Dallas

Texas Hyperloop Proposes Quick Travel Across The State

Hyperloop One announced ten winners of their Global Challenge that searched for the best routes to improve transportation between major cities around the world, and one of those winners features a Texas Hyperloop.

More than 2,600 teams registered and in January the field was narrowed to the 35 strongest teams.

"Hours of judging, interviews, and analysis by our engineers and business strategy teams yielded the ten winners of the Challenge," Hyperloop CEO Rob Lloyd wrote on a company blog. "The winning teams will get our support and resources to move their projects toward commercial readiness.

The concept was envisioned by Tesla founder Elon Musk. It would feel a lot like flying in a plane, but you won't be in the air, you'd be traveling in a closed vacuum tube on the ground.

It reaches speeds up to 700 miles per hour and has passengers riding in pods similar to high-speed rail trains, but since you'd be traveling in a tube, there would be no windows.

The proposal for a Hyperloop in Texas, comes from company AECOM. Its proposal is for a 640-mile Texas corridor that would connect five of the top eight fastest growing cities in America – Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. 

"These cities make up an area the size of Georgia, with a population expected to reach 33 million by 2030, about the current population of Australia," wrote Hyperloop One VP Strategic Communications Bruce Upbin on the company website. "A Hyperloop One system can connect them all with vehicle speeds of up to 700 mph."

Another key feature of the proposal is combining the passenger system with a cargo hyperloop to the border city of Laredo, which is home to North America's busiest inland freight port.

"The port of Laredo is arguably one of the most important economic assets to the country. Close to $300 billion in annual trade flows through it from Mexico, China, Japan, and Malaysia," wrote Upbin. "The combination of freight and passenger volumes, coupled with the efficiency of connections between so many economic hot spots, would maximize the potential of Hyperloop One’s fast, packetized transport system."

A full-scale hyperloop is being tested in the Nevada desert.

The company is hoping to have one in service by 2021.

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