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* Chinese version of Elon Musk's vision could travel up to 1,000km/h, top engineers say. * Several major cities were considered for mega project, expected to be operational by 2035. China is likely to build its first hyperloop train line between Shanghai and Hangzhou, according to the nation's top engineering and rail design institutes. The 150km-long (93-mile) in-vacuum tunnel will allow maglev trains to travel at speeds of up to 1,000km/h (621mph). The Chinese Academy of Engineering and rail authorities commissioned a "comprehensive assessment on the candidate construction sites for ultra-high speed pipeline maglev system demonstration line", and the two...

Picture Pittsburgh 50 years from now with these transportation changes: a terminal in a central location to handle a hyperloop system, vehicles for vertical takeoffs and landings, and high-speed trains; aerial trams linking neighborhoods; and new bridges crossing the Monongahela River at Hazelwood for motorized vehicles and at the former Wabash rail bridge piers for bikes and pedestrians. Those might sound like something from a science fiction novel, but they are among the ideas the city says it must consider in a 50-year Mobility Vision Plan released Thursday by Mayor Bill Peduto and Karina Ricks, director of the city’s Department...

Development of a proposed hyperloop transportation system linking Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Chicago would not only be a boon to communities along the travel corridors but also would be a strong business investment. That’s the conclusion of a 157-page feasibility study released Monday in Cleveland by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc., a California-based company developing the technology to move passengers and freight at more than 500 mph through low-pressure tubes. Consultant Transportation Economics and Management Systems performed the $1.3 million study of the proposed Great Lakes Hyperloop System. For the first time, the study estimated...

Ohio planners will move full speed ahead on a proposed hyperloop system that would carry passengers between Pittsburgh and Chicago in about 58 minutes for a one-way cost of about $93. But the full system, known as Mid-West Connect, probably wouldn’t be finished until about 2050. Thea Walsh, director of transportation and funding for the Columbus, Ohio-based Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, said this week the agency is putting the finishing touches on feasibility and environmental impact studies but has concluded it should pursue the hyperloop system. The system being developed by Virgin Hyperloop One would move passengers and freight in...

As Elon Musk struggles in acquiring land rights for testing his audacious Hyperloop project in the United States, India has emerged out of nowhere to offer him a helping hand. India is offering Musk's SpaceX a big chunk of land and permission to do the required testing in Pune, a city 118 kilometers away from Mumbai. The country's Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said he made the proposal to Hyperloop's parent company SpaceX during his recent visit to the United States. “I just offered them ... they want some road for experimental purpose. I offered them the westerly bypass of...

Will a hyperloop work in Pennsylvania? That’s the question officials from legislative and executive branches, statewide agencies, organizations and departments, as well as a handful of private business leaders are trying to answer. Fifty people, invited to a workshop at Dixon University in Harrisburg on Wednesday, met to talk about the possibility of building a hyperloop system in the commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has until April 2020 to complete a $2 million state-legislative commissioned study on its viability. Media wasn’t permitted to attend the invitation-only meeting. According to the turnpike’s research, a hyperloop combines a magnetic levitation train and...

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It’s not science fiction, but old-school tunneling—a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump’s forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business. The plan calls for creating new high-speed rail lines deep underground—the basic idea behind the English Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, that whisks travelers at 186 miles per hour from London to Paris in just two hours and 20 minutes. That’s less time than the Amtrak from New...

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has called into question the state’s authority to grant permission to Tesla founder Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, The Boring Co., to build several miles of tunnels for his high-speed Hyperloop transportation system below the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The State Highway Administration granted a conditional utility permit on Oct. 16 to allow The Boring Co. to begin building the tunnels, if the company supplies additional information about the project and it meets all necessary requirements. But the Hyperloop system “is not a utility under federal standards or SHA’s federally-approved utility accommodation policies,” Assistant Attorney General David Stamper...

It sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, but Colorado has been named one of 10 finalists for the Hyperloop One competition, which could end with a vacuum-sealed tunnel shooting people from Cheyenne to Pueblo and Vail to Denver at speeds up to 700 miles per hour. The futuristic, pod-based transportation system for Colorado could cost as much as $24 billion, but it's only one of a number of major developments in the realm of transportation throughout 2017. The proposed route for a Colorado Hyperloop accounts for roughly 360 miles total, and the Los Angeles firm that's sponsoring...

OH, ELON. BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE HYPERLOOP DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT Is this … is this really happening? On Wednesday morning, Elon Musk made a strange announcement on Twitter: His Boring Company (yes, that's what it's called) had received “verbal government approval” to build an underground hyperloop, he said. The maglev-powered train thing would pass through New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before terminating in good old swampy Washington, DC. All in twenty-nine minutes. It sounded momentous—but “verbal government approval” isn’t a thing. A White House spokesperson said the administration had conducted “positive conversations” with Musk and Boring Company executives, but...

Just as Elon Musk’s revolutionary Hyperloop technology was starting to look like a serious business model, there are signs that one of the most promising companies commercializing the technology may be facing some serious internal problems. Hyperloop One is one of the two most prominent companies trying to develop commercial versions of the Hyperloop. The company is now facing an explosive lawsuit from one of its co-founders, which may end up permanently derailing the firm’s ambitions. Hyperloop One is based in downtown LA and claims to be building a fifth mode of transportation based on Elon Musk’s original concept. The...

Hyperloop One has released a proposal that will allow passengers to commute 310 miles (500km) between Helsinki in Finland and Stockholm in Sweden in just 28 minutes. Currently it takes around an hour to fly from Stockholm to Helsinki, or a 16 hour ferry journey. The company was among the first to demonstrate its technology for the transport system, dreamed up by Tesla and Space X founder Elon Musk, in a trial in the Navada desert in May. It hopes to build pods that can travel through vacuum tubes at speeds of up to 700mph. In a feasibility study drawn...

Dream on you loopians, just don't expect me to fund your crazy ideas! There is a new company, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) that intends to revolutionize high speed continental travel. It’s CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, recently announced an agreement with the Slovakian government to build Hyperloops from Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Its competitor, Hyperloop One, recently tested an open air propulsion test of a vehicle with its “Blade Runner” test rig. The Japanese “bullet trains” going at 200 mph are like snails in comparison. The new hyper-things are envisaged to do about 760 mph....

It's a bird. ... It's a plane. ... It's a pod of steel! The future of transportation could be closer than you think as Hyperloop One tested its electric engine in its first open-air demonstration on Wednesday. Before its first test run, Rob Lloyd, CEO of the tech start-up, said that the company — formerly known as Hyperloop Transportation Technologies — is "rewriting the rules" in transportation technology. "The world is watching. It's cynical, but it's cheering for us at the same time," Lloyd told CNBC's "Squawk Alley." "Our objective is to find the routes in the world where governments,...

Just three years after Elon Musk described his sci-fi-esque vision for “hyperloop” travel, one of two competing companies, Hyperloop One, successfully conducted its first proof-of-concept test in Nevada.

Vienna to Bratislava in 8 Minutes In 2013, Elon Musk’s SpaceX revealed the concept for a high-speed ground-transport system, dubbed the Hyperloop, which would travel around 700 mph and deliver passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes. The idea: to create a faster, cheaper, safer and more environmentally conscious transit option — one in which pods travel through tubes with near-zero air pressure, and which is eons ahead of the hell that is Interstate 5. Three years later, however, the California Hyperloop is still a far cry from coming to fruition: SpaceX is currently holding an...

Hyperloop Technologies is working on a project to move people and cargo at nearly the speed of sound, and its engineers believe they're approaching a transportation breakthrough not seen in ages, reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans. In 1903, the Wright brothers launched the age of aviation in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with their experimental flying machine. It connected the world, pushing the limits of what many believed possible. Hyperloop Technologies co-founder and engineer Brogan BamBrogan wants to change the world again, with a ground transit system that would go faster than a commercial jet. "We're kind of inventing a...

Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop' was dismissed as a pipe dream that would never get off the ground. But now the billionaire's plans to shoot capsules of passengers along a tube at around the speed of sound may launch as soon as next year. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has secured land for the first full-scale Hyperloop with a 2016 launch in the California town of Quay Valley.

[It would really be great if private entrepreneurs could develop this system! Musk is an innovator. Check out the videos in the article.] “Hyperloop moves closer to becoming reality.” Phil LeBeau@Lebeaucarnews (Hyperloop Transportation Technologies,Inc., says Elon Musk’s vision for the new transportation system is beginning to take hold. CNBC’s Phil LeBeau reports, and talks to Ahlborn about the 5-mile stretch to be tested in the next few years.) The Hyperloop, just an idea in the mind of Elon Musk two years ago, is moving closer to becoming reality. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has signed an agreement with a developer in central...

PLAYA VISTA (CBSLA.com) — It takes about six hours to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco – depending on your speed – and more than an hour to fly. But in the future, the trip may take a matter of minutes. Designers of the speed tube called Hyperloop say they are one step closer to making that happen. Tesla founder Elon Musk says the technology is being developed with the help of about 25 UCLA graduate architecture students at a facility in Playa Vista. Hyperloop has teamed up with the students to create the tube technology, designed to connect...