But the dream – the whizzing of human and containerised cargo through low-pressure tubes on levitating pods at speeds of up to 1,200 kmh - was fast-tracked Tuesday when Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) inked a historic agreement with Hyperloop One to explore the world’s first hyperloop.
If the prototype system passes its Q1 2018 test at Hyperloop’s Nevada Desert testing facility and the UAE infrastructure can be financed, what is now a two hour bus ride between Dubai and Abu Dhabi will become a mere 12 minute journey by as soon as 2020. The passenger/cargo network could eventually spread out across the Middle East and beyond with Doha earmarked as the next likely connection.
But Hyperloop ceo Rob Lloyd admits containers are still likely to boldly go first where humans will eventually dare to sled.
As Seatrade Maritime News revealed in August, DP World signed an agreement with Hyperloop One to explore firing containers from its flagship Jebel Ali Port to an inland container depot (ICD) 29km away near Dubai’s new Al Maktoum International Airport.
The partnership matured to a fiscal commitment last month with the global terminal operator credited with spearheading $50m of new financing. The exact amount of DP World’s contribution to Hyperloop’s now $160m of funding was not disclosed but it was apparently significant enough for the terminal operator’s group chairman and ceo Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem to be appointed to the Hyperloop One’s board.
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Lloyd sees a seaborne future where containers from ever larger boxships are moved directly from ship to hyperloop tubes dockside and then dealt with inland. He likened it to when the new Airbus A380 came on line and airports were not equipped to handle the new capacity.
“Well the 18,000 teu ships are turning up and the port wasn’t set up to handle that capacity. So I think ports could become as they are in many places in Europe where they are at the end of a canal. I think ports could be more inland,” Lloyd told Seatrade Maritime News in Dubai.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5spdN3nU
“I think those places that create this very efficient infrastructure could become very significant logistics and distribution centres …the [Jebel Ali] free zone is already one of those, it’s a working model where airport, port and all the logistics are handled in this tax free environment.
“So quite frankly, I see ports as the beginning of the next high speed logistics infrastructure. We’ll still connect to the train system, we’ll still connect to the airports, everything about what we talked about today is about intermodal connections but with a new high speed connection from Hyperloop One.”
But what might be good for ports, logistics free zones and ultimately the environment – taking trucks off the road and trains off the track – may not be so exciting for feeder shipping if Hyperloop One technology becomes a widespread reality.
“If you look India, if you want to more cargo across India, you put it on a ship and go around by sea…it's crazy, right?” Lloyd asked.
“That country lacks infrastructure. But what if you were able to bring a Hyperloop system that begins at a port and takes that inland into India to its future manufacturing sites and [operates] in a high population density, building a system above the ground, as opposed to a train that is on the ground which makes noise, needs a large right of way. We could actually build right over the top of towns. That creates flexibility.”
Lloyd described Hyperloop One’s relationship with DP World as a “very sincere undertaking to do a study about the entire process, operations, container handling equipment, the capacity we’d require to really make a sea change improvement in the capacity of an already fully automated, very efficient port [at Jebel Ali].”
“If we can make that improvement here, imagine what we can do at other ports around the world where they haven’t invested as much as Jebel Ali has in terms of automation and efficiency.
“So actually our objective here is to study the problem, look at the joint engineering, combine their [DP World’s] expertise in logistics and container handling and our expertise on building something new, all electric. Imagine what we could do together. And if we could find something that works, then maybe we could build the first of those systems or solutions in Dubai from Jebel Ali to the new proposed ICD which is on the other side of Al Maktoum Airport.”
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