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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