring land along the route, and because of all sorts of environmental and legal challenges. Meanwhile, the clock’s ticking on federal stimulus grants that expire in 2017.
Despite the difficulties, the LAT editorial writer Jon Healey says, “If I had to pick a horse in this race, I’d bet on California finishing the oft-delayed high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco before a single section of Hyperloop gets built.” After all, California’s already devoted so much time and money to the current plan. And unless the train’s speeds get slowed down further in planning, it’s supposed to get passengers from L.A. to S.F. in two hours and 40 minutes. That’s no 800 mile-per-hour Hyperloop, sure. But it’s still far better than the mind-numbing six-plus hours it currently takes to drive.
