The future of transportation? Europe’s longest hyperloop center opens

A decommissioned railway center near Veendam in the north of the country has a sophisticated 420-meter (1,380-foot) Y-shaped Y-shaped structure made of 34 interconnected pipes approximately 2.5 meters wide. There is a white tunnel.

Almost all the air is sucked out of the tunnel to reduce drag, and magnets are used to propel the vehicle at speeds that could eventually reach 1,000 kilometers per hour.

The European Hyperloop Center is the only facility in the world with a “lane switch,” a tunnel that branches off from the main line, allowing scientists to test what happens when a vehicle changes course at high speed.

“We need this to build a network. The lane switches are branching parts of the infrastructure, so for example one part goes to Paris and the other goes to Berlin,” said center director Sacha Lam.

Lam predicted a network of 10,000 kilometers of Hyperloop tunnels crisscrossing Europe by 2050.

“If you look at how highways have developed over time, they develop exponentially as the technology is perfected,” the 33-year-old told AFP.

“We’ve built something that’s very scalable. It can go very fast. So you can get to the station in Amsterdam and travel to a city like Barcelona in less than two hours. It should actually be possible,” he said.

“It’s just like flying, but without all the hassle.”

The Netherlands-based company Hard Hyperloop plans to conduct initial vehicle testing in the coming weeks, and the center is open to companies developing all aspects of Hyperloop technology.

But scientists admit there is a “long way” to go before the technology is fully perfected, and it will still be a while before it can be tested on passengers.

Mr Lam said full-scale passenger operations should be possible by 2030, perhaps on short routes of about 5km from the airport to the city.

SpaceX and Tesla mogul Elon Musk brought Hyperloop into popular culture with a 2013 paper proposing a “fifth mode of transportation” linking San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Musk said the Hyperloop tube would connect the two cities in about 30 minutes, compared to six hours by road or one hour by plane.

Since then, several cities around the world have considered the idea and millions of dollars have been spent on research projects, but the Hyperloop has yet to take off.

British businessman Richard Branson sent two passengers 500 meters across the Nevada desert in 2020, but his company Virgin Hyperloop (which later became Hyperloop One) went bankrupt late last year.

But experiments and research remain intense, and China has longer facilities that will allow it to reach speeds of nearly 700 kilometers per hour, Lam said.

Proponents argue that Hyperloop produces no pollution or noise and blends into the background in both urban and rural environments.

“The energy consumption of Hyperloop as a means of transportation is much lower (than others),” said Marinus van der Meis, director of technology and engineering at Hard Hyperloop.

“It also requires less space to operate because we have these tubes that can be easily installed underground or elevated, so the infrastructure footprint is smaller,” the 33-year-old told AFP. .

Critics say the technology is a piece of cake, with questionable experiences for passengers traveling through narrow tunnels at near-sonic speeds.

Transportation blogger Aron Levy famously described Musk’s initial proposal as a “barf ride.”

But van der Meijs said the acceleration should not be that different from a high-speed train.

“Passengers move faster, but it’s all due to force. It’s like an airplane. When the airplane is in the air and moving at a constant speed, you don’t feel it.”

“It provides a very comfortable ride,” Lamb said.

“Imagine a capsule with a nice ceiling and stars and a sunny day. Especially when you go inside, you get to your destination in a very short time.”

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