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Stephen Pina
Professor Malvin
English 114B
17 April 2016
Track To The Future
You've heard the saying "time is money" and it is. Perhaps this is why people have
always complained about traveling. In the past 200 years humans have gone from horse-drawn
carriages, to trains, to cars, and now commercial airplanes that can get you halfway around the
world within a days time. Thanks to Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, we will soon be
traveling at supersonic speeds of 760mph just below the speed of sound. The fifth mode of
transportation is now here and it is called the HyperLoop. This concept, created by Musk,
consists of an ultra-low pressurized tube that allows pods to travel extremely fast by overcoming
air resistance. The pods are much smaller than planes and they will be designed to depart every
10 seconds, making it easy for people to hop on and hop off. As of now, since Elon Musk is busy
building rockets and cars, he has released the patents to the public and is holding a competition
for the summer of 2016 to inspire more engineers to hop on the bandwagon, while he plans to
help accelerate the HyperLoop movement. I will propose a new project that connects the city of
Los Angeles and San Francisco with a HyperLoop transportation system that transports people
and cargo. Each city will have its own terminals and it will take only 35 minutes to travel from
LA to SF for the cost of only 25 dollars. My HyperLoop project will change the Los
Angeles economy by providing thousands of jobs for low income families(particularly
immigrants), allowing more small businesses to grow at faster rates than ever before, and by
opening marginalized communities to more job opportunities.

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There are many naysayers that claim that this proposal will be scientifically impossible,
that it will be a complete waste of money, and that it would only benefit and affect upper class
citizens. The truth is, in fact, that these statements sound very familiar to the statements that the
naysayers of the railroads and airlines had during their beginning stages. People complained that
these forms of transportation were extremely unsafe and that it will not be able to fully integrate
into their society with positive effects. I argue, however, that yes, it is easy to say that a natural
disaster can totally destroy the HyperLoop, but let's not forget that these problems are not
impossible to solve. Even Elon Musk himself believes that his concept will inspire creative
ingenuity and inspire more engineers to hop on the HyperLoop bandwagon while solving all of
its technicalities. While many people might believe that this project will be too risky since it will
cost roughly about 7 billion dollars. Let's keep in mind the amount of time it will take for it to
pay for itself. Solar panels will be placed on top of the tracks that will be able to collect more
solar energy that is needed to power the HyperLoop itself, making my project a wise investment.
The benefits that the first public railroads and airlines brought to the cities drastically changed
the economy as a whole and I believe that the Hyperloop would be the next push towards a
similar economic boom.
One of the most direct benefits that would help the Los Angeles society is that this project
will create a broad spectrum of jobs in aspects such as engineering, construction, and labor work.
This project will create a huge demand for labor work which is something that many low income
workers are constantly trying to look for. According to an article in caimmigrant.org, more than
one-third (35%) of residents in Los Angeles are immigrants and that they compose nearly half of
the labor force in the county at 45% (Reshma). This will be great for the immigrant workers that
struggle to put food on their familys tables while the demand for labor work will benefit them.

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Immigrant families will finally be able to rely on an industry that is only going to continue to
spread across the nation. In result, more money means more opportunity and I believe that the
struggling immigrants who are suppressed by society will finally have a guaranteed cash-flow
which will help them grow, giving their families a brighter future.
The most unique aspect of my project is the fact that people will be able to travel to each
major city in only 35 minutes. This will not only change the way we travel, but it will change
why we travel. The HyperLoop will be so convenient that the average person would be able to
live and work in either city. Just imagine finding your dream job or the love of your life in a city
400 miles away knowing that you can get there in half an hour. This will benefit many of the
communities who still suffer from inequality and are trying to get their voices heard. Cities such
as Compton and Watts will be able to protest in northern California making this side more aware
of the inequality that exists in their society. In Twilight Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere
Smith, Congresswoman Maxine Waters argued that Washington does not understand what was
really going on in the poorer parts of Los Angeles during the time of the Rodney King trial. Its
not enough to say theyre insensitive or they dont care. They really dont know. I mean, they
dont see it, they really dont understand it, and they really dont see their lives in relationship to
solving these kinds of problems (Smith 163). Maxine Waters believes that the only way to fix
the issues that exist in suppressed communities is to simply make more people aware of the
issues so they can take a stance and vote in more politicians who will reform policies and fix the
issues that America continues to struggle with. As a result, these communities in both major
cities will be able to have their voices heard across the state making awareness of class division
more integrated into society.

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With Los Angeles beautiful beaches, exciting attractions, and tasteful food, the amount
of tourism continues to grow. In 2012, tourism was Los Angeles fastest growing industry, with
visitor spending supporting 324,000 jobs (Wallace). With the HyperLoop, the amount of tourism
will increase drastically in not only Los Angeles, but eventually the whole nation. Tourists will
be able to easily travel across the state and spend money in each city, which will benefit the
engine of our economy (small businesses). A result of easier accessibility to both cities will
encourage more spending and will allow all businesses to grow at much faster rates. Instead of
tourists being able to say they traveled to Los Angeles or San Francisco, they will be able to say
that they have visited the whole state of California in one day. According to the Los Angeles
Tourism and Convention Board, the final tally of tourists who visited LA in 2014 was 44.2
million people and spent about 19.6 billion dollars in just one year (Martin). The demand for
entertainment, food, and attractions will boom and continue to inspire more people to start their
own businesses which will overall bring more jobs and money into the economy.
Currently we live in a time where businesses have been able to expand their market and
growth on smartphones. We can now pick up our phones and demand an Uber driver to take us
across the city or request any food of our choosing from Postmates to be delivered right to our
front door. The quickness of delivery has continued to put more money into the economy by
giving people the incentive to buy more products and try new restaurants without having to go
through the process of actually going there. The HyperLoop will soon be the next generation of
delivery. People would be able to request food and products which will create a larger demand
for these freelance delivery guys, creating more jobs.
With all of these pros that the HyperLoop could bring to the economy, the one factor that
separates it from aviation, railroads, and even automobiles is the impact it has on our

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environment. Climate change is real and humanity is now leaning towards sustainable energy.
The only problem is that electric vehicles are currently the only answer to this problem and its
barely getting its foot through the front door of our society. According to Impacts of airplane
pollution on climate change, an airbus uses as much energy as 3,500 family cars, equivalent to
six cars per passenger. To put that into perspective, Long haul flights produce on average twice
as much emissions per mile traveled per passenger than cars and short haul flights produce three
times as much (Flyingclean.com). The HyperLoop will not be powered by fuel, gasoline, or coal
but it will be powered by our most powerful energy source in our universe, the sun. The
HyperLoop would simply be better than aviation because it is much faster and it doesnt pollute
the air at all.
The HyperLoop or as I like to call it, the fifth mode of transportation, will be the answer
to LAs economic inequality and social divisions. Being able to connect two major cities, or even
two major states through the HyperLoop will solve these problems that exist in our society by
giving people more opportunities to prosper. While this technology is currently in the early
stages of testing, it is expected to be ready by 2020. By 2020 minimum wage will rise, and
thanks to the HyperLoop, more people will be employed which means the future is much closer
than we think it is.

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Works Cited
"Issue Briefing: Impacts of Airplane Pollution on Climate Change and Health." Flying Clean.
N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
<http://www.flyingclean.com/impacts_airplane_pollution_climate_change_and_health>.
Martin, Hugo. "Los Angeles and California Break Tourism Records in 2014." Los Angeles
Times. Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2015. Web. 04 May 2016.
Shamasunder, Reshma, and Isabel Alegria, eds. "Immigrants in Los Angeles County." (n.d.): n.
pag. Caimmmigrant.org. California Immigrant Policy Center, Sept. 2014. Web.
4 May 2016.
Smith, Anna Deavere. Twilight Los Angeles, 1992. Anchor Books ed. Vol. 1. New York:
Anchor, 1994. Print.
Wallace, Emily, Kristina Pollock, Brandon Horth, Siobhan Carty, and Nathalie Elyas. "Table of
Contents." Los Angeles Tourism (2014): 1-36. Lachamber.com. May 2014. Web.
4 May 2016.

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Evaluation Letter
Dear Professor Malvin,
Proposing a new project for the Los Angeles society seemed very fun to me. I enjoyed
researching this new technology and I have high hopes that it will benefit our society in the
future. When I took my draft to the LRC, the tutor told me that my thesis was not framed
correctly throughout the paper. Unfortunately I was confused by what he was telling me and it
made it even harder to understand because he didnt write anything down. I ended up making a
second LRC visit and the new tutor gave me a better explanation of why my thesis wasnt framed
correctly. The problem was that I didnt restate my argument within my evidence. On the other
hand, I think I have improved my writing in aspects of giving examples that back up my
argument. I hope that I will overcome my unorganized thought process when it comes to
constructing an argument. Since I consider myself to be better at being creative, I still know that
I need to work on how I organize these creative thoughts. I learned that I need to organize my
argument first, and then find the connections between the evidence and thesis.