Don’t mourn the hyperloop — the train trumps it every time

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is a professor at MIT, where he directs the Senseable City Lab

As I stretched my legs out in the softly lit car of a Eurostar train, I thought of the recent travails of Hyperloop One, which held the promise of making the journey from Paris to London in only 28 minutes in giant vacuum tubes, instead of today’s two hours. It’s a shame that we’ll never be so fast — or is it?

It’s a question worth asking. Perhaps the hyperloop deserves to join flying cars and teleportation devices on the trash heap of mobility technologies that never got moving.

Most people associate the system with Elon Musk, its once-vocal cheerleader, but the idea is actually more than 200 years old. Transportation is a battle against friction, so what could be better than a vacuum tube where you don’t need to push against air?

Over time, many variations on this theme emerged, but none went far. Only in 2013 did Musk jazz up the idea in true Silicon Valley style, with a white paper titled “Hyperloop Alpha”, setting off a frenzy of research and investment to make it a reality.

Several companies have tried tests at different scales, and some efforts continue across the world. One of the leading companies, Hyperloop One (formerly known as Virgin Hyperloop), generated significant buzz with a human trial in Las Vegas but never found a contract. Last month, it shut down and sold off its assets.

On the Paris trip, one dives into the Channel Tunnel, after which the Eurostar tracks split into separate lines. Railways are useful for their interconnections. But the simple act of changing tracks would be much harder for the hyperloop, conceived primarily for point-to-point travel. Along the way, the sunlight reveals barbed wire and surveillance cameras to protect us against terrorism. How much more security would it take to protect thousands of kilometres of Hyperloop’s thin vacuum tube?

But let’s imagine for a moment that all technical hurdles were solved — what would we have? Hyperloop stations would be very difficult to build in dense urban areas due to the exorbitant cost of real estate, excavations and the necessary infrastructure. One would have to take a shuttle from the centre of London to a peripheral hub, spend 20 minutes in the hyperloop, and finally face another transfer from the outskirts of Paris to the city proper.

Does this remind you of something? Yes — aircraft. In terms of user experience, hyperloops would essentially be terrestrial Airbuses. Users don’t need this option: since the 2007 opening of the refurbished Eurostar at St Pancras station, the number of air links between the British and French capitals has fallen dramatically.

Customers clearly prefer a smooth experience to maximum speed. They might also be choosing the Eurostar for having a carbon footprint that is about 95 per cent less than that of aircraft. While the hyperloop might have emitted less per journey than a plane, and perhaps even a high-speed train, its construction would have had a huge environmental cost.

Travel has changed dramatically in recent years, thanks to internet connectivity. As it becomes possible to work from almost anywhere, truly rapid transport becomes less necessary for many professionals. Shouldn’t we focus on making their journeys more comfortable and accessible? The Eurostar, where I am typing these words, is perhaps one of the most beautiful offices in the world.

This is not to say that there is no room for creative ideas in the future of transportation. But today, between the Eurostar, the plane or a hypothetical hyperloop, I would continue to choose the good old-fashioned train. It is this invention that deserves our attention: more investment, more innovation and more love.