With a trip in capsules, which slide in a vacuum inside tubes, a person can travel around 135 kilometers between the airport of Porto Alegre and Caxias do Sul, in less than 20 minutes, with an average ticket cost of R$ 115, in a system that can reach speeds of up to 850 km/hour.
The scenario, at first sight futuristic, is what Hyperloop Transportation Technologies promises. It was identified as viable by a study carried out by UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), after an agreement signed between a company, university and the government of Rio Grande do Sul in early 2021.
The analysis is a very early stage of the project, which does not yet have environmental licensing for works or investors defined to embrace construction and operation of the service — the company calculates that the stretch designed to connect Porto Alegre to Serra Gaúcha would cost US$7. 7 billion (about R$ 43 billion) in a 30-year scenario.
“We are at a time to expand the study. We are going to pre-approval with environmental licensing, then the project will indeed become an executive project to be invested by some player. The pre-feasibility study showed very reasonable numbers and aroused interest from some,” says Ricardo Penzin, director of the company in Latin America.
Without authorization to identify those interested, he says that two are from Brazil and one is from abroad. The capsules could carry between 28 and 50 passengers or loads of up to 15 tons.
“Hyperloop does not build and does not operate, it is a technology company. In fact, we are a great licensing agent, we are a great McDonald’s”, he explains.
The idea is based on the technology known as hyperloop, a concept launched from an article published by billionaire Elon Musk in 2013. It is currently being developed by at least eight companies and startups around the world — Hyperloop TT itself was created after publication.
Among them is also Virgin Hyperloop, the first company to test a manned trip with people in capsules, in November 2020. On the website, the company highlights that this could be the first mass transport modal launched in over a hundred years. HyperloopTT estimates it will have its first manned test in 2023.
Similar in size to a small, wingless commercial aircraft, the capsule moves through a magnetic levitation system, called an inductrack, in a low-pressure environment, which allows it to operate at high speed with almost zero friction. The system, according to the company, is compatible with aviation in terms of safety and sustainability.
The system can reach a speed of up to 1,200 km/h, but on the route being studied to Rio Grande do Sul, the maximum reached must be 850 km/h.
According to the UFRGS study, the route in the pilot project in Rio Grande do Sul would have four stations: Porto Alegre, Novo Hamburgo, Gramado and Caxias do Sul. at R$115 for the full route.
Bus tickets between the capital and Caxias today cost between R$40 and R$60, with travel time between two and three hours.
Christine Nodari, coordinator of the UFRGS study by Latran (Transport System Laboratory), explains that the calculation was based on estimated demand, fare values and responses from the public in a stated preference survey, common consultation in the transport area, that asks people how much they would be willing to pay for that service.
The company also emphasizes that the investment does not have any contribution of public money. The estimate is $1.5 billion in revenue for the first year of operations in 2026 — the majority, more than $1 billion, coming from non-operating income such as real estate investments.
“In order not to be subsidized, the business needs to appropriate this income. It is on this premise that it is self-sustainable”, says Nodari.
The estimate is that the investor will start to make a profit in about 15 years, which, according to Penzin, the company’s director, is “a blink of an eye” when talking about infrastructure.
As this is still a new modal, if implemented, it will also have to go through the regulation discussion, which the director says is already planned. He claims that the logic to be followed in terms of taxes is the same as for other transport services, such as buses, and that the company has a regulation manual, developed by the German Tüv Süd, which must be translated.
The relationship with the state government was one of the factors for choosing RS, according to the company. In early October, Governor Eduardo Leite (PSDB) visited the company’s testing headquarters in Toulouse, southern France, during a business trip in Europe, and called the system “absolutely disruptive”.
“The government is providing us with all information related to passenger and cargo transport in the state, all the necessary support for environmental licensing with the competent bodies, to regulate the system. We are forming a multidisciplinary committee in the state government so that everyone the members, from all the institutions necessary to evolve with the project, are up to date and speed up the project, all interested parties”, says Penzin.
Working with a ten-year window to get the system up and running, estimating time between permitting and construction, Penzin recognizes that policy changes can affect project progress. The company even reached an agreement with the Fernando Pimentel (PT) government, in Minas Gerais, for the construction of a research and development center in Contagem, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, which stopped with the entry of Romeu Zema (Novo) in the government.
For Roberto Andrés, urban planner and professor at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), the issue of regulation by the State, even though the project does not involve public money, is fundamental.
“In the case of the transport sector, it is configured as a natural monopoly. In other words: after the infrastructure has been built, the barrier to entry is very high. Therefore, it is practically impossible to have competition to regulate prices,” he says.
“Perhaps we are once again seeing rather pharaonic promises around bullet trains, air trains, technological fantasies,” he points out.
”We should have been, for a long time, retaking and implementing new railways, new trams, subways, electric buses, affordable, realistic, low-environment, reasonable-cost technologies that can be paid by users, who don’t see something VIP or elitist,” he says.
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