Europe opens test tunnel for 1,000 km/h super-speed train

Europe's longest tunnel to test Hyperloop technology opened on March 27 in the Netherlands.

Hyperloop train technology test tunnel in the Netherlands. Photo: AFP — Hyperloop train technology test tunnel in the Netherlands. Photo: *AFP*

Located at a decommissioned railway hub near the northern Dutch city of Veendam, the 420-meter-long, white Y-shaped tunnel consists of 34 interconnected tubes about 2.5 meters wide, according to AFP . Almost all the air is sucked out of the tunnel to reduce drag, and vehicles inside are propelled by magnets at speeds of up to 1,000 kilometers per hour. Operators hope that passengers will one day be able to travel from Amsterdam to Barcelona in two hours.

The European Hyperloop Center is the only facility in the world with a switch, a tunnel branching off the main track, allowing scientists to test what happens when vehicles change direction at high speed. "You need to design it like that to create a network. The switch is a branching part of the infrastructure, for example one branch goes to Paris, another one goes to Berlin," said center director Sascha Lamme. Lamme predicts a 10,000km network of Hyperloop tunnels will crisscross Europe by 2050.

Hardt Hyperloop 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 there is a long way to go before the technology is fully ready and passenger testing is still far off. Full passenger operations would be available by 2030, perhaps on short trips of around 5km, such as from an airport into a city.

Billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, first proposed the idea of Hyperloop technology in a 2013 paper proposing a “fifth mode of transport” between San Francisco and Los Angeles. According to Musk, the Hyperloop tube could shorten the travel time between the two cities to about 30 minutes compared to 6 hours by road or 1 hour by plane. Since then, several companies around the world have developed the idea with research projects costing millions of dollars, but Hyperloop technology has yet to become a reality.

British businessman Richard Branson flew two passengers 500 metres across the Nevada desert in 2020, but his Virgin Hyperloop company, later renamed Hyperloop One, closed late last year. But research and testing continues around the world. China has a test facility that can reach speeds of nearly 700 km/h.

Proponents say Hyperloop technology is pollution-free, noise-free, and blends in with both urban and rural environments. According to Marinus Van der Meijs, director of technology and engineering at Hardt Hyperloop, the energy consumption of Hyperloop as a means of transportation is much lower than other forms. It also requires less space to operate because the tubes can be easily installed underground or overhead.

Critics of the technology say the Hyperloop is an impractical idea and have expressed doubts about the experience of passengers hurtling through a narrow tube at near the speed of sound.

An Khang (According to AFP )

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