Chicago to O’Hare: hyperloop vs. traditional rail transit

[Adlington]

It'll be interesting to see the result....

Two teams have been chosen to compete for work to design, build, finance and operate Chicago's O'Hare Express operating system. The project is intended to deliver express service from downtown Chicago to O'Hare International Airport (ORD) in 20 minutes or less, cutting current travel times along that route by more than half.

[Elon Musk's] The Boring Company and O'Hare Xpress LLC, which consists of Meridiam, Antarctica Capital, JLC Infrastructure, Mott MacDonald and First Transit, are two of the four groups that responded to a Request for Qualifications (RFQ).

The [proposal] calls for a downtown station, an ORD station and maintenance facilities. Travel corridors may be built above or below ground, officials said.

Travel times of 20 minutes or less with service frequency occurring at least every 15 minutes for most of the day are two major goals of the projected service. The city also seeks premium service fares that remain below than the cost of current taxi and rideshare services.

The O'Hare Express Service be funded only by project-specific revenues such as fares and advertising, and that they be entirely funded by the developer.

Source

 

[takno]

Apart from the headline I can't see any suggestion that The Boring Company are planning on doing it as a hyperloop. It's a pretty short distance, so there wouldn't be any particular benefit to it.

 

[Lucan]

Apart from the headline I can't see any suggestion that The Boring Company are planning on doing it as a hyperloop.

Well, the linked article does say "Musk’s loop concept". But highly unlikely; as there has yet to be any significant prototype for Hyperloop. I cannot see Chicago wanting a needed transport link to be used as one; a prototype is more likely to be in a desert somewhere for the amusement of some wealthy sheikh. Nor has the original Boring idea of car-carrying sleds in tunnels been demonstrated as practicable, even on paper.

But tunnels are nothing new, and for about 18 miles (I understand) a conventional underground railway would be fine; but the trouble is that Americans freak out at the idea of railways, especially with themselves on board, so these public transport schemes have to be promoted under some other label, no matter how crackpot the label is, in order to get political and financial backing.

 

[edwin_m]

"Musk’s loop concept"

That may be a play on the downtown district of Chicago being known as the Loop, due to it being within the inner circle where all the elevated transit routes meet up.