Elon Musk winning over LA politicians for underground Hyperloop tunnel network : VIDEO
Elon Musk winning over LA politicians for underground Hyperloop tunnel network
By THE WHITTIER DAILY NEWS |
PUBLISHED: June 20, 2017
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, famous for altering the realms of space travel and cars with SpaceX and Tesla, is winning political support in Los Angeles for his next innovation.
Inside the SpaceX hyperloop track along Jack Northrop Drive in Hawthorne, a smaller version
of a proposed high speed long distance model. File photo.
(Brad Graverson/The Daily Breeze/SCNG)
Musk’s plan to build a supersonic, environmentally friendly Hyperloop mass transit system beneath Los Angeles County is getting a thumbs-up from local political leaders, he tweeted on Sunday.
But, he added, “permits (are) harder (to get) than technology.”
Musk’s skill at cutting through entrenched government bureaucracy could help local politicians persuade voters to spend tax dollars on his futuristic transportation solution, say local political insiders.
After all, his Hawthorne startup, SpaceX, now routinely wins government and military contracts that were reserved only for Boeing and Lockheed until three years ago.
Los Angeles Councilman Joe Buscaino, who represents the Harbor Area, expressed strong support for partnering with private industry to solve the region’s biggest problems.
“We need to use technology to streamline our archaic regulatory system,” Buscaino said in an email. “I welcome Elon Musk and companies like Google to help the City of Los Angeles modernize our slow and increasingly entangled processes, especially those regarding land use and development. I have felt the frustration Mr. Musk is expressing since my first day in office.”
Common ground: LA’s traffic nightmare
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has had repeated conversations with Musk about Hyperloop’s potential for Los Angeles. In January, Garcetti introduced Musk at his first Hyperloop passenger-pod prototype competition for university students in Hawthorne.
At that time, he indicated that Metro was supportive of Musk’s tunneling ambitions.
Musk first introduced the mass-transit Hyperloop concept in a 2013 white paper as energy-efficient, affordable and fast.
He is now testing new tunnel engineering techniques in the parking lot of SpaceX’s Hawthorne headquarters for The Boring Co., his tunneling venture. He hopes to make a tunnel-boring machine that’s much faster and more efficient than existing models.
Hyperloop pods can theoretically travel through vacuum-sealed tubes at supersonic speeds up to 700 mph. The challenge, as Musk indicated in his Sunday tweet, is in persuading people to get inside the unfamiliar, closed levitating pods.
In his tweet, Musk shared an KABC, Channel 7 news video clip of Garcetti promoting the Hyperloop concept.
“This Crenshaw-LAX Line will be a great public transit line but it will take many stops, you know, to get downtown,” Garcetti said in the interview clip. “And, like many other cities have, I’d like to see – maybe even with the new tunneling technology that Elon Musk is looking at – whether we can have a quick and direct route from LAX to Union Station.
Private investment
Last year, LA Metro opened the door for the first time to private companies interested in building transportation solutions, through its new Office of Extraordinary Innovation.
Joshua Schank, Metro’s chief innovation officer, said the agency asked for help from the private sector because it needs to find cheaper, quicker ways to fix L.A.’s traffic nightmare.
“Unlike technology, government is very, very messy because there are a lot of people involved, right? And people tend to have opinions and feelings and vested interests, and they try to prevent innovation,” Schank said last week at the SelectLA conference, a forum in Los Angeles to lure foreign investment for tech companies.
“But transportation in Los Angeles is so bad that people are looking for solutions and there’s greater open-mindedness about trying anything that might work,” he said. “The problem’s really bad and somebody’s got to tackle it. There’s no one who can do it except us.”
Metro has received 75 private industry proposals, including 10 for major capital projects – presumably including the Hyperloop plan Musk has repeatedly touted for Los Angeles.
“Over the next 50 years, we’re building out the rail system and bus network throughout the county and managed lanes (such as HOV and carpool lanes),” Schank said. “Those networks will be dramatically expanded and upgraded.”
The problem, he emphasized, isn’t finding solutions to L.A.’s traffic headaches, it’s in getting enough money and political support to implement them.
Engineering key to transportation solutions
Hyperloop One in Los Angeles and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies in Culver City are now developing marketable Hyperloop trains.
Robert Miller, chief marketing officer for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said the company is working to finish its first passenger pod in an old aircraft hangar once owned by Howard Hughes.
“The critical thing about Hyperloop is to use renewables – solar wind, geothermal and regenerative braking,” which recovers energy and stores it for later, Miller said. “This is a completely green transportation system but we consider ourselves a technology company. We want to bring air travel speeds down to the ground.”
And, to soften the anxiety of getting inside a closed capsule to speed through tunnel networks, the company plans to have an “ambassador” in each pod.
“There will be a Hyperloop ambassador at least until we get very comfortable,” Miller said.
But, before Hyperloops are taking Americans to dental visits and family vacations, Miller and others familiar with the developing industry say it likely will be used to move cargo from offshore locations to free up parking space at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In the meantime, marketers and political leaders will have time to drum up support for the futuristic concept.
If Schank’s efforts to use drones for Metro’s daily operations are any indication, it will be an uphill battle.
Schank proposed using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to monitor the safety of about 92 miles of transit tracks throughout the county rather than having workers doing it by walking the tracks. In response, he was told that is prohibited by the Federal Railroad Administration.
He checked, and it wasn’t prohibited at all.
“People are going to tell you 10 reasons why it can’t be done,” Schank said. “My job is to change people from saying why it can’t be done to saying: ‘How do we get it done? What are the things it will take to get it done? And these are the questions we should be asking.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/20/elon-musk-winning-over-la-politicians-for-underground-hyperloop-tunnel-network-6/
