Are Ontario's transportation plans the rotary phone of infrastructure?

Are Ontario's transportation plans the rotary phone of infrastructure?

The future of transportation is coming more quickly than we think.

Hyperloop One, a company developing technology to move people and cargo at tremendous speeds through low-pressure tubes, expects to build a commercial track and have paying passengers somewhere in the world by 2021.

A trip between Toronto and Montreal in a pneumatic tube transportation system would take just 32 minutes, Rob Lloyd, chief executive officer of Hyperloop One, told the International Economic Forum of the Americas conference in Toronto last week.

But it doesn’t appear the technology will be coming to Ontario, or even Canada, quite yet. Lloyd says his company has had a few exploratory discussions about bringing his technology to Ontario, but he wants the regulatory process to move faster.

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App aimed at easing border congestion takes top prize at Canada-U.S. hackathon

App aimed at easing border congestion takes top prize at Canada-U.S. hackathon

A two-member team of young professionals from Chicago has a new idea for unclogging the Canada-U.S. border: an app for importers and exporters based on the popular TurboTax program that many taxpayers use to fill out their annual tax forms.

The Chicago team, called TradeSherpa and made up of Steve Martinez and Price Shoemaker, emerged this past weekend as the winner of a two-day “hackathon” sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Global Affairs Canada, at which 23 teams were challenged to produce the most useful app for cross-border trade.

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