|23 January 2017|
South Korea
South Korea wants to revolutionise public transportation by advancing technology which would allow trains to run at 1000km per hour.
The Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) revealed earlier this month it plans to collaborate with key stakeholders in the country to develop the near-supersonic train service, which would slash the journey time between Seoul and Busan to 30 minutes – it is currently over five hours by train and just under an hour by plane.
South Korea is the latest country seeking to take advantage of hyper-tube technology – first proposed by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk – which is designed to propel people and things through a levitated pod travelling in a low-pressure tube.
A KRRI spokesperson told the Korea Times: “We hope to create an ultra-fast train, which will travel inside a state-of-the-art low-pressure tube at lighting speeds, in the not-too-distant future. To that end, we will cooperate with associated institutes as well as Hanyang University to check the viability of various related technologies called the hyper-tube format over the next three years.”
