The proposals that Brogan BamBrogan and Andrew Liu showed Shailen Bhatt promised a fanciful world: highways moving ten times more vehicles than they do now. Shipments zipping throughout the Denver area at 200 miles per hour. People getting from their homes to the airport gate in minutes. A new mode of transportation, moving people in numbers and speed far beyond what any metro system in the world accomplishes today. “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. They hoped to enter a partnership with the governing body on their “inspired by the Hyperloop concept.”

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. Based on “linear-electric motors and magnetic levitation,” it would cost about the same to use as public transit or a toll road.

Bhatt says he was less captivated by their vision than their goal of building a proof-of-concept test track in Colorado, which would mean jobs for the state. In a follow-up letter sent to the Arrivo cofounders, which WIRED obtained along with Arrivo’s pitch materials and other documents through a public records request, he said he shared an Arrivo document with then-governor’s John Hickenlooper’s office. He assured BamBrogan and Liu that their interest in partnering with Colorado “has interest at the highest level.”

On November 14, the Colorado DOT, Arrivo, and the E-470 Public Highway Authority announced a partnership to build a test track along E-470, the toll interstate that runs through the eastern Denver suburbs and near to Denver International Airport. They would hire up to 200 employees and conduct feasibility studies in exchange for $267,000 in performance-based incentives from the Colorado Office of Economic Development. Along with renderings of the system, Arrivo released a video of Bhatt and BamBrogan admiring classic cars and talking about transportation technology. In a press release announcing the deal, BamBrogan boasted, “Arrivo will end traffic and futureproof regional mobility.”

It didn’t quite work out that way. At the end of 2018, Arrivo shut down due to a lack of funding. Construction on the test track, originally slated to begin in the first quarter of 2018, never broke ground. Arrivo never completed its feasibility study. There is no evidence the company ever completed a proof of concept at any scale. BamBrogan did not respond to an interview request, and attempts to reach Liu were unsuccessful.

The speedy demise of Arrivo and its promised transportation system makes one wonder what CDOT saw in a company without any clear evidence it could deliver on outrageous promises. 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. Arrivo In a press release announcing Arrivo's deal with Colorado, Brogan BamBrogan boasted, “Arrivo will end traffic and futureproof regional mobility.” Arrivo

Meanwhile, Denver already has a good airport connector. In his book Trains, Buses, People, transportation expert Christof Spieler named the A line one of the best commuter rail lines in the country, noting it is the only such system in the country that runs every 15 minutes, seven days a week. (Spieler is, though, critical of Denver’s transit network in general.)