Hyperloop-Inspired Transit Company Picks Denver For New Test Track

Colorado will soon be home to a test facility for an experimental new high-speed transportation system. The company Arrivo has announced plans to build a test track in the Denver metro area.

Arrivo was created by a co-founder of Hyperloop, and like that company, its system uses magnetic levitation to move passengers at high speeds -- up to 200mph. But where Hyperloop aims to connect multiple cities across hundreds of miles, Arrivo is focused on shortening commutes within a given metro region.

"The residents, visitors and businesses of Denver will now have a new tool to be anywhere they want to be," says Arrivo co-founder Brogan BamBrogan.

In conjunction with the Colorado Department of Transportation, the company chose Denver as the site of  a new test track, which will run adjacent to the E-470 airport toll-road. Arrivo co-founder Brogan BamBrogan says the company also plans to conduct a feasibility study, looking at building an Arrivo network in the Denver area.

“Arrivo’s system is an additional layer of transportation designed to complement existing modes of transportation, connect with the airport, the metro, and even allow people to use it with their own car," explains BamBrogan in a press release. "The residents, visitors and businesses of Denver will now have a new tool to be anywhere they want to be.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwIU4UnJy2oArrivo promotional video

If all goes as planned, BamBrogan says the first commercial Arrivo route could be built in Denver by 2021, and a metro-wide system could be ready a few years later. 

In a press release, Governor John Hickenlooper hails Arrivo's decision, calling Colorado the "ideal location for the development of an Arrivo system.” Echoing the company's estimates, Hickenlooper says the test track and accompanying engineering and technology facility will add "up to 200 employees by 2020 and $10 to 15 million to our economy in 2018."

Arrivo's announcement comes on the heels of news that Hyperloop selected Colorado as one of ten worldwide finalists for a feasibility study. If completed, that project would connect cities from Pueblo, Colorado to Cheyenne, Wyoming using Hyperloop's high-speed "transit-tube" technology.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Colorado Springs is also being considered as a possible location for a hyperloop test track to be built by a Fort Collins-based company.