Image by Elon Musk, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

When Japan pioneered high-speed trains, the new form of intercity transport was successful and profitable immediately. Why? Japan’s Shinkansen opened 10 days before the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, guaranteeing plenty of users and global publicity. Linking Paris and London via train service through the Channel Tunnel proved successful in 1995. With high-speed rail now common in Europe and other areas of the globe, is the world ready for Hyperloop? Will the 2020 Olympics, in Tokyo once again, debut transport innovations, perhaps patterned on Elon Musk’s 2013 proposal for passenger travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes? http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.