It's fun to dream, but you foot the bill when reality comes knocking
The fortune dumped into tech pipe dreams like Hyperloop could have made the New York subway smell like roses, or even made the buses run on time!
Oh, Hyperloop. Remember when it was all the rage?
When every mention of it came with glossy renderings of futuristic capsules zooming through vacuum tubes, promising to whisk us from L.A. to San Francisco faster than you could watch an episode of "Silicon Valley"? It was a heady dream, conjured up by none other than visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk, who, it seems, might have had ulterior motives—like kneecapping California’s high-speed rail project to keep us all glued to our Teslas on congested freeways.
So, let's pop the champagne—or should we say, the vacuum seal?—as we explore the spectacular implosion of Hyperloop One, a company that promised the moon (or at least a very fast trip to the Bay Area) and ended up offering a stark lesson: Beware the allure of "gadgetbahn" technology, those shiny tech miracles that dazzle politicians and headline writers but often leave taxpayers holding an expensive bag of feasibility studies and broken dreams.
First, a refresher on the promise: Hyperloop touted a ground-breaking mode of transportation where passengers would travel through tubes at near-supersonic speeds. It was supposed to be cheaper and faster than high-speed rail (HSR), not to mention cooler than being stuck in traffic. What's not to love, right?
Well, as it turns out, a lot. The downfall of Hyperloop One is now nearly as famous as its rise, marked by high-profile departures, lawsuits, and financial woes. Musk’s vision of a futuristic transit system crashed into the harsh wall of engineering realities and economic feasibility. Critics, who once whispered, now shout that the Hyperloop concept was perhaps more about undermining public investment in proven rail systems than a genuine transportation revolution.
But Hyperloop One is only the tip of gadgetbahn iceberg. Around the globe, politicians eager to appear cutting-edge have signed multimillion-dollar deals with high-tech transit companies promising revolutionary changes. Cities from Chicago to Dubai were mesmerized by visions of Hyperloop stations, investing hefty sums in studies and promotional campaigns. Yet, to this day, not a single operational Hyperloop system exists. Instead, these cities have little more to show than glossy brochures and some hefty invoices from consultants.
And let’s not forget about other members of the gadgetbahn hall of shame. Take Maglev trains, which, despite their magnetic appeal and literal levitation skills, have seen limited application due to exorbitant costs and infrastructure challenges.
Or how about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems, those adorable podcars that were once touted as the future of urban mobility but mostly ended up as niche attractions in places like business parks and airports?
The moral of our story? When it comes to public transportation, sometimes the tried and true is better than the new. High-speed rail, for instance, has been reliably zipping passengers around Europe and Asia for decades. It may not have the sci-fi sexiness of a Hyperloop pod, but it gets the job done without sucking public coffers dry or requiring the laws of physics to be rewritten.
So next time a company comes along promising a revolutionary gadget to solve all our transit woes, let's remember the tale of Hyperloop One. Let’s demand evidence and cautiously evaluate the costs before we jump on the hype train—or in this case, the hype tube. After all, when something sounds too good to be true, it just might end up being a very expensive pipe dream.
And for those still dreaming of Hyperloop, maybe just catch the next high-speed train. You’ll actually get where you’re going.
Hi Rei, I enjoyed the article. And you made some excellent points about 'pie in the sky' technology. However, I do disagree with the assertion you presented at the beginning of your article, to wit: "The fortune dumped into tech pipe dreams like Hyperloop could have made the New York subway smell like roses, or even made the buses run on time!"
No amount of money will fix the New York Subway because the people operating the subway are corrupt, incompetent, and don't give a damn about the people who ride the subway. They look at the New York subway as a bid piggy bank and as a way to siphon cash to their own ends. The way to fix the New York subway is to fire every single employee and then sell the assets to private operators who have an incentive to provide reliable, comfortable, and safe subway service.
I take your word for it, as I've only been to New York once. However, I think the analogy still holds. Just as it would take an infinite amount of time and money to make the hyperloop concept a reality, so too would cleaning up New York's subway 😅
Also, privatization is very tricky and would require multiple legal changes for it to have any positive effect in NY. The reason it works relatively well in Japan is because of massive government subsidies in terms of cheap loans and free land. The railway companies put up the money to build and run the systems, but most of their profits comes from developing real estate near the stations on land they've received from the government. As shown with California HSR and the Texas corridor, NIMBYs have too much power to make any of this feasible in the US.