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Second channel tunnel and Hyperloop

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Citybreak1

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I read about a future channel tunnel in 2000. If in 90 years the current channel tunnel needs replaced would they build a second one next door or close it?

I know it’s very speculative because hyper loop technology is possible to replace it or magnetic trains.

Could the current one be updated for these technologies?

If hyper loop was built next door I imagine France could be reached in minutes?
 
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PGAT

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For reasons that other people will do a much better job at explaining than me, Hyperloop is very silly
 

D365

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I read about a future channel tunnel in 2000. If in 90 years the current channel tunnel needs replaced would they build a second one next door or close it?
90 years - is this a record for speculative discussions?
 

swt_passenger

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I read about a future channel tunnel in 2000. If in 90 years the current channel tunnel needs replaced would they build a second one next door or close it? I know it’s very speculative because hyper loop technology is possible to replace it or magnetic trains. Could the current one be updated for these technologies? If hyper loop was built next door I imagine France could be reached in minutes?
Hyperloop is a complete joke. Just forget about it.
 

Citybreak1

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Hyperloop is a complete joke. Just forget about it.
For me I believe in electric cars driverless flying taxis and hyper loop. I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off or Eurostar ect. Hyperloop has potential I believe there’s a new line planned for Holland. Supersonic travel will also be back.
 

bluenoxid

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The problem for Hyperloop is the huge amount of infrastructure required if it’s going to be a proper replacement. A 45 foot container is quite a beast to shift compared to a small car carrying 4-8 people.

There’s also the expectations for security. My understanding is that the low pressure would require pressurised vehicles, which will take time to load, close up, check all safety systems and shift into the tunnel, then accelerate. That’s quite a bit of time. A train not having to faff with pressurisation cycles could be a good half way there

Personally, I think we are looking at MagLev, rather than hyperloop.
 

Lucan

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Hyperloop won't ever happen. Musk seems to have got the idea from sci-fi comics, making no reference to the prior and only slightly less silly Swissmetro idea (and ones before that). Musk himself has never taken it very seriously and only proposed it to try to scupper the Californian high speed rail project, because he hates railways. At the same time it was one of his elaborate jokes at the expense of his fans, some of whom have taken it seriously because they think he is a genius rather than the salesman and factory manager he actually is. Prominent among those fans is Richard Branson who wants to be like Musk and who has wasted huge amounts on money on building a short prototype.

Anyone with much understanding of large engineering projects (which does not include Musk or Branson) will know it is a bad idea. A hyperloop would be astronomiically expensive to build and operate, for very little capacity, and little time gain once you factor in terminal management.
 

Citybreak1

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The problem for Hyperloop is the huge amount of infrastructure required if it’s going to be a proper replacement. A 45 foot container is quite a beast to shift compared to a small car carrying 4-8 people.

There’s also the expectations for security. My understanding is that the low pressure would require pressurised vehicles, which will take time to load, close up, check all safety systems and shift into the tunnel, then accelerate. That’s quite a bit of time. A train not having to faff with pressurisation cycles could be a good half way there

Personally, I think we are looking at MagLev, rather than hyperloop.
I just assumed it was pods for passengers rather than cars?
 

zwk500

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I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off
50 years ago is 1973. Concorde first flew in 1969. The Boeing 747 was in service by 1970. Mass jet travel as well as high-end jet travel were perfectly well established 50 years ago.
 

swt_passenger

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For me I believe in electric cars driverless flying taxis and hyper loop. I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off or Eurostar ect. Hyperloop has potential I believe there’s a new line planned for Holland. Supersonic travel will also be back.
Hyperloop is still a complete joke.
 

Bald Rick

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For me I believe in electric cars driverless flying taxis and hyper loop. I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off or Eurostar ect. Hyperloop has potential I believe there’s a new line planned for Holland. Supersonic travel will also be back.

50 years ago thee were also proposals for APT style London - Paris trains through the then proposed Channel Tunnel - construction even started. It wasnt called eurostar, but the concept was the same.

No chance of hyperloop for passenger services, although it may have a future for freight - effectively a pipeline with capability of taking consignments (at slower speeds than ‘hyper’). Even then it’s dubious.


If another tunnel is built, it will be for road traffic, and probably zero emission only.
 

Lucan

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I just assumed it was pods for passengers rather than cars?
Musk's original proposal was for "pods" for 28 people. He hates railways with such an obsession that he avoids any railway or existing public transport terminology. The pods would be very cramped in his proposals, so much so there would be issues getting disabled or even obese people inside - they are almost laying on their backs in Musk's own sketches. Since then Virgin Hyperloop (since renamed Hyperloop One) has given up on carrying passengers at least for the time being, and now talks about high value freight.

Many people (and even the media) have confused Hyperloop with "The Loop" which was to carry people in their cars at high speed on sleds in tunnels. The Loop had since been downgraded to Tesla taxis in a conventional tunnel (as in Las Vegas). Giving them similar names and enjoying the confusion was another example of Musk's sense of humour.
 

skyhigh

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I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off
I'm sorry but that's so ridiculous that made me laugh out loud.

Planes have been taking off for a lot longer than 50 years :lol:
 

Arkeeos

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I read about a future channel tunnel in 2000. If in 90 years the current channel tunnel needs replaced would they build a second one next door or close it? I know it’s very speculative because hyper loop technology is possible to replace it or magnetic trains. Could the current one be updated for these technologies? If hyper loop was built next door I imagine France could be reached in minutes?
It’s a tunnel built to railway standards, all tunnels are the pretty much the same there’s nothing special about it. Could it be updated for hypothetical, likely implausible future transport solutions? It would depend what standards those transport solutions are built to.

Also, with hyperloop, taking the idea and making it as plausible as possible leaves you with a train in a depressurised tunnel, essentially, which is probably plausible in the tunnel.
 

Sorcerer

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Like many others have said, Hyperloop is a mere fantasy that will never take off. People might be keen to draw comparisons to ideas such as commercial aircraft or supersonic flights, but the difference is those ideas actually did take off (until the latter was grounded more for economic reasons rather than technological), while Hyperloop is simply a re-treading of a centuries old idea that greater minds than Elon Musk either haven't been able to or haven't bothered to make an everyday reality. Aside from the expenses of building a Maglev in a vacuum tube, it wouldn't be interoperable with either side of the channel's existing network, so for what will be a relatively minor time save will be offset by the need to change modes of transport to actually reach the centre of European cities.
 

birchesgreen

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Hyperloop doesn't really exist as a viable transport method outside of those utopian concept videos which plague youtube.
 

yorkie

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According to Google the tunnel can last 120 years.
I doubt Google would make any such claims.

When citing a source, it's important to refer to a primary source; the search engine used to locate the source isn't relevant.
.. I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off or Eurostar ect....
Is this a typo?
Hyperloop has potential I believe there’s a new line planned for Holland.
Again, citation required. But at best this is highly speculative.
Supersonic travel will also be back.
See the thread on the subject:
 

stuu

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120 years is often given as the design life for tunnels - it was definitely used in Crossrail publicity. It doesn't mean they will fall apart in year 121, but presumably that is as far as the builders can reasonably claim it will last
 

mike57

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Bearing mind a lot of railway infrastructure including tunnels dates from the 1840s, and with proper care and maintenance is still giving good service 170-180 years later, and that this infrastructure was created with fairly simple tools and materials, I think its fair to say that although 120 years was/is the design life it will stay in service for considerably longer if maintained properly.

Hyperloop is just what it says Hype... Even if it could be scaled up to 'train size' the issues of maintaining vaccuum, and the difficulties this introduces at places like stations means it is never going to viable for a London Paris journey which currently takes 2hrs, you just wouldn't save enough time to make it worth the while over conventional high speed rail.

Steel wheel on steel rail technology has been around for well over 200 years, the reason is its simple, flexible and efficent (low friction) and can be adapted to move heavy freight and high speed passenger trains, and in a lot of cases using the same infrastructure.

Those advantages are down to basic physics, and hyperloop isn't going to change that, even Maglev currently is a niche technology, the only place I would see these technologies being applied in at any scale would be as a replacement for long haul flights, but the infrastructure investment required would probably rule it out.

As for a second channel tunnel, this has been aired before and there is still capacity in the existing tunnel. I am not sure what proportion of the cross channel traffic goes through the tunnel, but unless there is a lot more traffic you are not going to need a second tunnel, better to maintain the one you have.
 

Mountain Man

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For me I believe in electric cars driverless flying taxis and hyper loop. I know many here will rubbish it but 50-50 years ago nobody knew planes would take off or Eurostar ect. Hyperloop has potential I believe there’s a new line planned for Holland. Supersonic travel will also be back.
Supersonic travel won't be back in anything but a few trans ocean uses as the fundamental issue why Concorde only did Trans Atlantic in regular service hasn't been solved. Countries don't want sonic booms over land because of the issues they cause
 

birchesgreen

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Maybe the OP meant mass airtravel "taking off"? 50 years ago it was still largely the preserve of the fairly well off.
 

jon0844

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120 years is often given as the design life for tunnels - it was definitely used in Crossrail publicity. It doesn't mean they will fall apart in year 121, but presumably that is as far as the builders can reasonably claim it will last

Planned obsolescence... Exactly one day after, the tunnel will implode!

As has been said above, Hyperloop was just a bit of fun from Elon (who never actually had any direct involvement; he started by creating a competition to get university students and kids to come up with ideas) and his motives were to attack the railway. It was dead at birth, and still dead now even though some supposedly respectable online sites still mention it from time to time.

It's easy to wow some kid working freelance for a site, who has to publish ten articles a day and is measured on traffic, to post something about this - especially as if loads of people comment that it's BS, that's engagement and can be monetised. There's no shortage of influencers who will also talk about this amazing tech and use the existing B-roll someone has rendered, then throw some text on top and create some Reels and Shorts.

If you tell them it's not happening, you'll be told something like 'Elon has done X, Y and Z - what have you done?' as a way of suggesting because Elon made it up, it has to be real and doable.

The irony is the idea of a vacuum tube came from someone in the 1800s. It wasn't Elon's amazing genius invention, any more than most of the things he leads us to believe he came up with.
 

Mountain Man

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Maybe the OP meant mass airtravel "taking off"? 50 years ago it was still largely the preserve of the fairly well off.
Still not true though even if that was what was meant. The concept of mass air transport was envisaged decades before it actually became reality, it simple took time for it to become practical. Whereas hyperloop isnt even envisaged, it's like teleportation, a nice idea in a science fiction book
 

Technologist

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Many people (and even the media) have confused Hyperloop with "The Loop" which was to carry people in their cars at high speed on sleds in tunnels. The Loop had since been downgraded to Tesla taxis in a conventional tunnel (as in Las Vegas). Giving them similar names and enjoying the confusion was another example of Musk's sense of humour.
The cars have always been a minimum viable product to get the system operating.

The plan remains to use 12 seat vehicles for the full Vegas system. Human factors mockups of the passenger vehicles have leaked, it is likely that they are using the Cybertruck as a platform.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

Still not true though even if that was what was meant. The concept of mass air transport was envisaged decades before it actually became reality, it simple took time for it to become practical. Whereas hyperloop isnt even envisaged, it's like teleportation, a nice idea in a science fiction book
Hyperloop prototypes have run in vacuum tubes and even carried people. It's not science fiction, it's just currently stuck in the valley of disappointment.

The effects of the initiative are not to be sniffled at.

Firstly it has resulted in Inductrack actually being demonstrated at scale. This is by far the most cost efficient implementation of Maglev.

Secondly people are looking at how the Hyperloop technology can be incrementally deployed.

A former Polish Hyperloop team is looking at using their linear motor to boost freight trains and have a design for a Inductrack Maglev which uses conventional rails for low speed work.

Thus conventional switching and signals can be used at stations with 500kmph speeds on deciated high speed rail lines.
 
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Lucan

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The cars have always been a minimum viable product to get the system operating.

The plan remains to use 12 seat vehicles for the full Vegas system.
By "cars" do you mean the original idea of the public's cars or the company-owned taxis it has evolved/devolved to?

The history of the Loop (the Las Vegas type) started with Musk being frustrated in a traffic jam on his commute. He wished he had a tunnel to overtake the jam (we are supposed to think that makes him a genius). He would descend sitting in his car to the tunnel in a large lift and ascend again once ahead of everyone else, possibly in his office car park. Moreover, on the lifts and inside the tunnel his car would be on a high speed car carrier he calls a sled (I think he talked about 150mph). The idea is shown in the artist's impession below.

I said "his" car and not yours and mine because the maximum throughput in cars/people per hour would be abysmal; the car lifts would be a severe bottleneck. It would only work if there were few users, presumably Musk himself and some other wealthy subsribers. It would be like any other rat run - only advantageous if few use it. Even Musk realised this would be politically unacceptable so he added the idea of dedicated mini-buses to carry pedestrians. These are the 12 or 16-seater vehicles. Of course he could have proposed cars entering the tunnels by ramps, just like countless existing vehicle tunnels, but this would have been too commonplace and even his fans might have find it hard to claim he had invented anything, and would also have made the sleds a bit pointless.

The LV Loop as built, a small bore ordinary tunnel with a taxi service, with the underground stations reached by escalator, is a massive and humiliating downgrade from Musk's original idea. These days they don't like you seeing pictures like that below. Note that the sleds in the artist's impessions would be too large to fit in the LV tunnels as built anyway, which are only just large enough for a car alone.

Hyperloop prototypes have run in vacuum tubes and even carried people. It's not science fiction
There was one publicity run in Virgin Hyperloop's 500m straight and level test tube in a desert; later it was announced that the plan to carry passengers was abandoned in favour of freight only. The real thing that would kill Hyperloop even if the technical problems were solved is that the tube must be almost straight in both the vertical and horizontal planes, otherwise the centrifugal forces on passengers and even freight at the proposed speed would be intolerable. Try drawing a near straight line between two major cities and see what it cuts through. Vertically, it would mean extremely high viaducts and far longer tunnels than even a high speed railway would need.

Financially, few people seem to realise that Musk's calculations assume that because the tube is raised on pylons (at least in flat country) he would not need to pay for the land below. He also neglects to include the costs of signalling. Reading Musk's Hyperloop "White Paper" it is clear that not only does he hate railways with a vengance, he has no awareness of the need for signalling or other control on a system like this. If anything, he seems to assume control by departure interval.

people are looking at how the Hyperloop technology can be incrementally deployed.

A former Polish Hyperloop team is looking at using their linear motor to boost freight trains and have a design for a Inductrack Maglev which uses conventional rails for low speed work.
Such a system has no relationship to Hyperloop.

la_lifts.jpg
 
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Technologist

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By "cars" do you mean the original idea of the public's cars or the company-owned taxis it has evolved/devolved to?

The history of the Loop (the Las Vegas type) started with Musk being frustrated in a traffic jam on his commute. He wished he had a tunnel to overtake the jam (we are supposed to think that makes him a genius). He would descend sitting in his car to the tunnel in a large lift and ascend again once ahead of everyone else, possibly in his office car park. Moreover, on the lifts and inside the tunnel his car would be on a high speed car carrier he calls a sled (I think he talked about 150mph). The idea is shown in the artist's impession below.

I said "his" car and not yours and mine because the maximum throughput in cars/people per hour would be abysmal; the car lifts would be a severe bottleneck. It would only work if there were few users, presumably Musk himself and some other wealthy subsribers. It would be like any other rat run - only advantageous if few use it. Even Musk realised this would be politically unacceptable so he added the idea of dedicated mini-buses to carry pedestrians. These are the 12 or 16-seater vehicles. Of course he could have proposed cars entering the tunnels by ramps, just like countless existing vehicle tunnels, but this would have been too commonplace and even his fans might have find it hard to claim he had invented anything, and would also have made the sleds a bit pointless.

The LV Loop as built, a small bore ordinary tunnel with a taxi service, with the underground stations reached by escalator, is a massive and humiliating downgrade from Musk's original idea. These days they don't like you seeing pictures like that below. Note that the sleds in the artist's impessions would be too large to fit in the LV tunnels as built anyway, which are only just large enough for a car alone.


There was one publicity run in Virgin Hyperloop's 500m straight and level test tube in a desert; later it was announced that the plan to carry passengers was abandoned in favour of freight only. The real thing that would kill Hyperloop even if the technical problems were solved is that the tube must be almost straight in both the vertical and horizontal planes, otherwise the centrifugal forces on passengers and even freight at the proposed speed would be intolerable. Try drawing a near straight line between two major cities and see what it cuts through. Vertically, it would mean extremely high viaducts and far longer tunnels than even a high speed railway would need.

Financially, few people seem to realise that Musk's calculations assume that because the tube is raised on pylons (at least in flat country) he would not need to pay for the land below. He also neglects to include the costs of signalling. Reading Musk's Hyperloop "White Paper" it is clear that not only does he hate railways with a vengance, he has no awareness of the need for signalling or other control on a system like this. If anything, he seems to assume control by departure interval.


Such a system has no relationship to Hyperloop.

View attachment 147561
The Vegas loop is being built out as we speak, they have bored 7 tunnels and have two TBMs running.

They are not going to run the whole city wide network on manually driven cars, it wouldn't work economically.

If you listen to what EM has said about the systems they have always intended to use the trunk tunnels of a system at massive throughput which is facilitated by the ability of rubber tyred vehicles to merge on slip roads.

Signalling is expensive in the same way avionics on old space boosters was, because it mostly uses obsolete low volume parts/technologies. Loop won't need any signalling, maglev based systems find it difficult to hit each other anyway. If a Muskverse company was doing signalling it would be doing it at a fraction of the cost in a vertically integrated manner and moving at a speed that the incumbents would consider infeasible.

This is the outfit which is spun out of Polish Hyperloop team which is trying to develop a path to Hyperloop by developing the sub technologies in manner that is backwards compatible with existing rail.

Even if all they managed was a high speed Maglev that can use existing stations it would be pretty revolutionary.

 
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