A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed, as-yet-unbuilt design for future high-speed railroad transportation. This would entail building maglev lines through evacuated (air-less) or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. Though the technology is currently being investigated for development of regional networks, advocates have suggested establishing vactrains for transcontinental routes to form a global network. The lack of air resistance could permit vactrains to use little power and to move at extremely high speeds, up to 4000–5000 mph (6400–8000 km/h), or 5–6 times the speed of sound at sea level and standard conditions, according to the Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering program "Transatlantic Tunnel".
Theoretically, vactrain tunnels could be built deep enough to pass under oceans, thus permitting very rapid intercontinental travel. Vactrains could also use gravity to assist their acceleration. If such trains went as fast as predicted, the trip between London and New York would take less than an hour, effectively supplanting aircraft as the world's fastest mode of public transportation.
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"Vactrain" is a word first used in about 2004 to describe the SwissMetro idea that originated in the 1970s. The SwissMetro idea was developed into a full proposal, with several millions of funding to do things like leakage tests on concrete tunnels, etc.. The main problem with ideas like Swissmetro (and the much later Vactrain) is that they are MUCH more expensive than High Speed Rail (HSR) trains.
HSR is already much too expensive to be used on a wide scale. For this reason, cars and airlines have displaced over 95% of passenger trains in the US (and over 70% world wide).
The infrastructure cost of HSR is more than 4 times the cost of a typical 4-lane freeway. The train set cost of HSR is about $70,000.00 per seat. N0 HSR in the world is able to recover the very high cost of construction; so the 'tax footprint' is typically more than 10 times the service footprint. Only one HSR system in the world (Japan) is recovering it's operating cost alone.
An underground Swissmetro (or 'Vactrain') is estimated to cost three times more than HSR. Underwater vactrains (as shown in the artwork) will cost more yet.
There is a new technology ET3 (Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies)tm (see et3.com and et3.net) that has offers many more benefits than vactrains, but at less than 10th the cost of HSR.
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