CLEVELAND — Five years ago on a cold February morning, city and state leaders, along with the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, gathered at the Great Lakes Science Center to announce the funding of a feasibility study. It was a $1.3 million look into whether it would be possible to build a Cleveland to Chicago hyperloop that delivers passengers from one location to the other in 27 minutes.
"Where it should go along, what are the best right of ways that we can use, how much will it cost and how are we going to be paying for it," said HyperloopTT Founder and CEO Dirk Ahlborn at the time.
Hyperloop travel involves capsules of around a hundred feet in length using passive magnetics to levitate in essentially a vacuum tube where they can travel at speeds of up to 700 mph. Something that actually enables it to generate more energy than it uses. The study, the largest done on a hyperlooop system, came back in 2019 and found that it was not only feasible but could be built using private dollars.
"This is the largest study that has ever been done on the Hyperloop system," said Ahlburn in 2019. "And it confirms what we have been saying for a long time. It's an independent study that says that the system does not need any government subsidies, and that's a game changer when it comes to transportation."
Impressive given the estimated cost to build of $50 million a mile. Still, when the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in November of 2021 it included some funds for hyperloop projects. That same month HyperloopTT, the group behind the plan to link connecting Cleveland to Chicago and Pittsburgh, unveiled what the inside of the cars in these tubes would look like.
"It's spacious; we have this really interesting artificial sunlight technology, artificial skylight, it feels like you're outside or we can turn it into the night sky," said HyperloopTT Chief Marketing Officer Rob Miller at the time. "We have speakers embedded in the headrests. It's personalized so the seat knows who you are, it knows your name if you want it to, where you're able to pick up on your Netflix show right where you left off at home."
And 14 months ago, Miller told News 5 they still remained bullish on a timeline. "Testing continues to go well. I mean we're still on track, so for you guys in Cleveland it's before the end of the decade we want to bring hyperloop to you."
But since then, there have been few updates. The last being back in November when HyperloopTT announced a deal that will result in them being the first publicly listed hyperloop company. A move that will allow them to raise money to fund the next phases which they tell News 5 are happening. “We remain excited and optimistic about hyperloop throughout the region, and we expect to proceed with the environmental study later in 2023.”
Grace Gallucci, Executive Director of NOACA tells News 5 because it is mainly a privately funded project it moves forward at a different pace, but it is moving forward.
"So there's a lot of reasons for us to be excited and that we would love to move forward on, but again, it's really a private sector initiative and so we're waiting for them to move forward on the environmental analysis and the preliminary engineering," she said.
RELATED: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies offers look inside capsule that will one day travel at 700 mph
Take a look at what it would look like to ride in a hyperloop capsule in the player below:
