Hyperloop study fails to gain support from Met Council committee

A $2 million proposal pitched by a group of civic leaders to study a 15-minute hyperloop vacuum tunnel between the Twin Cities and Rochester has failed to win the support of a key Metropolitan Council committee.

Donna Koren, the proposal’s project lead for Global Wellness Connections,, said the Edina-based nonprofit group was disappointed its funding proposal failed to gain traction with the regional planning body.

The idea involves whisking passengers at 700 mph from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to Rochester, home of Mayo Clinic. But to date there are no hyperloops in use as a form of public transportation anywhere in the world, despite being hyped a decade ago by entrepreneur Elon Musk.

“A carbon-neutral hyperloop route itself would meet the Met Council’s stated objectives for multimodal transportation, benefits to communities, and environmental sustainability,” Koren said in an email. “The technical and economic feasibility study would quantify these benefits, and assess any risks.”

The group was looking to tap federal funds that funnel through the Met Council’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB), which vets such requests using a points-based scoring system. The study itself was projected to cost $2.5 million.

The TAB, which consists of 34 elected officials and residents, will distribute more than $280 million in mostly federal funds this year.

Most of the money parsed by the committee pays for tangible transportation projects, including roads, connections to public transit, and bike and pedestrian paths that are intended to improve mobility and safety, manage congestion and improve air quality.

The hyperloop request was made under the committee’s “Unique Projects” category, which makes up a small piece of the funding pie. The study received a score of 302 out of 900 possible points.

Edina Mayor Jim Hovland, who serves as TAB chair, said the process for reviewing “Unique Projects” applications for federal funding “is not set up well to evaluate studies,” so the hyperloop proposal did not score well as a result.

Hovland, who serves as chair of Global Wellness Connections’ leadership team as a volunteer, said he did not participate in the scoring of the hyperloop proposal, which is largely done by Met Council staff.

Koren, of Global Wellness Connections, said the organization was disappointed that the Met Council “decided to use a very narrow and literal interpretation of their scoring tool, instead of assessing the potential project that could result from a positive feasibility study.”

She said this came as a surprise to group members, since Met Council staffers told them last fall that U.S. Department of Transportation officials “expressed positive feedback and interest” in the hyperloop study proposal after a preliminary plan was submitted.

Koren said funding technical and economic feasibility studies makes sense under the “Unique Projects” category because “unique implies new. It’s just fiscally prudent and necessary to study new things before building them.”

It’s unclear whether the group will resubmit its application; Hovland said the TAB may consider putting studies in a separate category in the future. Other Global Wellness leaders include former Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie; Tom Horner, the 2010 Independence Party candidate for governor; and Rochester Mayor Kim Norton, among others.

Met Council spokesman John Schadl said further consideration of the TAB’s scoring or categories will occur over the next 18 months.

Either way, a transportation link other than driving or flying between the Twin Cities and Rochester has long been on the radar of state and local transit planners since passenger rail service stopped in 1963. The Minnesota Department of Transportation and Olmsted County abandoned a study of a high-speed passenger rail project called Zip Rail in 2016 due to lack of funding.

Hovland said he still likes the idea of studying some type of high-speed rail connection between the metro area and Rochester, especially as Mayo Clinic embarks on a $5 billion expansion.

“I think we should be trying to figure out how to get people to Rochester safely and in the most effective and efficient way possible,” he said.