In October 2020, Virgin Hyperloop announced that it will build its Hyperloop Certification Center on nearly 800 acres of land in West Virginia’s Tucker and Grant counties. The innovative facility will be used to test a new high-speed transportation form that can transport passengers and cargo at airline speeds at a fraction of the cost of air travel using pressurized pods that move through a vacuum tube at speeds exceeding 600-miles-per-hour. This groundbreaking technology could one day enable travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago in 41 minutes or New York City to Washington, D.C. in only 30 minutes, drastically changing the way people and goods are transported in the United States.
How and why did Virgin Hyperloop, a company that is paving the way for an entirely new industry, say #YesWV? The answer is simple – West Virginia’s people, the opportunities that exist in this beautiful state, and the collaboration and cooperation of state leadership.
When Virgin Hyperloop started their search for a Certification Center location, the West Virginia Development Office team got to work immediately. Talks between the Development Office and Virgin Hyperloop advanced quickly. The first meeting took place in October 2019, following a letter of interest passed on by Gov. Jim Justice. As the Development Office worked diligently to identify sites and plan the company’s initial visit to the state, Virgin Hyperloop, which will fall under a newly emerging group of transportation technologies within the United States, informed the Development Office that West Virginia had made the first cut, from an initial group of 21 other states.
Check out the entire story here from the West Virginia Development Office