Catching the Hyperloop will be faster than the subway, its engineers say

August 08, 2017

The Hyperloop will allow us to move further away from the center of cities as commuting times get faster, they say. It will support subways, buses, and light rails! It will reduce congestion! It will be as affordable as a Greyhound! You’ll even be able to catch a ride more quickly than you would the subway (especially, one figures, the New York City subway).

“We have plenty of mini-platforms within each station to make sure everyone can can comfortably board and exit their pod,” the team building the high-speed vacuum tube transit system at Hyperloop One, wrote in an Ask Me Anything question and answer session on Reddit. The team—now in competition with the Boring Company, founded by the technology’s initial designer Elon Musk—staged its first, 192-mph pod test this month in Nevada.

What will it actually be like to ride the Hyperloop? Well, you won’t be jolted back in your seat when it takes off. And boarding and deplaning will involve a depressurization process akin to the way airlocks in space work, the group says. But what about in an emergency situation? The system would (hopefully!) ferry people to the closest station or a safe point along the way as long as they have power (not to worry, there will be redundancies!). Pods will also be programmed to be collision-avoidant and the crew says it’s thinking about ways to mitigate the effects of earthquakes. Certainly, they are keeping their eyes on the prize: “We are always interested in better ways to get good tacos faster.”

The team did not say if that will require constructing a Hyperloop over the Mexican border.