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West Virginia Could Play A Role In Revolutionizing How We Travel

Updated on Dec. 18, 2020 at 8:40 a.m.

In October, Gov. Jim Justice and Virgin Hyperloop made a major announcement. West Virginia would be home to the first hyperloop certification center ever in the country.

“For years, I have been saying that West Virginia is the best kept secret on the East Coast, and it’s true,” Justice said in a press release. “Just look at this announcement and all it will bring to our state – investment, jobs and tremendous growth.”

A hyperloop is a new concept for transportation that can move people and goods through pods in a vacuum at roughly 600 mph. To put that into perspective, a hyperloop could theoretically enable travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago in about 40 minutes, or from New York City to Washington, D.C. in just 30.

The hyperloop concept was first proposed by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Virgin Hyperloop’s new certification center will include a six to seven-mile test tube in the Canaan Valley covering parts of Tucker and Grant counties. The center is expected to be completed in five or six years.

The project may create up to 10,000 construction jobs in that time. Once fully operational, it could employ anywhere from 150 to 200 people with engineering and high-technology backgrounds who either already live in West Virginia or want to move here. West Virginians are expected to be given priority in the hiring process, according to company officials.

Long term, there may be efforts to connect the test track in the Canaan Valley to Morgantown, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

Reporter Liz McCormick spoke with Mike Schneider, vice president of project development at Virgin Hyperloop, over Skype to learn more about the certification center, hyperloop technology and what this could mean for West Virginia and the world.

Transcript below. This conversation was edited for clarity.

MCCORMICK: In layman’s terms, what is a hyperloop?

SCHNEIDER: The concept of hyperloop is…it’s almost closer to aviation than it is to a train. It relies upon several technologies that exist but have never been actually combined to form an actual transportation mode. So, the centerpiece of hyperloop technology is a process called magnetic levitation. There’s a series of magnets along the track. And there’s a series of magnets inside the vehicle. And what makes the vehicle move is the pulling function of the magnets on the track, attracting the magnets on the vehicle. But if you put that system inside a tube, and then evacuate the air, so there is essentially no friction — because it’s the air friction, which is largely a deterrent to speed — but if you remove the friction component, then have it operate in effectively a vacuum, there’s almost no limitation to how fast those magnets can pull the vehicle without there being any air resistance. So, that’s what allows us to get up to 650 or 700 mph within the tube once evacuated of air.”

MCCORMICK: What will the certification center in the Canaan Valley be doing?

SCHNEIDER: The first step is evolving and proving the technology works at scale, meaning at speed. You probably have seen videos or reports of our recent successes with our initial, much, much shorter test track in the Nevada desert above Las Vegas, where we have actually achieved speeds in a very short tube, about a third of a mile. We achieved speeds of about 250 mph, which obviously is an acceleration that humans couldn’t withstand. But it has proved the concept of magnetic levitation in a vacuum tube. And then of course, just a couple of weeks ago, we did put two live people in a vehicle and did demonstrate that we can move people in a vehicle in a vacuum tube. We of course didn’t take it up to that speed; they achieved about 110 mph within the third of a mile. But we proved for the first time ever that people could ride in a hyperloop vehicle. So, the real purpose [of the certification center] is to have a facility where the technology can evolve, be tested, and be used with government observers and monitors to assure that all of the safety provisions are embedded, and that it is indeed safe and therefore can be certified. So, that’s the ultimate mission.

MCCORMICK: Why West Virginia?

SCHNEIDER: We chose West Virginia for a number of reasons. All of which are very, very relevant. We had four basic criteria. One, what were the corridors that were being offered? What were the alignments? Would they work for hyperloop as a test track with respect to the speed and alignment that we wanted to achieve? Secondly, what kind of funding and financing proposals were being proffered by the states to partner with us? What kind of incentives and packages were being put on the table for our review? Thirdly, what was the composition of the team? Who would we be working with? Who was leading the team? What organizations, public and private, would comprise those teams? And finally, what kind of overall support was there? Political, community, business? And frankly, West Virginia, scored exceptionally highly on all four of those. And in the end, it was not a difficult decision.

MCCORMICK: Was West Virginia’s workforce something you took into consideration when you were considering the location in Grant and Tucker counties?

SCHNEIDER: We know that the location is not in the middle of Los Angeles or Dallas or even Kansas City, but on the other hand, the commitment that [West Virginia] seems to be already making to both education, to job training, to employment growth, to a focus and a movement from an extraction economy, in many ways to a high technology economy. All of that was quite compelling to us. We knew there weren’t hundreds of thousands of workers living in Tucker and Grant counties at this point, but we also knew that this was an area that, over time, would be developing in a number of different ways, and we felt that the attraction of this high technology enterprise would be quite a stimulus for both local residents, those in school in West Virginia, and others from around the country who would move to West Virginia because of the opportunity to work on this project.

MCCORMICK: How do you envision a project of this magnitude affecting West Virginia’s image throughout the rest of the country?

SCHNEIDER: I think it’s best summed up by what Gov. Jim Justice told me when I first came to the state a year ago to take a look at the opportunity and to talk to our potential partners. Justice said in his characteristic style, ‘you will find out that we are the can-do state. If we say we’re going to make this happen and be your partner, we will.’ When you’ve had as many decades working with elected officials as I have, you take that with a bit of a grain of salt. But he was absolutely right. It was uncanny how enthusiastic everyone from the research community, the university community, the private sector, the state has been about this. And one of the things that we really like is the notion that we can be part of, I guess what I would call a transformative project, that everyone we’ve talked to in the state feels will do a great deal to help advance the economy and put the state on the map as an emerging, advanced technology center.

MCCORMICK: Looking nationwide, what do you think the impact will be from this certification center? On the country and the world as we explore how we are going to travel in the future?

SCHNEIDER: It’s time for two things to happen. We haven’t had a new mode of transportation in over 100 years. I think it’s time. Secondly, we want to take the status of our planet seriously, and we need to find new methods of utilizing less energy and having less impact on the environment. So, you know, while there are states in the country that I think might be viewed as having a greener ethic than one would think of West Virginia — I’m not sure that’s true. I think there’s a great desire to support a new direction, and I think having the technology development and deployment centered in West Virginia is going to be very positive for the state. Think about what Houston was before the Space Center was put there in the 1960s. Houston went from, kind of the home of the energy elite and the oil and gas industry to the space center capital of the world. And it didn’t take more than a decade or so for that to happen. I’m not sure that [hyperloop is] on that grand a scale, but it’s not a bad comparison.

Bypass Project In Eastern Panhandle To Ease Traffic Flow For Part Of Morgan County, Bolster Region’s Economy

A heavily trafficked road in the Eastern Panhandle is going to expand to help drivers and commuters get to their destinations faster and safer.

The Berkeley Springs Bypass project will stretch a little more than three miles from south of Winchester Grade Road to Martinsburg Road in Morgan County.

This new road will allow vehicles to bypass US Route 522, which sees a current traffic volume of 13,400 vehicles per day. Approximately 30 percent of those vehicles are trucks, according to Gov. Jim Justice, who made the announcement over the weekend in Berkeley Springs.

“This project will alleviate traffic congestion, enhance safety, and increase roadway capacity along the US 522 corridor,” Justice said. “There’s a lot of people putting in a lot of good licks to make these things happen.”

The project is part of the governor’s Roads to Prosperity initiative, which is in its third year. The bond program has seen $1 billion in major infrastructure improvement projects to-date.

The contract for the new bypass project in Morgan County was awarded to the Trumbull Corp. with a bid of $59.8 million.

The project will create a four-lane highway with a diamond interchange at the intersection of West Virginia Route 9. It includes construction of three bridges – one mainline bridge and one overpass bridge – and three new at-grade intersections.

“This project is important for human safety,” said West Virginia Sen. Charlie Trump, R-Morgan, at the event. “It’s going to be a great project for Morgan County, and for the safety of the people of West Virginia and people from all over the United States who drive this highway.”

Another Morgan County lawmaker, West Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Pro Tempore Daryl Cowles, R-Morgan, was also at the event. Cowles said the new bypass will do more than make a safer highway.

“It’s great to have a safe highway, it’s great to have the trucks out of downtown [Berkley Springs] for the tourism industry, but let’s not forget that this will change people’s lives,” Cowles said. “It will lift and raise the boats of home budgets and the prosperity of regular citizens everyday.”

The eastern edge of the Eastern Panhandle, consisting of Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson counties, has seen massive growth in population in the past decade. Berkeley County alone from 2010 to 2018 saw more than 1,500 new people each year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But population growth also means heavier traffic and more upkeep of roads.

In an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting last year, the state Division of Highways said to adequately fund the state’s road needs, West Virginia would need at least $2.4 billion every year, which is twice what the state sees on average annually for road needs.

According to the state DOH, West Virginia has the sixth-largest transportation system in the country based on the number of miles of road in the state. The state has 36,000 miles of roadway largely maintained by the Division of Highways.

Only 14,000 miles of roadway in West Virginia are eligible for federal dollars, according to the DOH. The rest must come from state tax dollars like tolls, DMV fees and gasoline taxes.

In an emailed statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Sandy Hamilton, the executive director of the development authority in Berkeley County – which is the county that neighbors Morgan and often feeds into Morgan’s traffic congestion – said the bypass project will benefit the entire Eastern Panhandle.

“The Berkeley Springs Bypass project benefits our entire region, and particularly from an economic development standpoint,” Hamilton said. “Infrastructure improvements of this magnitude enhance and encourage our ability to more effectively market our attributes.”

Justice Admits Travel Order May Be Unconstitutional

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Tuesday acknowledged that his directive to have police monitor roads and check in on travelers from coronavirus hotspots might be unconstitutional but he said it will continue for safety reasons.

Justice has issued an executive order mandating that people entering the state from places hard-hit by the virus must quarantine for two weeks or face an obstruction charge, saying authorities will watch roads and conduct home checks to make sure people comply.

“If they don’t quarantine themselves for 14 days, you know, I’m going to take a big time issue with it, and I may lose at the end of the day but I’m going to try to protect our people,” Justice, a Republican, said in response to a question about the legality of the directives.

The instruction triggered constitutional concerns almost immediately, with the leader of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia saying the order was overly broad and could violate constitutional rights on unreasonable searches and seizures.

“From a real practical standpoint it’s hard to imagine how they would enforce this order without violating the Fourth Amendment,” Joseph Cohen, executive director of the ACLU chapter, said in an interview.
The order, which went into effect Tuesday, follows similar moves by governors in Rhode Island, Texas, Florida, Maryland and South Carolina, at least one of which triggered constitutional concerns over whether it is legal to pull someone over on the basis of the origin state of his or her license plate.

Justice said it’s important for people entering the state from New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Connecticut, Italy or China to self-isolate and that he “wants to be really respectful of constitutional rights but people are dying all over this country right and left.”

Clay Marsh, a high-ranking West Virginia University health official tapped to lead the state’s coronavirus response, said the self-quarantine directive is in line with federal guidance but did not mention the order’s criminal and policing components.

The directive allows for people who are under the ordered quarantine to leave to get food or medical attention. It doesn’t apply to people traveling into West Virginia for work, health, emergency or essential business purposes.

At least 162 people in West Virginia have the virus, with a total of 4,143 residents have tested, state health officials said Tuesday. The state reported its first virus fatality on Sunday, with the death of an 88-year-old Marion County woman.

West Virginia was the last U.S. state to report a confirmed case, though Justice attributed that to a lack of testing. Testing remains limited, meaning most people now spreading the highly contagious virus may not know they have been infected, and state health officials have admitted their count lags behind the actual total as results pour in from counties around the state.

A statewide stay-home order that directed all nonessential businesses to close went into effect last week, intensifying previous moves by Justice, who has ordered the closure of bars, restaurants, casinos, gyms, health clubs, recreation centers, barbershops, nail salons and hair salons. Schools statewide are closed until at least April 20.

Justice on Tuesday also announced he was banning elective surgeries and closing private campgrounds to new arrivals from people who aren’t from West Virginia, which he said was intended to further deter visitors.

In addition, the governor quietly signed an executive order eliminating a rule requiring that medical professionals conduct an in-person screening before refilling an opioid prescription. Justice did not mention the order at his news conference. It says that the state boards of nursing and medicine identified the rule as burdensome during the ongoing state of emergency.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks, and the overwhelming majority of people recover. But severe cases can need respirators to survive, and with infections spreading exponentially, hospitals across the country are either bracing for a coming wave of patients, or already struggling to keep up.

Exploding Sunroofs Unexpected Holiday Driving Danger

A few weeks ago, my panoramic sunroof seemingly spontaneously cracked into thousands of pieces while I was driving 70 miles an hour on I-26 W, more than six hours away from home.

“I mean it’s still like together,” I told my mom in a voicemail, “but a thousand pieces. I think the only reason it’s still together is because of the tape you and I put up a while ago.”

My mom and I had put tint tape on the inner side of the roof a couple years ago. As I later learned, the manufacturer had also put tinted tape on the glass and the combination was likely helping the roof stay intact.

In many ways, I was super lucky. The glass didn’t fall on me and it happened to break a couple miles from a glass repair shop that crash-wrapped my roof so I could get home. But it was pretty scary, and the rest of the drive I kept wondering if the roof would fall in on me, if the rain would get in while I drove, why my roof was now making weird sounds, etc.

It turns out that my roof is not an anomaly.

A cell phone picture of the top of Kara’s sunroof after she had pulled off the interstate.

“Every year we ask people what are their primary problems they’re having with their vehicles and we were actually surprised to find out that the biggest problem they’re having with their car is that their sunroof spontaneously exploded,” said Jeff Plungis, lead automotive investigative reporter at Consumer Reports. In October, Plungis co-authored a story on exploding sunroofs. My mom had sent me that story after it was published as an FYI. So, ironically, when it happened, I knew exactly what it was.

“This is happening more frequently than you might think. So we found when we went back into the NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s] database we found more than 800 instances – or 859 to be exact – and we also noticed a trend. That a bulk of the instances – about 71 percent of them – had occurred since 2011.”

The view of Kara’s sunroof after it broke from the inside of her car.

The report found instances in every month of the year in every part of the country on highways, country roads, and even while parked in driveways.

Experts don’t agree on what is causing the explosions, but Joe Milligan, the senior lead technician at Safelite AutoGlass in Charleston, says it doesn’t happen on its own.

“A lot of glass has to be fractured by some type of hit, whether it be rocks, wood, other cars, people hitting it in a certain spot – [all this makes it weaker. But anytime you’re doing glass, it could break at any point.”

I pointed out that I wasn’t near an underpass or another vehicle on a completely clear day when mine broke.

“It might not have been that day,’ Milligan said. “You could have picked up a rock or something hit it a week in advance and fractured it and finally [it] just took that day, the right bump, the right temperature, the right road –anything like that – and finally [it] let itself loose.”

Rows of windshields and sunroofs at Safelite’s warehouse in Charleston.

Milligan said he’s putting more sunroofs on than he used to –mainly because more new cars have sunroofs and they get are getting bigger.

Although my glass broke and scared me pretty badly – it sounded like a gun went off in the car – it didn’t fall. That’s not always the case.

“Sometimes people experience a shower of glass, you know, so you’ve got glass in your hair,” said Plungis. “You’re trying to maintain control of the vehicle in this very shocking unexpected situation. And even though there haven’t been fatalities, there have been minor injuries, and we just think it is an inherently dangerous situation.”

Ok, so how do you protect yourself from an exploding sunroof? Basically, there’s no way to know if it will happen to you. A quick search of NHTSA’s database found complaints against Volkswagens, Hyundais, Fords, Nissans, Kias, Toyotas… You get the picture. Short of selling your car and jumping on the New Year’s sale events, do keep your sunroof protector closed. That way, if the glass breaks, at least it won’t break on you.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Marshall Health, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

Television Premiere: "Traveling the Mountain Music Trail"

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is proud to announce the premiere broadcast of “Traveling the Mountain Music Trail,” a 30 minute travelogue guiding viewers through the five-county region of eastern West Virginia that makes up the “Mountain Music Trail.”

Watch “Traveling the Mountain Music Trail” on Sunday, April 3 at 7p.m. and again on Friday, April 15 at 10:30p.m.

The culmination of a year-long collaboration with “Wild, Wonderful West Virginia” and producers from WVPB and “Mountain Stage,” the project also includes an interactive digital map that showcases vignettes, musicians, venues and other points of interest specific to Monroe, Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Randolph and Tucker counties.

Click here to find your WVPB channel.

“We are thrilled to come together with Mountain Stage and local partners to showcase the Mountain Music Trail,” Commissioner of Tourism Amy Shuler Goodwin said. “Music is a significant part of West Virginia’s cultural identity and this program will encourage folks to not only explore the Mountain Music Trail, but other destinations along Route 219 as well.”

The Mountain Music Trail consists of venues throughout five counties in eastern West Virginia that came together to promote and present the traditional music, dance, and folkways of the Allegheny Mountain region. Several months ago, the West Virginia Public Broadcasting production team took to the road to capture the essence of the trail which runs through Tucker, Randolph, Pocahontas, Greenbrier and Monroe counties as part of a partnership between Wild, Wonderful West Virginia and Mountain Stage, a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting to promote the Mountain Music Trail.

The Hans Creek String Band performs at a Monroe County Ruritan Picnic.

For more:

Follow the Mountain Music Trail Tumblr, on Twitter, and Facebook.

Follow Mountain Stage on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Follow Wild, Wonderful West Virginia on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

W.Va. Agency Orders More Travel Guides to Meet Demand

The West Virginia Division of Tourism has ordered another 50,000 copies of the state travel guide from a vendor to keep up with demand.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that more than 8,000 people requested a copy of the “Wild Wonderful West Virginia” travel guide in July alone.

The Division of Tourism has distributed about 450,000 travel guides this year. The guides also are available at interstate welcome centers.

Tourism Commissioner Amy Goodwin says the division plans to improve the content and appearance of next year’s guide.