CLEVELAND, Ohio - The goal of a newly formed Great Lakes Hyperloop consortium is to get a Cleveland-Chicago route up and running in three to five years.

"In three to five years, we might have a Hyperloop here; that's the goal," said Andrea La Mendola, chief global operating officer for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, also known by its initials, HTT.

La Mendola set a timeframe for the Hyperloop project as one of a dozen speakers Monday during a press event at the Great Lakes Science Center organized by HTT and the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency.

HTT and NOACA used the occasion to formally launch a $1.2 million public private partnership exploring the feasibility of a Cleveland-Chicago route.

First envisioned by inventor and business magnate Elon Musk, Hyperloop is a technology that could speed passengers or cargo at nearly the speed of sound in specially designed capsules or "pods" through a steel tube maintained at a partial vacuum.

The capsules would employ passive magnetic levitation technology licensed from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn said in an interview during Monday's event.

A promotional video produced for Monday's event said that a Cleveland-to-Chicago run would take 28 minutes and could carry 54,720 passengers a day. Such a line could make 525,600 trips a year.

Foundation grant

NOACA's Executive Director, Grace Gallucci, announced that the Cleveland Foundation had contributed $200,000 toward the $600,000 the transportation planning agency has pledged to contribute toward the feasibility study.

At Monday's event, HTT and NOACA announced the names of 18 businesses and nonprofit or academic organizations that have joined their partnership to explore a potential Great Lakes Hyperloop link between Cleveland and Chicago.

The list includes: Meggitt Aircraft Braking Systems, Corp., Ohio State University, ZIN Technologies, Ohio Aerospace Institute, Jobs Ohio, America Makes, Oak Ridge National Labs, Ohio Aerospace and Aviation Council, Ohio Aerospace and Aviation Technology Committee, Wright State Research Institute, The Gateway Group, Additive Engineering Solutions, Eureka Ranch, The University of Akron, The University of Akron Research Foundation, University of Cincinnati SpaceX Hyperloop Competition Team, The Greater Akron Chamber, and the City of Akron.

Possible network

HTT and NOACA also unveiled a map of a proposed Hyperloop network that would link nearly two dozen American and Canadian cities including Toronto and Windsor.

The green-colored "Phase 1" illustrated on the map showed a Cleveland-Chicago route with stops in Sandusky and Toledo.

HTT officials said they expect the feasibility analysis to be completed in six to nine months after an engineering team is chosen through a request-for-proposals process to undertake the study.

Speakers at the gathering included U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and Tim Ryan of Youngstown, along with Gallucci, Ahlborn and others. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson welcomed the audience of about 75 attendees.

The HTT Hyperloop project is not to be confused with a different route being explored by Virgin Hyperloop One, based in Los Angeles.

Monday's event was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat announcements in which HTT, based in Playa Vista California, is vying for attention along with the Hyperloop One proposal, which calls for a Columbus-Chicago route that would exclude Cleveland.

Columbus proposal

Last week, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) said it was launching a $2.5 million Rapid-Speed Transportation Initiative to explore routes that could use either traditional passenger rail and/or Hyperloop technology to link Chicago, Columbus, and Pittsburgh.

The MORPC announcement said it would conduct a feasibility study of Hyperloop technology for the corridor, followed by an environmental study.

The map of the network unveiled in Cleveland showed a Columbus-Chicago route that would swing through Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and not go directly to from Columbus to Chicago. The Hyperloop One proposal would skip Indy and Cincinnati.

"I don't think it's a competition," HTT's Ahlborn said in an interview when asked about the Hyperloop One Columbus-Chicago project.

Creating a movement

"When we started out we realized that we had to create this movement. They [Hyperloop One] are part of the movement," Ahlborn said. "It's important to move the technology forward. Ideally everybody would work together. That's not always possible, but that would be the ideal case."

When asked whether Hyperloop One would be using the same technology as HTT, Ahlborn said he didn't know.

"I don't know their technology," he said. "Unfortunately, we've seen very little. From what we can see there's not too much information out there."

Asked whether one company would have an advantage over the other if it got a Hyperloop connection finished first, Ahlborn said: "I think the world is big enough to have many different companies."

Hyperloop One did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday's event in Cleveland.

Keeping Cleveland in the game

Gallucci said she believes Hyperloop will become a reality, and she wants Northeast Ohio to participate not just through supply chain industries and jobs, but with an actual route.

And she said she believes a Cleveland Chicago route that would parallel interstate highways on public rights-of-way makes sense as part of what could become a national network.

"There was no doubt in my mind that the connection should be through Chicago and Cleveland," she said, "because when you look at [Interstates] 80 and 90 from the West Coast to the East Coast, they both intersect at those two points."