Remember to ask the hard questions when presented with silver bullets.
Angie Schmitt expects the excitement and fawning support for the Hyperloop to over promise and under deliver.
The fawning most recently also meant funding, when "[c]ivic leaders in Northeast Ohio, including Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Congressional reps Marcy Kaptur and Tim Ryan, were on hand for the signing of a $1.2 million grant, funded in part with $200,000 from the Cleveland Foundation, that kicks off a six-month study of Chicago to Cleveland Hyperloop service."
Yet Schmitt sees more reasons to be skeptical than speculative:
Right now, the Hyperloop consists of a short test track in the Nevada desert. It has never carried a human any distance. Would it be a comfortable way for people to travel? Would it carry enough passengers to be useful for the public? Could the infrastructure be constructed at a competitive cost? No one knows.
Schmitt offers a few more questions for people to ask before they get to excited about promises of futuristic mobility comes riding into town with a catchy pitch and their hand open.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research