Texas is getting serious about attracting the futuristic travel system called the Hyperloop, which could be much more of a game changer to the way we get around than driverless cars or bullet trains, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The global engineering firm AECOM is working with Texas to attract a working version of the Hyperloop, which architectural consultant Steven Dwong says is like a giant version of those tubes that used to suck money to bank drive through windows.
"The idea of a hyperloop is a vacuum type transportation system, which moved pods through a tube at about 700 miles an hour," he told News Radio 1200 WOAI. "That is to move both passengers and freight."
One of the big advantages of Hyperloop, which has chosen Texas as one of six finalists for the first working prototype, is since it would be elevated, there would be fewer of the property rights issues that doomed both Gov. Rick Perry's Trans Texas Corridor, and several high speed and commuter rail ideas.
The Hyperloop tube could be build on risers constructed in the median of I-35, for example.
Dwong says passengers would sit in a pod which would be suspended by magnetic levitation and propelled by a vaccum environment inside a tube. Both of the technologies exist, although not at this level.
"Riding the Hyperloop would be very similar to riding an an airplane," he said. "But there would be no windows, but, because you would be riding inside a tube, there would be nothing to see in the first place."
Hyperloop is one of the projects of futurist billionaire Elon Musk, who has also pioneered private space travel (Space X), and electric cars (Tesla Motors). The plan by Hyperloop One is to have a functioning model in place somewhere by 2025.
The plan selected by Hyperloop One as one of the global finalists imagines a route from Dallas through San Antonio and south to Laredo, with another line heading east to Houston.
At 700 miles an hour, a passenger could get from San Antonio to Dallas in 20 minutes, San Antonio to Austin in eight minutes.
Unlike the Bullet Train project, which famously crashed and burned in the late 1980s, to a new plan to build a high speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, the Hyperloop plan in Texas has political support.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro was among those urging Hyperloop One to choose Texas as one of the finalists.
But so far, Hyperloop has made no request of the state for funding, and when the issue of tax increases comes up, which is likely in the 2019 Legislative session, opposition is bound to grow.
IMAGE; HYPERLOOP ONE