Can you imagine commuting from Boulder to Firestone in about 10 minutes via magnetic levitation monorail? If Sustainable Systems of Colorado CEO R. Paul Williamson has his way, that notion will soon become a reality. Williamson is holding a public information session regarding his plan to build a SkyTran monorail along Colo. 119 and the Diagonal Highway, then south on Foothills Parkway before ending at the Table Mesa Park-and-Ride in Boulder.
Headquartered at the NASA Research Park in Mountain View, California, SkyTran created a unique, high-tech transportation system that sends two-person capsules across long distances in short amounts of time by means of a computer-controlled overhead magnetic levitation system.
If completed, the monorail would make the trip between Boulder and Firestone take about 10 minutes as the capsules travel at speeds of 150 mph. The materials needed to construct the monorail has a small footprint on the ground, uses about 200 watts of solar power per mile and the infrastructure costs just one-tenth of what traditional light rail would cost.
This isn’t the first time Colorado has had talks of implementing a superfast train in order to alleviate the headache of traffic congestion. Several proposed routes for the Hyperloop train pass through Denver and the surrounding cities. The Hyperloop train would reach speeds of 700 miles per hour, shortening the Denver-to-Vail commute to only 8.4 minutes, instead of 2 hours and 36 minutes by car.
Given the recent sprawl of technology and startup activity happening not only in Denver and its surrounding suburbs, but also all the way out to Durango and the rural communities that reside in western Colorado, the need for hyperspeed travel has never been more prominent. A superfast train that shortens commutes for tech workers opens the doors for increased innovation, collaboration and more job opportunities.
