The hyperloop is coming to Denver — and not with the help of Richard Branson or Elon Musk.
Instead, it’s through the leadership of Brogan BamBrogan (yes, that’s his legal name), who is spearheading another hyperloop company separate from Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One or Musk’s Boring Company. BamBrogan’s startup is called Arrivo, and it just partnered with the Colorado Department of Transportation and one of the state’s major highways, E-470, to bring its version of the high-speed transit system to the region.
“What we’re focused on is connecting regions to themselves,” BamBrogan told Coins2Day over the phone Tuesday. It’s the main doctrine of Arrivo’s take on the hyperloop: a “super regional network” that focus on cities and their surrounding suburbs rather than long-distance journeys championed by companies like Virgin Hyperloop One, still the only hyperloop startup to build an operational test track.
Arrivo, which is based in Los Angeles, says construction for the hyperloop will start in 2019, with the first commercial leg of its system from the Denver International Airport to the Aurora Commerce Center completed as early as 2021. The leg is the first step to building the company’s “Denver Super Urban Network,” which Arrivo says will dwindle rush hour travel time from the Denver Airport to Downtown Denver from 55 minutes to just nine.
The emphasis on regional networks rather than a nationwide system is why Arrivo is promising speeds of only 200 mph instead of the near-700 mph pods Virgin Hyperloop One pledges to create. “We asked, ‘Where does engineering meet the market?'” BamBrogan explained. “We ended up with this super regional network solution. We thought, how do you build cities as they grow?”
That’s why Arrivo chose Denver as the location of its first system, BamBrogan said. The city added just over 13,000 people in the year that ended July 1, the U.S. Census Bureau reported, according to the Denver Post. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper echoed that sentiment in a statement announcing the Arrivo partnership: “Colorado’s rapidly growing population and booming economy makes for the ideal location for the development of an Arrivo system.”
And there’s another key distinction besides speed between Arrivo and other proposed hyperloop systems: flexibility. Virgin Hyperloop One utilizes aerodynamic pods, not unlike a bullet train. The Boring Company wants to put cars on sleds. Arrivo says it will more or less offer both.
BamBrogan broke down the three main types of transportation capable on the proposed Arrivo network. One will allow riders to drive their cars onto sleds and be shuttled down autonomous lanes. The other is specifically intended for freight transport. And the last is intended to operate like a “super metro.”
“Instead of a 400 person train leaving every 10 minutes, we could do a 20 person pod that sends every second,” BamBrogan said.
All in all, he said, the system could bump the average freeway load from “2,000 and 3,500 vehicles per hour to 20,000 vehicles per hour.”
“It will increase mobility and eliminate traffic,” BamBrogan added.
But first, Arrivo has to test the feasibility of these plans. Only Virgin Hyperloop One has started to physically test its system, with its pods over the summer reaching nearly 200 mph in a near-vacuum tube. The Colorado Department of Transportation will soon begin its own feasibility test ahead of the planned 2019 construction.
BamBrogan is confident of Arrivo’s impending arrival. “Residents, visitors, and businesses of Denver will soon have the mobility and choice to be anywhere they need, or want, to be,” he said in a statement.
