![]() ![]() “Cleveland is the halfway point between America’s largest city and its third largest city. The project is a public-private partnership between Hyperloop Transportation Technology (HyperloopTT), a Los Angeles-based startup, and the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), a local agency responsible for planning and overseeing major infrastructure projects in the Cleveland metropolitan area. In the U.S., the only passenger hyperloop system that’s actively under development is a 300-mile route, also in the Great Lakes region, that would connect Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. However, the project was abandoned after Virgin Hyperloop decided to focus on moving freight, not passengers. The same year, Virgin Hyperloop published a 19-page feasibility study of a proposal to build a 500-mile passenger hyperloop route in the Great Lakes area that would link Chicago, Columbus and Pittsburgh. “I felt a little pushback, but nothing uncomfortable,” Sara Luchian, Virgin Hyperloop’s head of passenger experience, said of the extreme acceleration experience in an interview with the Observer after the test. A prototype pod carrying two Virgin Hyperloop employees sped up from zero to 107 mph in less than six seconds and then screeched to a stop in a ride that lasted a total of 17 seconds. In November 2020, Virgin Hyperloop, a subsidiary of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group founded in 2014, conducted the world’s first human test of hyperloop at a 500-meter test track in a Nevada desert. didn’t respond to a request to elaborate on the plan. The company plans to test a “full-scale hyperloop” as soon as this year, it said in April without sharing details such as location and size. as a site for an annual student competition to test hyperloop pods. has built a roughly mile-long prototype tube in Hawthorn, Calif. The best-known one is probably The Boring Company, cofounded by Musk himself in 2016. After the publication of Musk’s white paper, a crop of startups were founded with the same goal of building the world’s first passenger hyperloop. There’s no lack of engineering interest in making hyperloop a reality. ![]() Hyperloop builders include billionaire-led startups and public-private joint ventures Department of Transportation (DOT) estimates hyperloop could be up to six times more energy efficient than air travel on short routes. ![]() For comparison, a high-speed train needs two 2,250-horsepower diesel engines. A 2017 study by the U.S. Musk’s white paper claims it would only need 134 horsepower-about as much as a low-end Toyota Corolla-to achieve a speed of 700 mph. But hyperloop takes the concept to another level by confining a train within a low-pressure or vacuum tube, thus removing air resistance as well. Among existing transportation technologies, the closest thing to hyperloop are maglev trains, which eliminate the friction between tracks and wheels, and have been built in countries like the U.K., Japan, Korea and China. If a vehicle can do away with friction and air resistance, it can theoretically move at very high speeds on relatively low horsepower. In traditional modes of travel, such as trains and planes, a significant amount of energy is lost in overcoming friction and wind resistance. ![]()
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