Virgin Hyperloop One Eyes India For Possible High-Speed Routes (theverge.com)

India is officially being added to the list of nations that have expressed interest in near-supersonic, tube-based travel. Virgin Hyperloop One "signed agreements with the governments of Maharashtra and Karnataka to begin studying the impact of a hyperloop in the region," reports The Verge. "The feasibility studies have implications for India's giant cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as fast-growing urban centers like Pune and Nagpur." From the report: The agreements are signs that despite its lack of a commercial product or human-ready testing, Virgin Hyperloop One has shown a tenacity for securing agreements with willing government partners. The company recently announced 10 winning submissions in a long-running contest to find what it believes to be the best places to build the first hyperloop routes in the world. Ten teams across five countries (Mexico, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada) were picked from the original 2,600 submissions, and the routes range in size from about 200 to nearly 700 miles, depending on the location. Virgin Hyperloop One hasn't specified the length of the routes it would build in India -- to be sure, it remains possible that none of these proposed routes get built -- but it did tease some of the possibilities in terms of reduction in travel time. For example, it would take just 14 minutes to travel between Mumbai and the fast-growing city of Pune, a journey that currently takes up to three hours by car. Also, it could look at connecting Nagpur, which is in the easternmost part of Maharashtra, with Mumbai and Pune to vastly improve passenger and freight transportation.

Comments

Brilliant

[argStyopa]

Build a boutique, experimental (dangerous as fuck*) transport system in a country where things like clean water, sanitation, basic education, and electricity are still not a "given" for a billion people.

*Think I'm wrong? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Jesus wept.

A friend worked for large multinational firewall vendor, as the primary tech sales lead for S & SE Asia. He said that he could hardly bear it, slogging into some shitville city to install $100,000+ firewall equipment in some school building, where the power cables were literally lying in the mud in the street, trailing in the door, and running to what looked like a birdnest of a power box.
Oh, and it wasn't infrequent that they were installing firewalls on government contracts WHERE THERE WAS NO SERVER TO PROTECT ("Yet!" said the local government functionary, optimistically).