Hyperloop Revolutionising The Future Of Transportation

[Music]

our ability to move

will dictate the future of the human

race in fact

it may even save the world

now you may be thinking hey jay that’s a

bit much you’ve just been out here for a

few seconds

but i’m going to tell you after decades

working in transportation

that what i’m saying to you is the truth

you know it’s a funny thing the word

transportation has become a dirty word

in fact i’ll let you in on a little

secret

the handbook for the ted talks

says you should avoid talking about

transportation

because it bores people to death

i’m going to take my chances but let me

step back for a little bit

to the beginning of this story when i

was a little kid

i used to ride the new york subway with

my father

and we would get into the train we’d go

to the very front of the train in those

days there used to be a window at the

very front of the train

my dad would lift me up and i would peer

out that window

into the tunnel and i would pretend

that i was driving that train

now 50 years later i was back in new

york

and i wasn’t driving the train but i was

the head of the entire new york transit

system

this was my dream job

it’s your hometown this is what you want

to do

so to my surprise

what i quickly found out was that

everyone

and by everyone i mean 8 million people

in the city of new york

everyone thought that what we were doing

wasn’t good enough now a few years after

that

i had left new york i went to hong kong

to run the mtr in hong kong

this is truly one of the world’s great

metro systems it’s clean it’s fast it’s

convenient it’s on time

it’s always on time 99.9

on time one out of every 1000 trains

would be late

and i thought that was incredible right

and little did i know that the people in

hong kong fought exactly the same thing

as the people in new york

not good enough

so what’s going on here i think i have

figured it out

it turns out that the word

transportation

isn’t the dirty word the dirty word is

incrementalism when you’re hired to run

the

the new york mta or the hong kong mtr

you’re bound by the boundaries of a

system that was

designed and built decades ago in the

case in new york

that’s a hundred and twenty years ago

and in that type of system almost by

definition

incremental improvement is the best that

you can do

i didn’t think that that was enough i

wanted to do something bigger i wanted

to do something more

and that’s why i joined virgin hyperloop

one

as ceo now hyperloop

is the first new mass transit system

that we’ve had

in over a hundred years

it’s going to travel at speeds

approaching 1 000

kilometers an hour it’s going to connect

cities in minutes yes go

[Applause]

it’s going to connect cities and minutes

and it’s going to do it all without

any direct emissions and it’s really

modern

right it uses an advanced magnetic

levitation system

and that ride will be so smooth that

you’ll be able to hold a cup of coffee

at a thousand kilometers an hour

and forget about train schedules the

tyranny of train schedules

this is a turn up and go system it will

be there when you want to go

so this is starting from scratch this is

starting with a clean

sheet of paper and it’s challenging

i think it’s probably the most

challenging thing that i’ve done in my

career

but i think it may also be the most

important

and here’s why

21st century problems deserve

21st century solutions by

2050 we know that two-thirds of the

world’s population will be living in

cities can we even imagine

what that means for congestion in mumbai

also told by scientists that

we must cut our carbon footprint in half

over the next decade or our planet will

face

irreversible and catastrophic damage

think about that statement it’s

incredible if we don’t take quick

decisive and effective action

our planet will suffer catastrophic and

irreversible damage now these are 21st

century problems

and it turns out that incrementalism

isn’t the way to be able to deal with it

we are sliding backward despite the

improvements in electric car

manufacturing

despite the investments that we’re

making in public transit system

despite the investments in new forms of

mobility

we need to be doing more

we need a giant leap

but you might ask what does a giant leap

actually look like so

i’ve been doing a lot of work and travel

now in the middle east

and i’ll give you a sense of what it

looks like there

in the middle east a giant leap

is 45 million people a year

riding on a transit system completely

off of the grid

powered only by solar energy

it’s a system that can be built for less

cost than high-speed rail

and yet will run three times as fast

it will give us the ability to run as

fast as a plane

with one-tenth the amount of energy

so let’s start imagining what it means

what does it mean

when you can connect uh cities like

their metro stops

what does it mean when you can connect

airports and avoid

building another runway imagine

the businesses that you would build

imagine how it would transform your

cities

imagine what it would mean for your

family

it’s literally a whole new world at your

fingertips

and that’s why i’m really excited also

about a project that we’re doing right

here

hyperloop from mumbai to pune

[Applause]

okay let me ask you a question

how far is it from mumbai to pune

now i’ve been going around asking this

question a lot

and i get pretty consistent answers

four hours some people say three and a

half hours if you’re lucky

but they always pretty much tell me not

to count on being lucky

you know the answers are consistent

but they’re all wrong the right answer

to that question

is kilometers

it doesn’t make any sense to translate

distance to time

on the basis of the congested roadways

that we have today

there’s no reason to do that

mumbai and pune will always be 120

kilometers apart that doesn’t change

but with hyperloop that journey becomes

28 minutes

[Applause]

28 minutes now that’s a great leap

now we can reimagine the connection

between these two cities

now we can think about twice as many

people moving between the cities as are

moving today

and at the same time being able to cut

our carbon emissions

by 150 000 tons a year

and look i’m a transportation geek you

know that i get excited about that

but i’ll also tell you that some people

think that i’m insane

so i was recently on cnn i was being

interviewed by richard quest

and he turned to me and he starts

talking about the transit challenges i

faced in my career new york

london hong kong and i thought he was

going to turn to me and congratulate me

on the things that i had done

but no he asked me a question he said

are you a masochist

no i’m not

i’m an optimist and i’m determined

i really believe that we’re in a

position where we can make this happen

and i’m excited by the way that india is

in the forefront

of what is happening with this right now

[Applause]

i’m not going to tell you that it’s easy

it takes time it takes money

it takes innovation all those things are

hard

but the returns are massive and we only

need to look at our history to really

really understand that

when trains were invented trips that

took days turned into hours when planes

were invented

trips that took months turned into days

we know what happened with those

inventions and the transformation that

was unleashed

as a result of that and when we have

hyperloop

trips that take hours will be turned

into

minutes and that transformation will

happen

again

[Applause]

so let me close by telling you something

that

happened to me recently that made me

very very happy

i welcomed my first grandchild into the

world

and i was holding this boy for the very

first time

and my son looked at me and he said hey

dad

do you think he’ll be riding hyperloop

by the time he’s a teenager

i paused and i said yes

he will and you can imagine

that that question reminded me of riding

the train with my father when i was a

little boy

you know my whole career has been in

transportation

but it’s not really about planes or

trains or buses or

hyperloops it’s really about people

and when i think about that little boy

he’s barely a month old

i have a faith that he will inherit a

world

better than we found it and i know

[Applause]

i know that starts

with a giant leap thank you very much

[Applause]

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