Page 17 - SAEINDIA Magazine December 2020

COVER

Story

The best business case for Hyperloop
lies in passenger transport as
many people are willing to pay
a premium for a faster commute
that saves a lot of time. At a later
stage, freight transport too can be Please note that these predictions are based on the
added as a complementing service. Having weighed assumption that innovations contribute to the growth and
several parameters such as population, daily passenger development of the economy. That is, with every passing
transport volume using different modes, and the average year, for the given forecast period, until 2030 –
expenditure on transportation, with mutual consensus, • Hyperloop – Time interval between two consecutive
Chennai - Bengaluru is taken as the base route for all the Pods reduces by 0.5 minutes.
comparisons and calculations in this article. • Airways – Increment of 4 airplanes.
The following table sheds light on some of the important • Railways – Increment of 1 train with just upper class
parameters like passenger volume and a few others (3-tier AC and above).
that affect the revenue of a mode of transport. This • Roadways – Increment of 20 buses.
data includes transport modes of all classes and types,
and the costs have been factored in accordingly. For This analysis clearly shows how Hyperloop is capable
instance, Railways includes data for chair cars as well as of individually handling the population increase and
AC coaches. Roadways take into account the peak pricing the growing commute. Eventually, when Hyperloop is
over the weekends. implemented, it would ideally complement all the other
modes of commute, and hence together, address the
Following these calculations, the cost and passenger growing demand and ease overall congestion.
capacity for Hyperloop can be further optimized based
on parameters such as time interval between consecutive Conclusion
pods, individual pod capacity, the total number of pods Hyperloop can provide much lesser travel time for
to be run over the day, etc. The expected time interval, to comparable costs, in consideration with the other
begin with, is taken as 6 minutes. means of transportation. Upon optimizations in the

MOBILITY ENGINEERING DECEMBER 2020 15