Park City and the Hyperloop...

Earlier, this month, I envied Colorado and Vail's good fortune to have been picked for one of the next Hyperloop roads and passed my thought on to our local politicians.

Diane Foster, Park City Municipal manager, said she and Jack Thomas our mayor have had contacts with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies three years ago, and had been told that we were too close to Salt Lake City, represented too small a population and on such a short segment, the Hyperloop couldn't reach its maximum speed before it'd need to slow down.

In addition, she had said that climbing the steep grade of Parley’s Canyon would also be a huge challenge. Since, I'm not one who takes no for an answer, I'd like to turn these arguments on their heads.

Here is how I see things. Before we run we need to walk and just like the present one-third of a mile track in Nevada, we could lobby hard to be chosen to develop a test track between Salt Lake, Park City and Heber to verify basic stuff like loading/unloading, acceleration and deceleration.

As importantly, it could test mountain climbs that soon would be required to climb the Colorado Front Range, clear both the Eisenhower tunnel and Vail Pass that are both extremely challenging, in advance of implementing the system planned for that region.

Summit and Wasatch county account for 70,000 people, vs. 80,000 for Eagle and Summit, Colorado! Even if the Hyperloop can't reach its top speed when it gets to Park City, who cares, as long as the transit time between the airport and Park City drops from 40 to less than 5 minutes!

As we all know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and there's always an other side to any argument.  If it makes any good sense though, any sensible and potentially good idea should be seriously considered.