The longest tunnel in Europe for testing Hyperloop technology opened on March 27 in the Netherlands.
Located in a decommissioned railway center near the city of Veendam in northern Netherlands, this 420-meter long white Y-shaped tunnel consists of 34 interconnected tubes, each approximately 2.5 meters wide, according to AFP. Nearly all of the air has been evacuated from the tunnel to reduce drag, and vehicles inside are propelled using magnets at speeds that can reach up to 1,000 km/h. Operators hope that one day, passengers will be able to travel from Amsterdam to Barcelona in just two hours.
Testing tunnel for Hyperloop technology in the Netherlands. (Photo: AFP).
The European Hyperloop Center is the only facility in the world equipped with a lane change system, a branching tunnel that diverges from the main track, allowing scientists to test what happens when a vehicle changes direction at high speeds. “You need to design it this way to create a network. The lane change is a branching part of the infrastructure, for example, one branch heading towards Paris, another leading to Berlin,” said center director Sascha Lamme. Lamme predicts that a Hyperloop tunnel network stretching 10,000 km will run across Europe by 2050.
Hardt Hyperloop, a company based in the Netherlands, plans to conduct preliminary vehicle tests in the coming weeks. The center is also open to companies developing any aspect of Hyperloop technology. However, scientists acknowledge that there is still a long way to go before the technology is fully ready, and it will be a while before passenger testing can take place. Full passenger service is expected to be available by 2030, possibly on a short route of about 5 km, for example, from the airport to the city center.
Billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, was the first to propose the idea of Hyperloop technology in a 2013 paper suggesting a “fifth mode of transportation” connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. According to Musk, the Hyperloop could reduce travel time between the two cities to about 30 minutes, compared to 6 hours by road or one hour by air. Since then, several companies worldwide have developed the concept with research projects costing millions of dollars, but Hyperloop technology has yet to become a reality.
British businessman Richard Branson once transported two passengers 500 meters across the Nevada desert in 2020, but his company Virgin Hyperloop, later rebranded as Hyperloop One, shut down at the end of last year. Nevertheless, research and testing continue globally. China has a testing facility that allows them to reach speeds of nearly 700 km/h.
Proponents argue that Hyperloop technology is pollution-free, silent, and harmonizes with both urban and rural landscapes. According to Marinus Van der Meijs, Chief Technology and Engineering Officer at Hardt Hyperloop, the energy consumption of Hyperloop trains is significantly lower than that of other transportation modes. It also requires less space to operate since the tubes can be easily installed underground or elevated.
Critics of the technology argue that Hyperloop is an unrealistic concept and express concerns about the passenger experience when traveling at nearly the speed of sound through narrow tubes.
