Driving from Austin to Dallas takes around three hours by car. The same trip via Hyperloop would take only 19 minutes.
Now, we're one step closer to that becoming a reality. That's because Hyperloop One, a Los Angeles-based startup leading the way on Hyperloop testing, named the Texas Triangle route as a winner in its Hyperloop One Global Challenge. The contest sought to find the most promising and impactful routes for high-speed travel.
The Texas Triangle route would have stops at DFW Airport in the Dallas area, Dallas, Houston, the Port of Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Laredo. As a winner, Hyperloop One will give the team of organizations that pitched the Texas route business and engineering resources, and it will help them forecast ridership and decide whether the route is commercial viability.
The Texas Triangle proposal came from a collaboration of organizations, including AECOM, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Austin Capital Metro, City of Dallas, Houston-Galveston Area Council, the Port Authority of Houston, Public Works and the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce.
The other routes selected as finalists are: Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo; Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh; Miami-Orlando; Edinburgh-London; Glasgow-Liverpool; Mexico City-Guadalajara; Bengaluru-Chennai; Mumbai-Chennai; and Toronto-Montreal.
Hyperloop One has become an industry leader in bringing Elon Musk's vision of tube travel to reality. In early August, the company became the first to test hyperloop travel, which uses magnetic levitation and electric propulsion to accelerate a pod inside a low-pressure tube. The company posted video of a trail run where they clocked a pod traveling at 192 miles per hour. They hope to reach 670 miles per hour in the future.
"The excitement around Hyperloop is in its potential to reimagine transportation by eliminating the barriers of distance and time," Michael S. Burke, AECOM's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a news release. "That half of the winning teams are supported by AECOM demonstrates the power of our connected expertise and is further evidence that these are the kinds of problems AECOM is built to take on and solve."
