“What we’re seeing right now is what I saw in 1996,” said Mr. Lloyd, a former president of sales and development at Cisco. “We all had I.P. routers and everything was done a certain way. At Cisco, we said, ‘You can carry that over the Internet,’ and everyone said, ‘No.’ But those high-speed networks made the Internet possible.” Hyperloop, he said, “will do to the physical world what the Internet did to the digital one.” — Allison Arieff – nytimes.com

"Utilizing a passive levitation system will eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track, which makes this system the most suitable for the application and will keep construction costs low," [...]

"From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground." — theverge.com

[Hyperloop] has the swagger of Elon Musk rather than the stigma of a public bureaucracy. Second, it’s going to be, like, a billion times faster than HSR. [...]

And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. [...]

The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate HSR also complicate Hyperloop. — cp-dr.com

Elon Musk’s vision of the Hyperloop — a lightning-fast transportation system that would shuttle passengers at speeds nearing 700-mph using low pressure tubes and air compressors — is slowly coming to fruition in the Nevada desert.

In fact, the first ever Hyperloop tubes are neatly lined up in a ditch, waiting to be assembled and then later tested by Hyperloop Technologies at a site in North Las Vegas. — Inverse.com

A diverse alliance of communities — including Los Angeles County's third-largest city — is fighting California's long-planned bullet train route into the heart of the San Fernando Valley, saying it would bring irreparable harm... The coalition of communities is demanding that only routes that are predominantly underground should be considered.

The growing resistance is coming in part from urban, working-class neighborhoods that are portraying the surface route as an environmental injustice. — LA Times

A source close to [Hyperloop Technologies Inc.], who was not authorized speak publicly, confirmed the company has moved into the space, which was chosen in part so Hyperloop could be around artists and designers and other creative types in a space big enough to build large-scale hardware. [...]

Funded by a reported $8.5 million in seed money, the company has raised an additional $20 million of the estimated $80 million it will need to build a five-mile Hyperloop test track — latimes.com