Elon Musk's Hyperloop, the futuristic high-speed transport system held something they called The Hyperloop One Global Challenge, a call for comprehensive proposals to build Hyperloop networks connecting cities and regions around the world. More than 2600 teams registered. Hyperloop execs narrowed the field down to the 35 strongest proposals. The final assessment selected the ten routes as winners of the Global Challenge.
Hyperloop execs selected winning routes, from which, they will seek to build at least one production system by 2021. Here are the winning routes:
- Toronto-Montreal, Canada
- Bengaluru-Chenna, India
- Mumbai-Chennai, India
- Mexico City-Guadalajara, Mexico
- Edinburgh-London, UK
- Glasgow-Liverpool, UK
- Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh, US
- Miami-Orlando, US
- Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo, US
- Dallas-Laredo-Houston, US
Basically, the Hyperloop is a pressured vacuum tube that pushes pod vehicles through a high speed.
From the finalists, the Hyperloop planners ought to build two routes: Toronto-Montreal and Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh. From here, the Hyperloop planners could connect the routes through Detroit.
The terrain seems favorable as there are no mountain ranges to tackle.
Building out around Chicago (2,704,958) would seem easier and offer much. Routes that could connect to Chicago would be Minneapolis-Milwaukee, Kansas City-St. Louis, Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati-Indianapolis. As it is, the Kansas City-St. Louis route was a finalist for this competition.One in 4 Canadians live in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. This is the fourth most populated region in North America. The aforementioned cities comprise the heart of the Windsor-Quebec Corridor. With Hyperloop, a trip tripe between Toronto and Ottawa could be 27 minutes, Montreal to Ottawa in 12 minutes, and Toronto to Montreal in 39 minutes.
The Hyperloop has the potential to turn cities into suburbs of bigger cities, e.g, Pittsburgh (63rd in pop) becomes a suburb of Columbus (14th in pop) and Columbus becomes a suburb of Chicago (3rd). If it proves to be true, a Hyperloop system could transform the movement of freight and the flow of goods across any region.
So what about California? California presents too many problems. Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains, which would increase construction costs. The state legislature has been building their slow-moving bullet train for more than a decade now. Likely, too, environmentalist activists and the corrupt political machinery of California would throw up major impediments to building one.
Hyperloop One intends on having a system built for use by 2021.
Gab It
