Indian Railways is frequently in the news, for both good and bad reasons. While its freight loading has logged the highest ever incremental year-on-year growth, it received brickbats for the recent accident of the Bikaner-Guwahati Express on January 13, which cost nine lives; the safety record of the Railways has improved in recent years, though.

The Railways is also in the news for its plans on hyperloop trains, hydrogen fuel-cell trains and lighter aluminium coaches — the most futuristic being hyperloop.

Hyperloop trains, like Maglev, use linear motors, with magnetised coils placed along the track with repelling magnetism induced in the train’s undercarriage so the train hovers on guide-ways in a magnetic field, powerful enough to lift, suspend and propel the train at speeds much faster than conventional trains, exploiting the absence of friction between rail and wheel.

Since air drag, which increases parabolically as speeds go up, limits the speed, hyperloop trains work in sealed vacuumed tubes. Aircraft-like speed becomes theoretically feasible.

Musk initiative

Hyperloop was mooted by Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, envisaging passenger-carrying pods travelling through vacuum tubes at 1,000 km/h or more. It was touted as power-autonomous with solar energy; after consuming tremendous energy to accelerate, the input reduces with momentum moving it at high speeds in the airless tube.

Musk offered the concept for investment and Richard Branson of Virgin joined with an upfront investment, and Virgin Hyperloop was born. Other companies like HyperloopTT (of the US), Hardt Hyperloop (the Netherland) and TransPod (Canada) are in the fray too.

Hyperloop is not operational anywhere in the world as yet but various companies have announced projects for routes in the US, Canada, West Asia, Ukraine, South Korea, etc. The only recorded proof of concept has been by Virgin Hyperloop, when, after many unmanned tests, it ran a prototype pod in a manned trial in November 2020 at 172 km/h in a 500 meters installation.

The company, meanwhile, continued testing with higher speeds, and feasibility of the concept was demonstrated as the pod travelled in the tube without grazing the tube walls with fast acceleration, reaching 150 km/h within six seconds.

The imponderables

Cost estimates of hyperloop vary from $20-40 million per km; the lower figure is comparable with that for high speed rail (HSR).

Transonic speeds, not proven but promising, would mean Chennai to Bengaluru in 30 minutes.

The running costs are lower than that of HSR, feasible due to lower energy input. But maintenance issues have not been assessed.

Safety is indeterminate at this stage.

The nature of regulatory mechanism is unclear, but  land acquisition issues for hyperloop may not be as complex as that for HSR.

Branson had signed a preliminary agreement for a Mumbai-Pune system with Maharashtra, but with a change of government the project got stalled. A committee nominated by NITI Aayog is assessing the techno-economic feasibility of hyperloop to recommend induction or development.

In November last, VK Saraswat, member of NITI Aayog, declared that India had the capability to design and build hyperloop, but since the R&D is time-consuming foreign companies should be allowed to demonstrate it here.

It is not clear which organisation can be tasked for R&D. DRDO? Will it not do better improving the design and manufacturing capability for defence equipment? As for the Railways, its track record in assimilating even proven technologies is poor; it can hardly handle a blue-sky project of this magnitude. The recent announcement by the Ministry of Railways that it was exploring the possibilities of acquiring hyperloop technology for a demonstrative project is, therefore, surprising.

India should take up this project through an SPV (special purpose vehicle) even though the exact cost of the project and clientele pattern are ambiguous today. We must ignore the developed world and China, as nearly all of them have HSR and hyperloop may not be so exciting for them.

In India’s case, the passenger railway system, hibernating since the 1970s, leapfrogging into something far beyond the current state of technology can bring great benefits. The passenger trains in US are closer to ours but they have their own automobile/airline lobbies. For once, India should plunge into something the world is still wary of investing in.

HSR has been debated about for decades and it was only because of the Prime Minister’s resolve that the first HSR is taking shape, albeit slowly. India can afford to initiate projects with half-proven credentials, evaluate them after completion and then take an informed decision. This is better than debating, ad nauseum, and reaching nowhere except accumulating a pile of feasibility reports.

It would be naive to think that companies will invest in a demonstrative system. We must leverage the might of our country to pitch in for a fully commercial, albeit medium-distance, project — say, Mumbai-Pune or Chennai-Bengaluru.

China did not make tremendous progress in HSR, and Maglev, by developing the technology; it engaged all the majors in the field with the bargaining chip of hitherto unseen volumes and fast execution. It soon acquired the capability to do things on its own and forged ahead, dumping the partners.

India, used to the transfer of technology regime, must realise its full potential through an imaginative contract.

The writer is retired General Manager, Indian Railways

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