For a moment, let us give our imagination carte blanche to dream of a South Africa not shackled to an economy bought to her knees, a South Africa that kept it’s brains, businesses and relating tax dollars where they want to belong, at home. A South Africa where a natural answer to the question of something like Hyperloop would be ‘tell me more’, rather than the thoughts that I am sure most of you are thinking now. Furthermore, let’s dream that COVID-19 was contained in Wuhan. So what is Hyperloop? Spacex and Tesla (both deriving from South African-born Elon Musk) first used the term Hyperloop to describe their open-source vacuum-train concept in 2012. This concept focused on reducing as much friction and resistance on a vehicle as possible, combining the principles of magnetic levitation and propulsion with the optimal environment of little-to-no air resistance – a vacuum chamber. The chamber’s close-to-vacuum state is maintained by large air pumps removing air from within the chamber, mimicking conditions of an aircraft at 20,000 ft, allowing the vehicle to move at blistering speeds using relatively little energy. The vacuum chamber in question would be in the form of a single-direction tube connecting origin and destination nodes, like two cities. Inside the tube there would be a vehicle resembling the sleek fuselage of an aircraft suspended by the mechanism of magnetic levitation. Once an airtight seal is formed, the vehicle has the ability to travel to theoretical speeds of up to 1,300 kph using its maglev principles. To put this in perspective, the cruising speed of a Boeing 737-800 is 583 kilometers per hour. All this relying on a purely electrical energy source, which can be virtually emission-free using renewable sources. This infrastructure can be suspended above ground level, at ground level or placed at a subterranean level. It all sounds quite sci-fi, however, the technology is very real, and progressing as we speak. After Musk’s fateful announcement of his new idea of mass transit, companies across the globe have responded to the call to develop the technology, and the results are fantastic. Hardt Hyperloop of the Netherlands have developed Europe’s first test track offering a tantalizing proof-of-concept. Another win for Hardt is the development of their proprietary track-changing technology which promotes multiple origin-destination pairs across a network, similar to a railway network. Hardt are in the process of developing the European Hyperloop Center (EHC) in the Dutch province of Groningen, which aims to bring developers from across the world to advance the technology – and ensure a commonality across suppliers. The EHC will feature a 2.6 km test track, offering Europe the first opportunity to test the technology at high speeds. Hardt is just one company of a handful that are working tirelessly at becoming the World’s First commercially viable Hyperloop system, with peers including Richard Branson’s Virgin One and Musk’s own The Boring Company in the race. The market that Hyperloop will pack the most powerful punch will be at distances that are long enough to be cumbersome for High Speed Rail, yet short enough to be relatively inefficient for commercial flights. This is known as the Sweet Spot, which is pegged at between 500 to 1,750 kilometers in distance, which is a convenient sweet spot to have on the European Continent. Applying that sweet spot to South Africa, and we see a very promising opportunity. The red-eye between Cape Town and Johannesburg is an all-too-familiar drudgery that is increasingly part of the South African job description. Furthermore, with OR Tambo being South Africa’s regional and international hub, most flights out of the country will be from OR Tambo. This has resulted in the CPT-JHB segment often included in the top 10 busiest air routes globally, with pre-pandemic numbers averaging 521 commercial flights per week, that’s a staggering 27,092 commercial flights per year. Imagine a world where this travel was facilitated through renewable energy, rather than fossil fuels. Furthermore, the timing consideration includes the trip to the airport, mandatory security checks, ticketing, baggage declaration (if any), boarding, taxying before you are wheels-up. Either side of the journey, this makes the entire exercise a 5-hour process – going to Johannesburg for a meeting is quite a day. Considering the infrastructure footprint of a Hyperloop system being a lot smaller than an airlink, a terminus can be located within the confinements of a city, in the middle of a Central Business District meaning you exit the station and walk to your meeting – this alone is enough to invoke my ‘tell me more’ response. These convenience peg the Johannesburg - Cape Town Hyperloop commute to be an hour and a half, door to door. Let us awake from our dream of a Utopian South Africa. Our National Policy on Transport White Paper has made reference to the construction of a high-performance national standard-gauge rail (SGR) network replacing our Cape-Gauge infrastructure. This is in line with the African Union’s Railway Masterplan stating that any new rail infrastructure must be SGR infrastructure, leading to many African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco and our Gautrain to adopt this high tech, high speed platform. The rationale behind the expense is to offer an alternative to the inefficient and overused air travel. High speed rail, operating at optimal levels offers possibly 300 kph over long distance. High Speed SGR infrastructure costs around $26m/km, with the Californian High Speed Rail line costing $40m/km. Initial costing estimates from the Boring Company have put the construction of a Hyperloop network being $10.6m/km (this excludes the costs of purchasing land as well as the vehicles itself, as the SGR rail infrastructure would incur these costs as well). Granted, these are expected to be revised upwards as the technology progresses, with estimate coming in at 4x The Boring Company’s estimates, however, as with all technology, prices decrease over time. The operational and maintenance costs are drastically lower than rail infrastructure, as there are no critical moving parts, with electricity usage being a mere 38 Wh/passenger/km at 700kph. This can only leave a taste of possibility.
The current COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic fallout, combined with a decimated fiscus and the emergence from The Lost Decade means that South Africa’s infrastructure aspirations are all but shelved for the medium term, however, this allows time for further development of Hyperloop technology, maybe even accepted as a viable form of transport. Governments across the world are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a chance to relook at industries across the board, with the ‘Great Reset’ offering the opportunity to nudge certain industries in a different direction, perhaps this is a good time to table the Hyperloop discussion. When we do emerge from our tribulations, we may have the option of a breakfast meeting in Cape Town, lunch in Johannesburg and then back at the coast in time for a glass of the Cape’s delights to wash the sun down. |