Elon Musk's "Hyperloop": The Cure For The Common Light Rail

It was only in 2003--just a few years back--that I felt like a white kid with a mullet upon a visit to Long Beach. In fact, many of my disabled friends from LA and myself would often go to King Taco on the corner of Long Beach and PCH, but there was something that that part of the city had that ours didn't at the time.

That "extra feature" was an electric train, something that Italian rednecks like myself had never before seen in the San Fernando Valley. Hell, come to think of it, there were a lot of things that we never got to see in the Valley, some of which included crossing gates.

This was a system that Long Beach's cable-fed "Blue Line" used, but then I was driven to ask a friend from South LA why our Valley suburb didn't have a rail system like that, but he assured me that it was undoubtedly in the Valley's future.

Well...some "future" our beloved San Fernando Valley had to look forward to: a half-assed "light rail" that was really just a two-lane roadway that had been retrofitted from a railroad track, one that ran along Victory during the War era. Back then it probably wasn't called, "Victory," but then the Valley has always been a tossed salad of industrial inconsistencies anyway, so who cares?!

The point that we care about for the sake of this discussion is America's "grid," the "infrastructure." With all sincerity intended, that "grid" is one that's simply silly. It's nonsensical to blow tax dollars on a hydrogen Hummer for Schwarzenegger, while gas continues to soar toward the 5-dollar-per-gallon mark.

It's nonsensical for In-Home Supportive Services to shell-out minimum wage toward a menial workforce, when clearly it's more cost-effective to make all efforts toward getting the developmentally-challenged up and working, and this is where the "Tesla touch" comes in to help bring public transit to a brand new plane of existence.

Elon Musk has just leaked a ground-breaking, mass transit model that will inevitably make super sonic travel into a near reality. It uses a strange breed of "space tech" like none that has ever been used in public transportation.

Now you'd say, "Sweet! But isn't that "kind of thing" only for the rich and eccentric? Yes, such is usually the case with such high-and-mighty forms of transport. The Musk vision, however, is one that sees a world where electromagnetic transport is something accessible to nearly anyone who wants it.

That seems to be the key to unlocking the door to Elon Musk and his electromagnetic know-how, and his DC motor technology is the kind that's going to benefit all of us.

Why? Because it would cost a tad over $6 billion dollars to build the "Hyperloop," a refreshing concept from Elon Musk that proposes to bring a new kind of high-speed rail to the West Coast. This, however, is not nearly as substantial as the proposed $69-70 billion that would be needed to build the Bay to LA train that the "Administration" wants to construct, one that would also eat up steel and other crude resources.

With the Hyperloop, on the other hand, the form of transit comes in the form of what Musk himself describes as a sort of "air hockey table," a reverse bear trap of magnetic poles and giant turbines. The turbines are the most important part of the Hyperloop, because they push and pull, while dropping the tunnel's overall air pressure. This, combined with magnetized mile marks for torque, make for an in-tunnel "flight" that's reminiscent of Star Tours.

What this boils-down to is that the Hyperloop is a transit system that uses simple technology that's more complicated then it sounds. What's not "simple" about using magnets and air pressure to propel a passenger craft?!

Elon Musk apparently agrees, and with the invention of Hyperloop transit, the electronics guru has strove to invent a new dimension of public transit. That's got to make you wonder then...

...Have we been doing things wrong this whole time? Aren't gas and oil the best solutions for essentially any type of vehicle? Nope! And whoever told you that "gas is good" probably spilled a little too much nail polish in their chocolate milk, because honestly, gas is booty!

Gas is a bunch of explosive crud that we dump into our cars to make them run, but let's face it: even if we hurt the natural realm a bit by making batteries, that process can not be as toxic as burning fossil fuels.

And I mean for real, how the frick do you expect someone on a fixed income to buy Amtrak tickets for $60-120 per head, if that's even what it costs now? It's cool, except that it's a diesel-generated passenger train that books 65-70 miles per hour, where Musk is proposing a capsule that books nearly the speed of sound. And this is with nothing but magnets and airflow, which makes me really feel stupid about the kind of transit we're accustomed to.

Some of Elon Musk's most recent concepts and endeavors have actually made me feel stupid about a lot of things, like using steam, diesel motors and other abracadabras of the motoring realm to get from LA to San Diego.

Why couldn't we have figured this all out years ago?! It's so easy to combine air force with electromagnets to create a sort of "wind tunnel," one that moves a vehicle along with minimal drag.

That's good news for all of the speed junkies in the world, but what really makes the deal is that Musk's proposed Hyperloop would offer a one-way rate of about $20. The idea in itself is wild, to say the very least, but again it's possible with a $6-7 billion construction cost.

Also, the fact that the system would consist of an above-ground tunnel that's pressure-controlled would make the project a far more organic build than California's proposed light rail, one that's been said to top out at less than 120 miles per hour, this being done in the same distance as Musk's proposed Hyperloop.

Will Hyperloop prove to be a system that actually works? Tell you what: try riding MTA from Warner Center to Northridge, even on a weekday schedule, and tell me if that works.

The truth of the matter is that it now costs $80 for a Metro monthly pass, where in 2004 it was about $50. It takes approximately 45-60 minutes to travel from Woodland Hills to the borderline that separates Northridge from Reseda, and anyone who knows the area well enough knows that this is really not that much of a stretch.

So do we want Hyperloop transportation to become part of our daily landscape? Right about now, it sure is looking a lot nicer than conventional railroad, for sure!