ATPIO Member Discusses Colorado’s Proposed High Speed Transit HYPER LOOP project.

(credit CBS News)

The Colorado Department of Transportation is one of 35 semi-finalists in a global competition, and one of two semi-finalists in Colorado, for the new technology which would provide a safer and faster commute.

Shailen Bhatt, Executive Director of Colorado State Department of Transportation and a member of ATPIO, discusses Colorado’s proposed High Speed Transit HYPER LOOP project. This project is sort of “bullet train” that will move people and freight inside capsules at a speed of up to 700mph. The funds will come from both taxes as well as private funding from the Hyperloop One company. Bhatt said the pipeline is a suspended vacuum tube that will move people and things inside capsules at a speed of up to 700 mph.

“You can put people in them. You can put freight in them. There’s a lot of applications. So it’s kind of like the railroad- only a couple hundred years later, and it’s a new technology,” said Bhatt.

 

For more information visit the following link:

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/01/07/colorado-one-step-closer-to-supersonic-transit-with-hyperloop/

Member Profile: Dr. Chandra Bhat

Dr. Chandra R. Bhat is the Director of the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) and the Adnan Abou-Ayyash Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has a joint appointment between the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) and the Department of Economics. Bhat is a world-renowned expert in the area of transportation and urban policy design, with far reaching implications for public health, energy dependence, greenhouse gas emissions, and societal quality of life. Methodologically, he has been a pioneer in the formulation and use of statistical and econometric methods to analyze human choice behavior. His current research includes the social and environmental aspects of transportation, planning implications of connected and automated smart transportation systems (CASTS), and data science and predictive analytics. He is a recipient of many awards, including the 2017 Lifetime Achievement in Transportation Research and Education Award (Academic) from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). This award is to “identify individuals who have had a long history of significant and outstanding contribution to university transportation education and research resulting in a lasting contribution to transportation.” He also received the 2015 ASCE Frank Masters Award and the 2013 German Humboldt Award. In 2016, he was listed as the top ten transportation thought leaders in academia by CUTC and The Eno Foundation. He is a top-cited transportation engineering researcher.