USA TODAY International Edition
Hyperloop is coming to downtown Denver
Arrivo announces deal for test site near E-470
Colorado drivers may be the first to escape traffic thanks to a new partnership between state officials and a Los Angeles-based hyperloop tech company.
Arrivo founder Brogan BamBrogan joined Colorado transportation officials in Denver on Tuesday to announce a partnership to create a network of roadside tubes at the congested heart of the city that promises to whisk drivers and their cars to their destinations at speeds of up to 200 mph.
The public-private players include Arrivo, the Colorado Department of Transportation and E-470 Public Highway Authority, which operates a 75-mile, user-financed toll road running along the eastern perimeter of the city. The Arrivo test site will be near E-470, and groundbreaking is slated for early 2018.
BamBrogan says Arrivo’s first commercial system could be ready in 2021 depending on funding, regulatory and public-perception hurdles.
By way of pitching the Arrivo system, Colorado DOT officials speculated the network of tubes filled with high-speed trays to carry cars could cut a one-hour-and-10-minute drive from downtown to the airport to a nine-minute Arrivo ride. A one-hour slog down the state’s busy Boulder-toDenver highway corridor would take eight minutes.
“We’re the tech partner in what would be a big partnership involving lawmakers, real estate people and others, but our job is to show that we can help provide a positive ROI (return on investment),” BamBrogam told USA TODAY. “Traffic is something people are very eager to solve.”
BamBrogan said the idea is to use existing highway right-of-ways to install above-ground tubes to help commuters cheat traffic by granting them express trips in their own cars to popular destinations.
Why not just build a train? “I have a young son, and my car is filled with everything I need for him, so not taking my car often isn’t a great option,” he said.
Arrivo’s system is notably different from the more sci-fi version of hyperloop, the name Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave to the transportation system in a white paper he wrote in 2013.
That vision, one pursued by Arrivorival Hyperloop One, involves above- or below-ground vacuum-sealed tubes, inside which magnetically levitated pods can travel at up to 700 mph.
These hyperloop systems are aimed at covering hundreds of miles in short time frames, such as turning a six-hour Los Angeles-toSan Francisco trek into a 30-minute hyperloop scoot.
BamBrogan said that his new company, which took root last summer east of downtown L.A., is for the moment focused on “regional and super-regional solutions, which is typically a lower-pressure environment” when it comes to logistics. “Denver was a natural fit, since the place is urbanizing fast and there is a need for a traffic solution,” he said.
The company plans to hire 40 to 50 people in Denver next year as it puts between $10 million and $15 million into its test track site and open a new Engineering and Technology Center in the Denver area.
Since dreaming up hyperloop, Musk has launched The Boring Co. in order to start drilling tunnels for his own alternate transportation system.
BamBrogan spent part of his engineering career helping Musk build his rocket company SpaceX. He later joined Uber investor and Musk friend Shervin Peshivar in co-founding Hyperloop One, which he left after an acrimonious series of lawsuits.
Now called Virgin Hyperloop One, that company is building a test track near Las Vegas and has feasibility studies underway in Russia and the Middle East. The company recently announced that Colorado was among 10 finalists of a competition aimed at finding the best place to launch its debut U.S. project.
That Colorado project would transport people or freight in pods at up to the speed of sound and stretch across the entire state from north to south and west to its fabled ski resorts.