Presently a third of a mile loop exists in Nevada and in 2016, the Hyperloop launched a competition involving 100 countries. The number of candidates was first narrowed to 24 finalists in April, and just now, the 10 selected routes were announced in the U.S., Canada, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
This has also dovetailed with a shrinking length of stay by winter visitors over recent decades; as a result getting there fast is key. The bad news for people from Park City is that a 360-mile route from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Pueblo going through Denver Airport, Denver, along with a spur planned all the way to Silverthorne and Vail, was one of these lucky 10 sites selected.
With Hyperloop, Vail travel time would be just 9 minutes away from Denver. This means that Utah's competitive advantage over Colorado would vaporize if we choose to stay on the sidelines and not become part of that new technology. In terms of timetable, Hyperloop hopes to see 3, out of the 10 full-scale systems, operating by 2021.
It appears pretty obvious to me that Park City can't ignore this new development, but must move as a community, joining forces with the greater Salt Lake City area, from Provo to Logan, Utah, to get as soon as possible on the Hyperloop bandwagon.
Posts
1 comment:
Like you, I think the hyperloop technology is exciting and something that we will look forward to having in Park City one day.
About three years ago I was fortunate to attend, in support of Mayor Jack Thomas who also attended, a meeting hosted by the Utah Department of Transportation with two representatives from Hyperloop HTT, including their Co-Founder & Chairman. In addition to the Mayor, former Transportation Planning Manager Kent Cashel and me, the meeting included the head of the Utah Department of Transportation, the head of Utah Transit Authority, along with representatives of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. The meeting was organized by Pinebrook resident Sharon Anderson Morris who is the Director of Future in Review. Sharon has known the Hyperloop HTT team for some time and brought them to Utah for this discussion. In that discussion and later, at a dinner at Sharon’s home with the Chairman and the CFO, I was able to learn that while this is a terrific technology that will be great to implement in our area someday, Park City isn’t a great pilot city for two primary reasons – the first and most important being that we are too close to Salt Lake City. When travelling between Salt Lake and Park City, the Hyperloop would likely not be able to reach its maximum speed before it would need to slow down. The second challenge is that we are not a major population center. And there are other challenges discussed, such as the grade of Parley’s Canyon across the short distance between Park City and Salt Lake.
Now this doesn’t mean we can’t, in the future, be an extension of the project going to Cheyenne or be part of a competitor’s pilot, it simply means that it is less likely that we would be a pilot site. And we do have a couple of advantages that I discussed with Hyperloop HTT’s CFO: Utah’s Department of Transportation is well respected across the nation for getting projects done on time & on budget; in Utah we have a regulatory environment that is generally more flexible than in other states; and all of the people/agencies that would need to be aligned to make this happen in Utah already know one and other.
The company doing the pilot you have referenced is Hyperloop One. I am aware of at least three separate Hyperloop companies working on pilots – and Wikipedia lists six companies working on implementing Elon Musk’s hyperloop vision.
Our Transportation Planning team may have additional information, however if they don’t add to this email string, please know that they are quite focused on implementing new technology available now – in fact, today we got news that Park City was the receipt of a second electric bus grant from the federal government – this is on top of the grant we received for the six electric buses that went into service in June.
Thanks for sending this email to the Mayor and City Council; Park City is a special place because people like you care about keeping it unique and protecting its economic and environmental foundations.
Post a Comment