Hyper loop

courtesy : Hyper loop

What is a hyperloop and will it change the world?

Travelling from one place to another safely and efficiently has historically been one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity. Pollution caused by modern transport networks is currently an ever-growing problem, and the challenge is set to grow in scale and urgency.

By 2100, the UN projects that the world’s population will stabilise at around 11 billion people. What’s more, an unprecedented proportion of those people will live in the world’s big cities. It’s a phenomenon with a technical name: urbanisation. As a country develops, more and more young people living in the countryside will find work in urban areas.

Where does transport figure in?

Transport currently accounts for around a quarter of the CO2 emissions produced from energy usage. Of this, three-quarters are constituted by road transport — though aviation’s impact is vastly disproportionate to the number of people it caters for.

It isn’t just global problems like climate change that we need to consider. Built-up city centres suffer from heavy concentrations of traffic. Even if every car were electric and produced zero emissions directly, we’d still be faced with the logistical problem that comes with road transport.

Cars take up huge amounts of space, and much of the time, we’re not even using them. In the US, the problem is particularly severe. There are around a billion spaces available — four for every vehicle that currently exists. If you’re leaving four of the five seats in your car empty, then the per-capita impact of this is eye-watering.

Much of this space is concentrated in downtown areas, where land values are enormous. If just a bit of it could be reclaimed, the benefits would be considerable. This space could be used for offices, housing or even parkland.

Bringing in clean air zones, as many cities in the UK are beginning to, is only part of the solution. We must also come up with alternative ways of getting around.

A number of solutions have been proposed to this problem, some of them more ingenious than others. One idea that has received particular attention is the proposed ‘hyperloop’.

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#the logistical problem

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