Buffalo To New York City In A Half Hour?

It’s not quite Star Trek’s transporter – but it's getting close. On trips out to California, I've often thought it would be wonderful to be able to get into a capsule of some type and be able to see my family in a matter of minutes. The Hyperloop transportation system just might be able to do that some day.

The idea is pretty close to those vacuum tubes you use at a drive-in bank. It’s a system that would be more than twice as fast as the fastest commercial train in the world.

The idea was unveiled earlier this week to build a system of vacuum-like tubes and an air suspension system that could transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes. It would be the same as traveling from Buffalo to New York City in such a short time.

When you figure that’s a distance of about 350 miles – this system would take you at speeds of 700 mph, and that’s faster than most commercial airplanes these days.

There’s a train in China that has been recorded at a speed of 311 miles an hour, but it usually runs at under 270.

That’s still a whole lot faster than some of the trains being proposed for California that would only travel at about 164 miles an hour. Billions of dollars have been set aside for the project, but there have been all kinds of problems with it.

So maybe with all the problems, it’s a perfect opportunity to introduce something new.

The Hyperloop system in California would cost under $6 billion to build, but that’s cheaper than the high-speed rail system that’s in the works.

It would be above ground, with each capsule holding 28 people, and during peak times of day, another capsule would leave every 30 seconds on trips between Los Angeles and San Francisco

If it works, it could be expanded across the country, and with improvements, some day we could travel between New York and San Francisco in about an hour.