Hyperloop - For Cities or Suburbia?

Professor Berger recently joined Hyperloop’s Vision for America Conference in Washington D.C. with other panelists including former Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx; KPMG Head of Infrastructure Andy Garbutt; Vice President of Corporate Communications and Government Affairs of Amtrak, Caroline Decker; and former BNSF Railway Vice President of Network Strategy Dean Wise.

In Linda Poon's, Should the Hyperloop Be for Cities or Suburbia?, she discusses the urban implications of siting Hyperloop with Professor Berger.

"..But while much of the focus has been on the safety and reliability of the technology—and rightly so—Alan Berger, a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at MIT, has been thinking about where and how to design the routes so it benefits the most people.

His argument: build it around the cities.

Berger was among the panelists speaking at the event, and also one of the judges reviewing the 11 proposals the day before. His role was to help the “technology minds” understand the urban planning issues around mobility in the U.S. “The Hyperloop shouldn’t go into the city,” he says. “It should be trying to capture, in a concentric city model, all the peripheral movement.” Most people, he adds, move from one periphery area to another instead of traveling into the city, anyway. In that sense, the system should work for people living in suburban or ex-urban areas, which he says make up some 70 percent of the American population."

Full article here.