This work analyzes the idea of using existing railway routes in Europe for HL traffic. Different route acceleration profiles are evaluated by modeling key performance metrics of passenger pods traveling along these routes. While the resulting travel times are higher than conventional Hyperloop would suggest, these lines would still be competitive with other modes of transport. Especially passenger comfort is of concern as it limits the lateral accelerations allowed – and therefore the achievable velocity.

With a small-scale study, the market potential of the proposed concept is evaluated and further insights on passenger comfort are obtained. The results show, that this realization of Hyperloop is generally economically competitive and for the specific scenarios posed as an example even outranks other modes of transportation.