Thursday, April 18, 2019

Monorail

I know my obsessions bore most of you, but there is often (not always) some purpose to my madness. Read the whole thread, as the kids say, but basically...

Elon Musk's much touted "hyperloop" from DC to Baltimore has now been downgraded to the lesser brand "loop."

The "loop" is even dumber than hyperloop, in that the latter is only nuts because the technology doesn't exist, while the former is nuts because it's just stupid even if you build it.

The plan is to dig a tunnel. Single lane of traffic each way. It could carry ONE THOUSAND specially modified cars (actual cars. but special cars. not your car. really.) per day. Half what a highway lane carries in an hour. There's a picture. Really. It's a specially built car that looks like a car, but it isn't your car. You can't take your car in the tunnel, but instead of building a vehicle that could carry lots of people, it's car. Not a big car. A sedan.

It promises speeds of UP TO ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES PER HOUR. Sure, Elon, but fine, let's call it 120 MPH average speed. Even lowly Amtrak can average 80+ mph between DC and NYC and each train can carry 300 people. They run more than once per day.

One of Elon's great tunneling ideas what that he could make bricks with the dirt and solve homelessness or something. No more bricks.

Of course this is a private project which will take no public money. hahahaahahaahahahahaha.