I watched a show a while ago about how some future-looking engineers were contemplating a vacuum-sealed underwater maglev train tunnel from NY to London. They say that it would take 45min one way. (18 mins acceleration, 18 min deceleration). They were projecting a completion date of something like the year 2100.
Is such a thing possible with today’s technology, if money were no object?
Would such an idea be a GOOD idea? Is it realistic to expect that in a hundred years we might have something like that?
I saw that show too. IANA engineer of any sort, but it seemed very implausible. I particularly enjoyed how they gave a long list of possible problems that might be encountered, then delivered an elegant solution. What if there’s a fire? The vacuum will take care of that. What about air resistance? We plan to use a frictionless surface and ignore air resistance.
Ultimately, such a project – if it is possible – could only happen if it could be financially viable. How many people are willing to pay a premium fare to ride from NY to London at 5,000 mph? It might be viable if transatlantic air travel was completely replaced by the tunnel, turning NY and London into hubs for the entire transatlantic market, though that would cause some other problems.
I saw the show as well. One of my nitpicks is that New York and London are both crowded enough, thank you, and don’t need to be used as the endpoints of a transatlantic train service, adding to the congestion. Why take 45 minutes to cross the Atlantic and then need the same amount of time to get to your hotel?
But wouldn’t a trainload of people leaving NY for London be decreasing the congestion in NY by the same amount that it increased it in London? I don’t see how shuffling people from one to the other causes a net change in congestion.
As to the OP, who knows what kind of technology will be available in 100 years? A hundred years ago, the idea of computers talking to each other, laser surgery, men walking on the moon, transcontinental flight, nuclear bombs or jello would have been unthinkable. Where there’s a need, science seems to find a way eventually.
I think what SavageNarce is saying is: If it takes an hour-and-a-half to get through traffic to the maglev train station in New York, plus an hour-and-a-half to get through security, plus an hour for customs, plus half-an-hour for embarking, plus half-an-hour disembarking on the other end, plus an hour drive through traffic in London to get to a hotel, then you’ve already invested five hours or so getting from New York to London. In that case, a 45-minute maglev train ride isn’t that much of an improvement over a 4-hour SST plane ride.
The technical problems are solvable, but it is hard to see why society would want to build such an expensive project which would be opposed by the airlines, shipping companies and of course the Stonecutters.
Funding would be a big, big problem for a project that would take 20 years to complete.
Right now, northern transatlantic travellers are spread out. Many travellers pass through the New York area (primarily JFK and Newark) on the North American side, but there are many other airports one can use. Many travellers pass through the London area (Heathrow and Gatwick) on the European side, but again there are many other choices. A single tunnel carrying a significantly larger portion of this traffic would cause congestion because some people who would ordinarily fly, say, Frankfurt, Germany to Chicago, USA, would decide instead to travel from Frankfurt to London, take the train to New York, and then travel New York to Chicago.
In theory it could also increase transatlantic travel, by making it possible, even convenient (if expensive), for people who live near one end of the tunnel to pop across the ocean for a long weekend. It’s said the Channel Tunnel has led to an increase in the number of Londoners taking a day trip to Paris, to show a similar real-life example.
All of this is only theoretic anyway, because this turkey ain’t gonna fly in more ways than one. Even if it were technologically feasible, which it isn’t, it would cost more money to build and maintain than they could ever hope to earn back. Most of the projects on the first series of Extreme Engineering were pretty wild, but this one really took the cake.
So you’re saying you don’t see a difference between five hours and nine hours total travel time?
If you’re in the transportation business, you solve the inefficiencies where you can. There is very little one company could do to eliminate traffic issues in NY or London, remove security delays, or drastically speed up embark/debark times. The one link in the chain a single company can optimize is travel time. If they can do it in an economically feasible way, then it speeds up the overall trip. Yes, you still have to consider all the other links in the chain. No, the existence of those other links doesn’t make optimizing one link pointless.
That’s not to say I think a NY-London high-speed train is practical, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t make it work, and it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t at least try to speed up the bits they can.
“A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!” appeared as a serial in the April, May and June 1972 issues of Analog. The first book publication, BTW, was under the title Tunnel Through the Deeps, although the original title was restored later.
But how do you think it possible for a trip on an SST not to require the time to get to the airport, go through security, disembark, etc. Travel is travel no matter the means. You can’t eliminate all this extra time by magic just to bolster your case.
The problem with the tunnel is the same problem as any fixed route system: unless there are overwhelming concentrations of passengers on each end, no fixed route system can compete financially with a variable route system. Well before we get the technology to do a transatlantic tunnel, we’ll have the technology to do a scamjet that will also take only 45 minutes to get across the ocean, but be capable of flying to any major airport in the world. The advantages are obvious.
I’m not saying that you wouldn’t have to go though all the security rigamarole with the SST. What I am saying (or, rather, what I’m echoing SavageNarce in saying) is that you’re not getting across the Atlantic five times faster (45 minutes versus 4 hours) – you’re getting across the Atlantic twice as fast (5 hours versus 9 hours). How micco interpreted it, in other words:
Sure, there’s a difference between five and nine hours travel time… but not a lot of difference. This is kind of getting into IMHO territory, but… all things being equal, I’m sure people would rather take the quicker mode of transportation. But how many people would pay a lot extra to shave 50% off their travel time? Especially in the NY-to-London direction, where the 5-hour option still requires you to either arrive after business hours anyway, or get up God-awful early in the morning. Now, if you really could go 45 minutes office-to-office, that might actually change the way people did business, despite the extra cost.
Really. For all the talk about “Gee, how cool is it that I can cross the ocean at supersonic speeds,” the fact is that very, very, very few people actually need to get anywhere that fast. The Concorde was always more of a status symbol than a useful means of transportation. I have to imagine that this tunnel would end up the same way. And it would probably fall by the wayside much sooner than the Concorde did, since the maintenance costs would be astronomical.
I did almost the exact opposite about a month ago, got on a train in Nuremberg and took that to the Frankfurt airport, and got on a plane there to cross the ocean. By the time the technology exists to build this under water, there should already by plenty of high-speed trains on land. You’ll board the train in Frankfurt, maybe stop in Brussels and London, merge with the routes from Paris and Madrid, cross under the ocean to New York, and stay on the train right to Chicago.
Which is not to say that I think this will happen within 95 years, just that the tunnel would be only one part of a larger system.
