Amazon HQ2 RFP

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shmessy said:
You keep skating to where the puck is currently.........

Meanwhile others are inventing the future that you are forfeiting for your "call me when you see it" present.

Bezos sees folks like you in Massachusetts which is why he will choose to go elsewhere, thank you very much. I don't blame him.
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Nah, he's gonna come here because 5 years ago I came up with a new idea. We're going to have ROCKET SHIPS fly people around town. 5 years in I don't have any working prototypes, and I literally don't even own a company to do it, but trust me, this is the future.
 
Gameguy326 said:
Okay, call me when you see any prototype of anything related to a hyperloop that works in any capacity that isn't a toy, or when you see even a toy version with a human passenger. Until then...it's vaporware.
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This is a foolish outlook on any technology that actually already exists in some type of functioning manner today.

Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.
The Apollo 11 landed men on the moon in 1969.

100 years is a very short time, and the rate of technology evolving from concept to reality has accelerated exponentially in the most recent decades.

The cost to build will be prohibitive as it is in all infrastructure builds, but to say it's a figment, is again, foolish.
 
Gameguy326 said:
Nah, he's gonna come here because 5 years ago I came up with a new idea. We're going to have ROCKET SHIPS fly people around town. 5 years in I don't have any working prototypes, and I literally don't even own a company to do it, but trust me, this is the future.
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You prove my point with each additional post about why Bezos will choose another city. He's not dumb enough to choose Boston/Cambridge. Too many people like you despise the "big idea".

I would say Musk has a pretty damn good track record. Paypal, Solarcity, Space X, Tesla have by no means been linear easy successes, but they have all proven flat-earth believers wrong.

Who needs that, when we have the Durgin Park waitress attitude?
 
We need to *build our existing transit, then add a deep tube near our worst served faux-corridor and build 425' alongside it.

We're probably 7-10 years behind on planning to get the Bastard.

*optimize & expand
 
odurandina said:
We need to build our existing transit, then add a deep tube near our worst served faux-corridor and build 425' alongside it.

We're probably 7-10 years behind on planning to get the Bastard.
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Baker is too focused on garaging trains in Allston.

Godspeed to the Bezos', Musks, Gates, etc. in their work in distant places to shape the future of humanity.

We can read about it.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
This is a foolish outlook on any technology that actually already exists in some type of functioning manner today.

Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.
The Apollo 11 landed men on the moon in 1969.

100 years is a very short time, and the rate of technology evolving from concept to reality has accelerated exponentially in the most recent decades.

The cost to build will be prohibitive as it is in all infrastructure builds, but to say it's a figment, is again, foolish.
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Wait, I'm sorry, does the Hyperloop actually exist in any type of functioning manner? Because the only actual functioning "Hyperloop" I can find is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vydb5EBDp6c

Which is actually just a new type of maglev train with the word "Hyperloop" written on it.

I'd be curious if anyone has seen something I haven't though.
 
The technology? Yes.
Scaled to carry people? No.
Not sure what you don't understand there.

I gave ya some easy to understand analogy as well.

People laughed about space travel when rockets existed and had been used for centuries. The hyperloop to my understanding is a maglev. Reduced friction by being in a vacuum. Multiple things that exist.

This will not be in use for the public in the next decade or maybe two. But, hell if west station takes til 2040, it has a legit shot at beating that.

Not here of course, but the brush off seems beyond ridiculous for someone who is obviously fairly learned.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
The technology? Yes.
Scaled to carry people? No.
Not sure what you don't understand there.

I gave ya some easy to understand analogy as well.

People laughed about space travel when rockets existed and had been used for centuries. The hyperloop to my understanding is a maglev. Reduced friction by being in a vacuum. Multiple things that exist.

This will not be in use for the public in the next decade or maybe two. But, hell if west station takes til 2040, it has a legit shot at beating that.

Not here of course, but the brush off seems beyond ridiculous for someone who is obviously fairly learned.
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Oh, well I don't disagree that the core principles are there, and someday, down the line, 10, 20, 30 years from now, could materialize into something useful. But my point is that there's no technology right now. I wouldn't call fireworks a space shuttle, and I wouldn't call what we have right now anywhere near a transportation prototype. That doesn't mean it's not worth still researching or investing in - that's a far more nuanced argument. Hell, there's enough VC in this country that it's probably worth a few flyers.

But I will instantly dismiss anyone who thinks we should make policy decisions or HQ based off the Hyperloop. I wouldn't move my Amazon HQ to Baltimore because maybe it will get a currently imaginary mode of transportation someday.
 
I think hyperloop will fail on the question of emergency egress, just like monorails have (all the guideway advantages get eaten up when it comes time to provide a way for people to escape a fire/accident). Or just like safe helium-lift dirigibles don't have nearly the lift capacity that hydrogen did.

Monorails, H2 Zeppelins and maglev tubes all look really superior in early versions but fail on safety at scale up.
 
Gameguy326 said:
But I will instantly dismiss anyone who thinks we should make policy decisions or HQ based off the Hyperloop. I wouldn't move my Amazon HQ to Baltimore because maybe it will get a currently imaginary mode of transportation someday.
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Absolutely. However, the point was about a region's attitude/outlook. Baltimore is at least looking towards the future, and Musk is about to start boring tunnels. Is it imminent for the public? No. But are they signalling they are looking to play for the 21st century? Yes.

Bezos will choose on what is present, but also what a city is willing to do to be cutting edge for the future. Massachusetts can't even agree to plan to build West Station until 20-freaking-40. I guarantee, the moment Stephanie Pollack came down with that public pronouncement was the moment Amazon H2 turned off its Boston light (if it ever had it on in the first place - - it doesn't want to be another Olympic game snub). You could practically hear the click.

It's as pathetic as the dust growing on the NSRL and Blue-Red Connections. There is work to be done NOW. Big picture-wise, scratching our bellies and defeating Olympic bids are what Boston has become most adept at since the Big Dig was completed 15 years ago.

Boston knows how to say no. Bravo.

When it comes to infrastructure, Ol' Pa Boston is fixin' to get around to that one of these days, ma.
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I have to you are making a good number of reaches there. I don't rule out Baltimore can win the Amazon bid on the principle that there's a chance for anything. That we should treat any competitor with a ounce of seriousness.

But I'm not citing "Olympic Game Snub" or "West Station" if we lose it. I'm not even sure where you got the Olympics was a snub, we refused to back any cost overruns and that's a good thing (the bad and dysfunctional thing is our proposed plan was virtually guaranteed to overrun the estimated cost in a spectacular fashion).

And you can hear the "click" as soon as West Station got push to 2040? I don't want to be that guy, but is West Station that important? UHub may eviscerate me for saying that if I said that in their news post, but the risk of not building it (to take quote of one transit advocate) is it becomes another Seaport. But you know what, the Seaport may be another car-centric hell, but it is still successful. And when it comes to Amazon or most outsiders, the Seaport looks pretty good.

We might not get Amazon, but I don't agree of looking at West Station or the Olympics as any type of evidence if we fail.
 
jass said:
The money is now on Atlanta
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If the 'money' is being wagered based on Amazon recently registering am energy lobbyist with the state legislature, Amazon put out an announcement saying that the lobbyist has nothing to do with HQ2. (IMO, Amazon is likely looking for a HHUUUUGGGGEEEEEE data center so it can go mining for bitcoins, and one needs lots and lots of electricity to go mining these days.)
 
stellarfun said:
If the 'money' is being wagered based on Amazon recently registering am energy lobbyist with the state legislature, Amazon put out an announcement saying that the lobbyist has nothing to do with HQ2. (IMO, Amazon is likely looking for a HHUUUUGGGGEEEEEE data center so it can go mining for bitcoins, and one needs lots and lots of electricity to go mining these days.)
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And let's not forget that Amazon IS betting on Boston. They're looking for a million square feet of office space here, independent of HQ2.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.
The Apollo 11 landed men on the moon in 1969.
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The relevant extension of this analogy would be - where is the scaled space mass transit system moving thousands of people to orbit and beyond on a relevant basis?

Even more relevant - where is supersonic jet travel? The answer as we know is that for the vast majority of the market, frequency & cost were more important than incremental improvements on flight time.

The hyperloop is a dead end, just like the Concorde was
 
Equilibria said:
And let's not forget that Amazon IS betting on Boston. They're looking for a million square feet of office space here, independent of HQ2.
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Don't get me wrong - Boston does some things uniquely well. It is a Wade Boggs - - an almost unparalleled singles and doubles hitter, almost no other city better at that. There are also long-term strengths to not becoming a 1 or 2 company town, no doubt.

The big fish Amazon HQ2 type of home run? It's just not in Boston's DNA. Many of the posts in this thread exhibit that. As I've written earlier in this thread, there's nothing wrong with winning a batting title with thousands of satellite offices filled with high paying intellectual property workers. The nature of this area is to be the brainpower for the out of town corporate heads. Maybe Boston should just admit victory and go home regarding Amazon.

Baltimore or Atlanta are more of the desperate Dave Kingman "swing for the fences" type of cities (just count the number of taxpayer funded stadiums put up in the past 20 years in those two municipalities -omg! ). They are cities with large populations, large and modern airports that are desperate to kowtow to a corporation.
 
Without mentioning any particular city, future aspirations are great especially in terms of new age technology, but how you run your city in the here and now has to count as much if not more IMHO. So, if a city wreaks of corruption, dysfunction, crime, blight and poverty its kinda hard to say "yeah yeah yeah...but we're working on drafting a prototype to put a man on Mars".

To me, a big, BIG accomplishment is making a large city functional. Some places have figured that out and those I feel are Boston's strongest competitors. Some have not, and with all of the hockey analogies floating around I guess we can discount any without a professional team. ;)
 
shmessy said:
Boston does some things uniquely well. It is a Wade Boggs - - an almost unparalleled singles and doubles hitter, almost no other city better at that.
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And... one helluva beer drinker let's not forget. The comparison is very apt.

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Yeah, but not so much in that boning every trashy girl in the trailer parky kind of way.
 
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