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Virgin Hyperloop Project Selects West Virginia To House Certification Center, Test Site

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Virgin Hyperloop has selected West Virginia as the home for a $500 million certification center and test track for an innovative — but yet to be authorized by federal regulators — high-speed transportation system. The company, owned by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, announced Thursday that it will locate its new Hyperloop Certification Center on nearly 800 acres of land in the state.

The technology offers high-speed travel at speeds exceeding 600 miles per hour, using magnetic levitation. Passengers would travel in a fashion once only imagined in science fiction, in floating pods moving at speeds twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than high speed rail.

Travel time between Pittsburgh and Chicago would be reduced to 41 minutes. Trips from New York City to Washington D.C. would take only a half hour.

Construction on the test track and certification center — which will sit on a former coal mine stretching across Grant and Tucker counties — is expected to break ground in the coming year, with safety certifications expected by 2025 and commercial launch by 2030.

The land, owned by Western Pocahontas Properties and located near Mt. Storm, is being donated to the West Virginia University Foundation in partnership with Hyperloop. WVU and Marshall University will both be involved in developing the project.

A rendering of what the Hyperloop Certification Center is expected to look like upon completion.

Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson was joined virtually by John Chambers, a West Virginia native and former chairman of Cisco Systems, and U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to make the announcement.

The company picked West Virginia after reviewing applications from 17 other states hoping to host the testing hub. West Virginia has been vying for the project for nearly a year, with officials from Virgin Hyperloop visiting West Virginia University in November last year.

“You took a risk on our state, my home state,” Chambers said to Branson in a video.

Branson congratulated Chambers and other West Virginians as the announcement was made.

“You put more than your best foot forward to try to sort of build an already fantastic innovation center in your state. It could make a big difference in the future,” Branson said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will use the center and six-mile track to establish regulatory standards, while Virgin will run tests on the site. While the federal regulators have not yet authorized the Hyperloop, they recently laid out a framework for regulating such a means of travel.

“Hyperloop technology is one of the many new developments during this historic period of transportation,” Chao said in video. “This wave of innovation also includes drones, electric cars, autonomous vehicles, reusable rockets and quiet supersonic air travel.”

Top officials representing the state celebrated the announcement, including officials from government, business and higher education.

“For years, I have been saying that West Virginia is the best kept secret on the East Coast, and it’s true. Just look at this announcement and all it will bring to our state – investment, jobs, and tremendous growth,” Gov. Jim Justice said. “It’s a true honor and privilege to be selected as the site for the Hyperloop Certification Center and lead the nation in this next step forward for transportation.”

Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin took part in the virtual announcement.

“Virgin Hyperloop’s decision to make West Virginia the home of their Certification Center is a testament to our people and proves that when West Virginia competes, we win,” Joe Manchin said in a news release.

Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito also echoed excitement over the project. Capito also took part in the virtual announcement.

“Over the last several years, West Virginia’s economy has begun to diversify into new sectors,” Capito said. “The announcement that Virgin Hyperloop’s Certification Center and test track will be located right here in our state will help us continue this growth in the knowledge-based economy. I’m glad that Virgin Hyperloop views West Virginia as a state on the edge of the tech economy.”

Virgin Hyperloop also has a research and development test track near Las Vegas, Nevada.

WVU to Study Energy Pipeline Safety with U.S. Funding

West Virginia University will research new ideas and technologies to improve the safety of pipelines used to transport energy resources.

The research will be supported by a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s pipeline and hazardous materials safety administration.

The research comes as energy companies propose hundreds of miles of pipelines in Virginia and West Virginia, and elsewhere, to deliver natural gas drilled from Marcellus shale deposits.

The funding was announced by U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

U.S. DOT: Stronger Rail Cars Must Be in Place By 2020

After several accidents involving trains carrying crude oil in the past few years, including one in southern West Virginia, the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced new rules to make rail shipping safer.

The new rules apply to rail shipments of flammable and hazardous materials, like crude oil and ethanol.

They include phasing out some of the most widely used rail cars in the industry, like the CPC 1232s involved in the February derailment in Fayette County. That crash resulted in a massive fire that evacuated dozens of people from their homes.

Cars like CPC 1232s must be retrofitted by 2017 or phased out of use by 2020. Manufacturers are also required to begin producing new cars with thicker steel walls and thermal jackets to prevent punctures and fires.

USDOT Secreatary Anthony Foxx at the announcement of new rules for train cars Friday.

“One of the challenges with this rule, quite frankly, is that we’re dealing with prospective risk,” U.S. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said at the press conference releasing the strengthened regulations, “an industry that continues to grow, a use of transportation that continues to expand and the fact that we’ve got to think ahead of the problem.”

“So, this rule is recognizing that we’ve got a growing risk and its attempting to put some brackets around that risk and reduce the risk to the public.”

The rules also require trains carrying flammable liquids at more than 30 miles per hour be equipped with specialty breaks and those traveling through densely populated areas slow to 40 miles per hour.

Rail Car Company Urges DOT to Finalize New Safety Rules

One of the companies that builds the type of rail tank car involved in Monday’s train derailment in Fayette County is urging the U.S. Department of Transportation to finalize new rules for modernizing those cars.

The Greenbrier Companies based in Lake Oswego, Oregon is one of five manufacturers in North America that produce freight-rail tank cars used for transporting Class I hazardous material such as the Bakken crude oil that spilled in Fayette County. The company also retrofits older tank cars to make them safer.

Their work comes at a point when the federal-level Department of Transportation is developing regulations for phasing out older tank cars and setting increased safety standards for new ones.

Greg Saxton, Greenbrier’s chief engineer of manufacturing operations, says the new regulations are under review by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, or OMB. The deadline to finalize those rules was recently pushed back. Saxton says a change in regulations is long overdue and he has a message for the DOT:

“Get on with it. You know this rule was supposed to be out the first of this year. Then around the first of the year, they says we’re going to get it out on May 12. Well, this has been going on a lot longer than a couple years, as I say.”

He says the National Transportation Safety Board recognized there were problems with the older generation of rail tank cars more than 20 years ago.“I don’t know how this goes on forever, but we want it to stop.”

Greenbrier spokesman Jack Isselmann says the OMB’s job is to balance the cost of the new regulations with the benefits. He says that while the accidents in the U.S. have produced stunning pictures and video, they have caused relatively little damage in terms of loss of life and property. As a result, the potential costs associated with the regulations tend to be underestimated.

“The way that gets played out in a regulatory impact analysis is you’re going to make these safety improvements, but questions get raised about the benefit because we just haven’t seen accidents creating, you know, human health issues at the level that could happen or certainly at the level that happened at Quebec.”

He was referring to a rail disaster in Lac-Megantic Canada that killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings.

Isselmann says the public’s perception of rail safety is also an important factor in measuring the benefits of new regulations, but is overlooked in the process.

“It’s really incumbent upon all of us who work in the rail industry to reassure the public and the role of public confidence is critical here. That doesn’t get measured in a regulatory impact analysis.”

Isselmann says Greenbrier is committed to moving rail tank car safety forward. The company is building a new tank car that it says exceeds the current safety standards set by the DOT. The company calls it the Tank Car of the Future. It has a thicker shell, improved valves and heat shields that could mitigate some of the damage caused the derailments involving hazardous material.

W.Va. Gets Pipeline Safety Inspection Repayment

West Virginia’s pipeline safety program will receive nearly $453,000 from the federal government.

Congressman Nick Rahall announced the grant Monday from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. More than $47 million is being distributed in 46 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The safety administration reimburses state pipeline safety programs for a portion of their total expenses in a given year. The state programs employ more than 320 inspectors who are responsible for 80 percent of the nation’s intrastate and distribution pipelines.

In West Virginia, the state Public Service Commission handles pipeline inspection and enforcement of safety regulations.