What kind of transport infrastructure would there be in a new planetary colony?

Say humanity have the luxury to start anew. Colonizing a planet where speed of colonization is not an issue. Let's assume planet conditions and gravity pull similar to Earth. Technology relatively more advanced than ours, but not in the realm of fantasy.

What kind of transport infrastructure would they build? Specifically:

1. Sea transport: this is the first thing that comes to mind. In order to ferry heavy loads, nothing comes close to the efficiency of ships.
2. Air transport: Not great for shipping heavy materials, but great to ship passengers quickly around the world, or other time-sensitive cargo.
3. Land transport: That's where I've got my main question. Given the technology to implement an hyper-loop-like infrastructure, and the lack of the burden of legacy infrastructure to maintain, would we ever need to build roads or railways?

I guess roads could be useful for in-city transportation, but once we get to infrastructure connecting cities, why would we ever build roads or railways?

Especially since what's said in the marketing blurb of the hyper-loop site, that:

1. It rivals trains in transportation efficiency.
2. Speed would be at least 2× modern-day high speed trains.

Maybe we would need roads for parts of the landscape in which hyperloops are hard to implement? Or would we just connect everything through these?

posted over 4 years ago

Sunyatasattva‭

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