Proposed Texas Triangle Hyperloop May Cut Down Travel Time from Austin to Dallas to 20 Minutes

Hyperloop One unveiled 11 potential projects April 6 during meetings with policy makers in Washington, D.C. The company also announced that it has finalized tube installation on its 1,650-foot-long DevLoop in the Las Vegas desert.

So far the activities of Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One have focused around building a commercial high-speed tube transportation system in the United Arab Emirates with a track connecting Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

But the Hyperloop One Global Challenge, which invited individuals, universities, companies and governments to propose Hyperloop routes in their regions, has yielded 11 U.S. routes. Five of these — in Texas, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Missouri — involve officials from their state departments of transportation.

The Texas Triangle route — a 640-mile system that would connect five metros — is considered a potential frontrunner, the Dallas Business Journal reports. The proposed Texas route has endpoints in DFW, Austin, Houston and San Antonio, as well as a leg down to Laredo, Steven Duong, senior urban designer in the Dallas office of Aecom, told the DBJ.

Such a method of transportation could connect Austin to Dallas in as little as 19.5 minutes, according to Hyperloop's projections.

“The idea is that this system connects all of those nodes for both freight and passenger travel,” Duong said.

The proposals link 35 states and cover more than 4,200 miles. The longest distance proposal, Cheyenne-Houston, would run 1,152 miles across four states, reducing a 17-hour drive to an hour and 45 minutes.

Missing from the list, however, is Los Angeles-San Francisco — the commute that inspired Elon Musk’s idea for the Hyperloop in the first place.

In addition, there are 24 international teams vying for a spot among 12 finalists. Ultimately, three winners will work with Hyperloop One to explore project development and financing.

Here are the proposed U.S. Hyperloop routes:

• Boston-Somerset-Providence (64 miles)
• Cheyenne-Houston (1,152 miles)
• Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh (488 miles)
• Colorado Front Range/Mtn. Network (360 miles)
• Colorado Front Range (242 miles)
• Kansas City-St. Louis (240 miles)
• Los Angeles-San Diego (121 miles)
• Miami-Orlando (257 miles)
• Reno-Las Vegas (454 miles)
• Seattle-Portland (173 miles)
• Texas Triangle (640 miles)

The Dallas Business Journal’s Bill Hethcock contributed to this report.

This article was lifted from http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/04/07/austin-to-dallas-in-20-minutes-texas-triangle.html