World’s fastest railway ‘given green light by US government’

THE world’s fastest rail system, travelling at up to 760mph, has been given ‘verbal’ government approval, technology pioneer Elon Musk has claimed.

The billionaire creator of Tesla electric cars announced his underground Hyperloop is set to transport passengers between New York and Washington DC, more than 200 miles, in 29 minutes.

The technology would make a journey from London to Edinburgh less than an hour. Mr Musk, pictured, said his firm was given a ‘verbal’ green light for a subsonic propulsion tube, which would also link Philadelphia and Baltimore.

He said the project was a ‘cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table’ and likened it to a vacuum tube used in large buildings to move documents.

The Hyperloop’s passenger pods, powered by electro-magnets, float along rails in a tube from which air has largely been removed to minimise friction.

Mr Musk, 46, wrote on Twitter: ‘Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY- Phil- Balt- DC Hyperloop … with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city.’

He later added: ‘Verbal approval was at Federal level. Still a lot of work before formal, written approval, but this opens door for state & city discussions.’

Philadelphia spokesman Mike Dunn told CNBC: ‘We do not know what he means when he says he received “government approval”. There are numerous hurdles for this unproven hyperloop technology before it can become reality.’ Mr Musk’s firm is competing with similar project Hyperloop One.