How Arrivo Got Colorado to Back a Wild-Eyed Highway Scheme

“The end of traffic,” they called it.This was August 2017, when BamBrogan and Liu, cofounders of futuristic transportation company Arrivo, pitched Bhatt, then the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, on their ambitious vision. And it raises the larger questions of how much credibility future-focused mobility companies get by partnering with governments—even if their ideas amount to little more than glossy marketing brochures—and what those governments hope to gain in the process.Indeed, Arrivo’s pitch to CDOT included claims that Yonah Freemark, a PhD candidate in urban studies at MIT and founder of the influential website The Transport Politic, calls “very unrealistic.” In one presentation, proposing a connection to the Denver airport, Arrivo promised its “Super Metro” people-mover, which could fit 20 or 30 passengers, would transport 72,000 to 108,000 people per hour. That’s three to four times the peak capacity of New York’s L subway train, one of the busiest in the system.Arrivo’s pitch promised its technology would propel both specifically designed pods and people’s personal cars on sleds at hundreds of miles an hour, running along the medians of existing highways.In a press release announcing Arrivo's deal with Colorado, Brogan BamBrogan boasted, “Arrivo will end traffic and futureproof regional mobility.”Meanwhile, Denver already has a good airport connector. Virgin Hyperloop One, BamBrogan’s former employer, named CDOT among the 10 winners of a “Global Challenge” to propose feasible routes in welcoming places.But for more traditional transportation experts, this shoot-for-the-moon mindset is indicative of this country’s mobility issues: While they like the idea of maglev trains and supersonic tubes, American cities often fail to get the basics of transportation planning right, like running reliable bus and rail service.“Americans are constantly hoping for what's next, dreaming of some great new invention that will save them from whatever ills they currently experience,” says Freemark.