North Carolina to explore Virgin Hyperloop One Technology
Global Railway Review, July 12, 2019
Estimates suggest that trips from Raleigh to Durham or Chapel Hill, a distance of nearly 30 miles, could be completed in under ten minutes with the help of Hyperloop technology.
North Carolina’s Regional Transportation Alliance (RTA) – the voice of the regional business community on transportation – kicked off an exploration of hyperloop as a potential regional and inter-city transportation platform.
The report identified example hyperloop corridors that could seamlessly connect Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and RDU International Airport near the Research Triangle Park, and create a linchpin for a future hyperloop network across the southeastern U.S. The N.C. Department of Transportation also participated in the discussion.
Joe Milazzo II, PE, Executive Director, Regional Transportation Alliance, commented: “The Research Triangle area is uniquely positioned from a technology focus, spatial layout, and favourable mid-east coast location to benefit from a hyperloop travel solution that could quickly link America’s R&D cities of Raleigh and Durham with each other and with neighbouring regions in the southeast and mid-Atlantic.”
Other economic benefits to be considered include travel time reliability, direct linkages to the best-connected medium hub airport in North America, improved logistics for cargo shipments, and the effects of cities and economic centres connected by the system to have far more synergy by being connected within minutes. Interconnections with a proposed regional bus rapid transit network serving Research Triangle area counties and the existing passenger rail network would further leverage potential benefits of and connections to the system.
Virgin Hyperloop One’s technology proposes to transport passengers and goods at speeds comparable to airlines and enable regional cities to connect just as local city subways connect neighbourhoods.
Virgin Hyperloop One’s visionary technology features depressurised tubes that carry on-demand passenger or cargo “pods” at speeds up to 670 miles per hour, powered by magnetic-levitation. Its proprietary depressurised tube infrastructure essentially eliminates the impacts of air-drag and friction, requiring less energy and cost to operate the system and allowing travel to occur at exceptionally high speeds.
Virgin Hyperloop One is the only hyperloop company with an at-scale test track, known as “DevLoop.” Located outside of Las Vegas in Nevada, Virgin Hyperloop One has completed hundreds of test runs to date.
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