As a further extension of the news.
Either way, let's take a couple of examples:
1. A north-south UHSR line that runs the Beijing-Shijiazhuang-Zhengzhou-Wuhan-Changsha-Guangzhou route. Total length around 1950 kilometers.
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2. An east-west UHSR line that runs the Shanghai-Nanjing-Wuhan-Changsha-Chongqing-Chengdu route. Total length around 1900 kilometers.
View attachment 105729
Assuming that the UHSRs run at a maximum commerical speed of around 900 kilometers (since no trains run at its maximum possible speed during commerical operations). That means both the direct Beijing-Guangzhou route and the direct Shanghai-Chengdu route would take around 2.5-3 hours, counting in the factor that the UHSR has to slow down when rounding curves, plus the acceleration and decceleration time spend at the start and end of the journey.
From this, there are major caveats that the Chinese planners would have to consider:
1. Speed of travel - If the UHSR has to travel close to/at its maximum commercial speed for as long as possible, how many stops at in-between cities could the UHSR afford, considering the extra time penalties from acceleration from and decceleration to stations?
2. Time of travel - If the UHSR has to travel the entire route in the shortest amount of time possible, how many stops at in-between cities has to be excluded from the route in order to remove the extra time penalties from stopping at stations in-between?
3. Ridership - If the UHSR is to receive as many ridership as possible from cities in-between along the entire route, how much speed and time can it afford to sacrifice - And hence, how much wasting of energy, efficiency and cost would this incur?
On the other hand, if the mass adoption of hyperloop technology in intercity passenger transportation becomes a reality, how would this affect the competition between ultra-high speed rail lines and airline companies in the coming future?
Say, the UHSR runs at a top speed of 900 kilometers per hour (since trains don't run at top speed during commercial services). Most commerical jetliners today fly at around Mach 0.78, or around 960 kilometers per hour, but that is only while cruising. Commerical jetliners don't fly at that speed throughout the entire flight.
As per mentioned above, the time taken for both UHSRs to travel the entire routes without stopping would be around 2.5-3 hours. For comparison, a direct Beijing-Guangzhou flight takes around 3 hours and 20 minutes, while a direct Shanghai-Chengdu flight takes around 3 hours and 30 minutes.
When the UHSR is up and running, the competition between rail companies and airline companies in China is going to become even fiercer. This is because more people are going for the UHSR - All thanks to the time spent between origins/destinations and train stations, and time spent in train stations for boarding and disembarking are going to be shorter than that for airports, not counting the ease of accessibility as there is no need for immigration and security check procedures. The lower rates of on-time arrivals of Chinese airlines thanks to large portions of the Chinese airspace being off-limits to commercial planes for use by the PLA certainly doesn't help either.
Perhaps we could be reaching the limits of speed of travel for intercity routes that are of short to medium distances. Perhaps 600-700 kilometers per hour would be a hard cap onto how fast a land transportation vehicle could go for these routes without loosing too much on efficiency, energy wastage and cost incured. I'm thinking that hyperloop technology would only be useful for long and ultra-long distance routes, such as the Beijing-Kunming-Bangkok-Singapore route or the Shanghai-Chengdu-Urumqi-Astana route.
