Hyperloop could very well be the future of transportation

Not too far in the near future, Elon Musk and his open source patents will have changed the way we as human beings have travelled for a really, really long time. While a majority of that “really long time” (read: centuries) may have included riding on horseback or walking to get somewhere, in the past century this would mainly consist of three modes of transport land, air and sea. We have kind of figured things out and commercialisation along with a tight economy usually paves the way. Travelling by sea using ships is meant more for luxury (cruise liners) than to actually get somewhere. Ships are used more for transportation of goods, natural resources like oil, more than anything else, because well, there is no other means to transport such heavy goods (for now). But the deal with land and air travel, may soon see a sea change. This is simply because the roads have traffic and there’s nobody to stop or monitor the growing number of cars hitting the roads on a daily basis. It’s the same problem with public transportation systems. There’s the growing population and everyone basically needs to gets somewhere, in the most efficient way possible. And keeping this in mind, Hyperloop and autonomous cars could change things for the better because they do have plenty of benefits, provided the right infrastructure is in place. Professor Vivek Wadhwa clearly laid down the scenario in an article penned down in the Washington Post after his conversation with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies’ (HTT) chief executive, Dirk Ahlborn. We step into an autonomous car, speed to the nearest Hyperloop station, get on board and zip across the country in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days. Something that is clearly not as easy to pull off even with domestic air travel, thanks to the always included, delays that does not include wait times, security checks, the traffic to the airport and even the traffic from the airport your land in, till your destination. It’s all of these inconsistencies that make a solution that Hyperloop offers an efficient one. This is why even a country like India, does not shy away from getting into such elaborate plans for transportation. With the open source patents in place, HTT and Hyperloop One are gunning for contracts around the globe and it happens to come at the right time, since traditional modes of public transport have started to show signs of wear and tear. A simple and clear example mentioned by Wadhwa is the state of California, USA has been debating for long. The move centres around whether or not the state should invest $64 billion in a rail-based transportation system that aims to move 20-24 million passengers a year from Los Angeles to San Francisco and is said to be completed by 2030. Self-driving cars could become the norm by then, in an effort to make road accidents a thing of the past, making hard to maintain rail networks an overburdened mess.