A US company is considering building a lightning-fast ‘hyperloop’ train in Indonesia that would help alleviate traffic in Jakarta, one of the world’s most congested cities.
The hyperloop train – dreamed up by Tesla founder and billionaire Elon Musk – would use magnets to propel a train through a tube at up to roughly 1,200 km/h.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced on Wednesday that it was in talks with private investors and would consider launching a feasibility study to potentially build a hyperloop train in Indonesia.
The $2.5m study would assess whether a hyperloop could work in Jakarta, with possible plans to expand to Java and Sumatra.
“Indonesia, and Jakarta in particular, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world,” HTT chairman Bibop Gresta told CNBC.
“With traffic and congestion being such a big issue there, the Hyperloop will be a welcome transformation for the region.”
HTT believes that the technology would shorten a trip from Jakarta to Yogyakarta from 10 hours in a car to just 25 minutes with the hyperloop train.
Jakarta’s traffic has been called the worst in the world, with four-hour trips not uncommon for some of the 3.5 million people that commute into the city every day.
