Official

Hyperloop One lists 11 potential US routes and finishes its test tube

The company seeks 500 engineers and fabricators by year end.

Hyperloop One, the high-speed transportation project involving pods full of people being shot through air tubes, listed 11 potential US routes. The project's organizers also said its 1,640-foot-long DevLoop testing facility was completed near Las Vegas this week. Hyperloop One has promoted itself as a transportation alternative that can ferry passengers and cargo at "airline speeds."

Of the 11 proposed routes, the shortest is a 64-mile route from Boston to Providence, while the longest would span the 1,152 miles between Cheyenne and Houston. Other routes would link Los Angeles to San Diego, Reno to Las Vegas, and Miami to Orlando.

The routes were chosen out of the Hyperloop One Global Challenge, which was launched last May and attracted more than 2,600 participants. Of the 11 teams with the prospective routes, five included officials from their state's departments of transportation, suggesting a potential public-private partnership. That said, the company has not shed light on when these routes would see the light of day or how they'd be funded, but the company did say it expected to employ 500 engineers, scientists, and fabricators by the end of the year.

Hyperloop One said last month that it reached an "exploratory" agreement with the UAE, as organizers claimed its project could ferry passengers between Dubai and Abu Dhabi (that's about 90 miles) in a mere 12 minutes. The company said at the time that its DevLoop test track, which is about 11 feet in diameter, would be ready to be put to use by the first half of this year.

Hyperloop One is competing against a company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which has reached a development agreement in the Czech Republic. Additionally, Hyperloop One co-founder Brogan BamBrogan, who left the company last fall, has formed his own project called Arrivo.

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