High-speed rail projects across the United States are facing high budgets, lengthy timelines, and increasing skepticism from the federal government, but a new concept could breathe new life into the industry.
HSR America proposes using tracks suspended above street level along existing roads and railways, with maglev-based transport pods rather than traditional trains.
The pitch, outlined in HSR America’s promotional video, is ambitious, but grounded in patents and research, and most importantly, its creators believe the technology could avoid the pitfalls currently facing high-speed rail development.
Why It Matters
One of the other biggest delays facing U.S. high-speed rail is dealing with land acquisition for the track itself. Before shovels can even touch the soil, landowners, environmental agencies, and local authorities need to be consulted and convinced that the project can go ahead, and for such long-term and complex constructions, that can be a tough sell. This has led to complications with both the Dallas-Houston project in Texas and the California high-speed rail project.
What To Know
HSR America hopes that by suspending their design above existing infrastructure that already has all the necessary permits in place, they can avoid the problems these designs have faced.
“What we’re looking for is rights of way that are already granted,” Victor Peloquin, HSR America’s founder, told Newsweek.
“We could go right alongside their rights of way, as they already own the easement. They already own the rights of way for the overhead, so we could go right along them, and not have to go through environmental impact and reports.”
Peloquin’s design forgoes the traditional train engine followed by cars in favor of a series of autonomous carriages managed from a central command system.
The system’s transport pods operate independently of one another and are fully electric. HSR America hopes that the network will be “carbon negative” due to solar panel arrays on the top of the pods generating more energy than required for transit.
Peloquin told Newsweek that passengers could travel as fast as 300 miles per hour, which would be faster than the predicted speeds of the California high-speed rail project, in which trains are expected to run at around 200 miles per hour.
The speed would go a long way in solving the issues of congested commuter hotspots, which Peloquin is looking to target with his patents.
“Especially where I live in California, we have a tremendous infrastructure problem,” he told Newsweek.
“Freeways takes years, sometimes five or six years, to build, eminent domain takes 10 years to get through government hurdles on and congestion has been increasingly getting worse and worse and worse.”
However, despite the design’s promise, funding for HSR America’s feasibility study, one of the key gateways to the construction process, was revoked after the increasingly rail-skeptic Trump administration cut back on grants for technology innovation.
What Happens Next
HSR America is aiming to resume feasibility studies in the future and has identified several potential routes that could benefit from the infrastructure.
One such route is Sacramento to San Francisco, where high demand and an embracing attitude to new technology could benefit the concept.
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