Like an airplane, hydrofoils use aerodynamic lift to climb just above the water above a certain speed. This reduces drag, making the craft far more efficient than if it were moving through the waves. Passengers literally fly.

The technology is not new; Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, later constructed a seaplane. But a new startup called Navier (“NAV-ee-ay”) is going a step further, trying to solve the age-old problem of how to efficiently transport people across a lake or bay with sleek, unobtrusive luxury vehicles. flying water taxis.”

The name sounds like a variation of “navigation” or “marine” but is a reference to Claude-Louis Navier, the 19th-century French physicist and engineer whose contributions to fluid mechanics remain central to this field of research. The company is betting on the eventual electrification of all modes of transportation — particularly what Chief Technology Officer Kenny Jensen calls the “marine segment.”

“The thing about boats is that they are ridiculously inefficient. You get a mile a gallon,” he said. “So if you tried to electrify these without changing anything, you’ll either run out of range or you’ll be a giant floating battery.”

The docks at Pier 40 jutting out from the foot of Townsend Street on the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco are an ode to the city’s maritime past, when trade and transportation mostly took place along the coast. However, on a recent visit, The Standard noted that it is also home to Navier’s two current watercraft, one black and one white.

The electric-powered boats were built at a Maine shipyard and have toured Miami, LA and elsewhere. Navier claims a range of 75 miles per charge, which takes around eight hours. Boaters can simply plug into standard marina outlets or use a charger like Tesla makes.

Despite the term ‘water taxi’, Navier’s boats are intended for personal mobility rather than the proverbial Uber of the Seven Seas, carrying six or eight people at a time. You can get from Redwood City to the Embarcadero in 20 minutes or across the bay to the company’s Alameda headquarters.

The ride itself is undeniably cool, a smooth and almost impossibly quiet ride. Technologically, it’s light years beyond the analog ship that could set sail from Sausalito to Hawaii. Passengers zip under the Bay Bridge at 22 knots, looking with no small pity at the comparatively sluggish ferries while Yacht Rock playlists accumulate in the back of their minds.

Admittedly, the $375,000 price tag means hydrofoils are no longer affordable for the average person, but future generations of Navier vessels could disrupt the polluting shipping industry as well as the world of passenger transportation.

Co-founder Sampriti Bhattacharyya comes from aerospace robotics and applied her work to underwater drones – like Jensen she has a PhD. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop this next-generation ship.

“We’re very optimistic about the vision and what it can make possible,” she said. “It’s a game changer.”

There are other small advantages, such as the ability to move relatively quickly in a port where it is forbidden to leave wakes, the ability to operate near coral reefs with less risk of harming sensitive marine life and the risk of seasickness is reduced. Pilots don’t need a driver’s license either, as they pilot and control the throttle while the computer does most of the rest.

A technician once lamented the fact that our timeline gave us 140 characters instead of flying cars, but now we have flying water taxis. Navier plans to have a few more boats in the water by next year, hoping to make an impression by 2035. There is great optimism, but much less when it comes to the boats themselves.

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California High-Speed ​​Rail Authority Approves $4B San Francisco Line | Engineering News Record

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GILROY (KPIX 5) — California’s high-speed rail project is moving ahead with the approval of the San Jose-to-Merced section by way of Gilroy.

The approval by the state High-Speed ​​Rail Authority board of directors was cheered by Gilroy officials who envisioned building a transit hub around the rail stop.

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“I believe this will be transformative for the Gilroy community,” said Mayor Marie Blankley.

The approved alignment for the San Jose-to-Merced segment which will take tracks through the Gilroy station, before heading across Pacheco Pass into the Central Valley.

“This will be a connector for bus and rail to Monterey, to the east, to San Jose and it’s going to really help people who are going to be needing transportation to get to jobs as we increase the housing supply in California,” Blankley said .

Gilroy resident James Suner says it all looks good on paper.

“It would be like having an airport terminal in town, it acts as a hub, brings in transit-oriented development and would be a catalyst for the next century for Gilroy,” he said.

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But given the high-speed rail project’s history, Suner is skeptical it will actually happen.

Although construction of rail infrastructure is ongoing in the Central Valley, there are no firm plans for when the San Jose-Gilroy-Pacheco Pass segments would be built.

“High-speed rail is the biggest boondoggle in the history of the state,” Suner said.

Others like bike shop owner Ro Gaeta are hopeful that it will help make Gilroy more of a destination.

“We’re just a little bit of a secret town that people know as for the Garlic Festival, but I think that would be a plus for this town if it actually happens, and it sounds like it eventually will,” Gaeta said.

Mayor Blankley said she’s been told to expect pre-construction activity to begin sometime within the next two years.

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SAN JOSE (BCN/CBS SF) — A new poll suggests strong public support for California’s ambitious high-speed rail project, but the challenges of stretching it to San Jose are daunting.

UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies reported voters in California favor continuing the high-speed rail project by a five-to-three margin. The poll, which examined a range of issues voters want the state to address, was administered online to 8,676 California residents in English and Spanish. The findings are likely subject to a sampling error of approximately plus or minus 2 percent.

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Mark DiCamillo, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies poll, told San Jose Spotlight it can’t easily be compared to past surveys about the popularity of the rail project. But he said the results show majority support for the truncated version of the project.

“We’re now in 2022, it’s a long way away, and it’s been 14 years, but voters wanted to go forward even in its kind of abbreviated form,” DiCamillo said.

In 2008, California voters approved bonds to design and build a high-speed rail system that would run from San Diego to Sacramento by 2030. Cost overruns and delays have extended the timeline: the state’s current plan calls for a rail line linking Bakersfield to Merced by 2030, and then the Bay Area by 2033. According to the latest state estimate, finishing the complete route from Los Angeles to San Francisco could take $105 billion.

The high-speed rail line would feed into San Jose through Diridon Station, which is already set to become a major transit hub thanks to the expansion of BART from the north. At a recent VTA board meeting, officials from the California High-Speed ​​Rail Authority said the project will require tunneling through the Pacheco Pass to connect the Central Valley to Gilroy, and then San Jose. A final environmental impact report is going to be received by the authority’s board later this month.

According to a high-speed rail spokesperson, the connection between Silicon Valley and the Central Valley is projected to generate nearly $50 billion in economic output.

“It’s encouraging to know the people of California are excited by the promise of the nation’s first high-speed rail system,” Anthony Lopez, a

spokesperson for the High-Speed ​​Rail Authority, told San Jose Spotlight. “We look forward to moving this project forward and putting high-speed rail into service by the end of the decade.”

Speeding through San Jose

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Local officials and transit advocates are optimistic about the project’s potential impact on San Jose. Vice Mayor Chappie Jones, who chairs VTA’s board, told San Jose Spotlight he believes high-speed rail will transform Diridon into the equivalent of New York’s Grand Central Station on the West Coast.

“You’re going to have BART, light rail, buses and trains coming into that station, and having high-speed rail also come in will bring tens of thousands of riders into downtown San Jose,” Jones said. “The economic benefit of that alone is tremendous.”

Derrick Seaver, President and CEO of the San Jose Chamber of Commerce, said he’s not surprised people are supportive of the project, especially given the return of crushing traffic as the pandemic recedes. The Berkeley poll noted four out of 10 respondents are experiencing serious problems due to rising gas prices.

Seaver said there are many upsides to the project for the local economy, although he is concerned about construction.

“The struggle the business community has is all about the mitigation costs–where is the construction going to take place? What is the mitigation going to look like?” Seaver told San Jose Spotlight. “Downtown San Jose has a lot of activity already, with the BART project coming downtown, so this would be another element they would have to work through.”

Jones noted the project will also allow more people to commute to San Jose from the Central Valley, where there are more opportunities for people to find affordable homes. Aside from the challenges of tunneling under the mountains that separate Silicon Valley from the Central Valley, Jones said he’s concerned about how the trains will travel through San Jose.

“That’s a big discussion in terms of grade separation. Do you want a train just going 110 or 125 miles per hour at grade level and crossing major intersections?” Jones said. “Imagine the safety concerns for vehicles and bicycles and pedestrians.”

Monica Mallon, a transit advocate and San Jose Spotlight columnist, believes high-speed rail will be a major improvement over Amtrak, which she said is too slow. She said the greatest obstacle will come down to money.

“The funding has not been what (high speed rail staff) expected it to be,” Mallon told San Jose Spotlight. “I think they expected the private sector to step up a little more and contribute.”

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To celebrate Earth Day 2021, California’s high-speed rail authority announced that contractors will only need to use zero-emission vehicles for their project fleets in all future construction contracts.

“Bullet trains will be California’s fastest zero-emission vehicles with the highest capacity,” said Brian Kelly, chief executive officer of the agency. “As rail construction continues to grow, we need to further reduce our emissions. That’s why we’re looking for new ways to make our building practices even more environmentally friendly. “

At the 35 active construction sites that span 119 miles in the Central Valley, the agency requires contractors’ fleets to be newer, more fuel-efficient model years. As ZEV technology improves and more options become available, the agency will now require 100% ZEV for such fleets in future infrastructure construction contracts.

“This project delivers a sustainable future for transportation,” said Margaret Cederoth, director of sustainability and planning for the agency. “Our policy is not to have net greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutant criteria in construction. To help us do that, we want to leverage the ZEV market that California is driving.”

This implementation strategy will bring harmful emissions closer to zero and will keep harmful particulates out of the air in communities with poor air quality and high asthma rates, such as many near the Central Valley high-speed rail project.

In addition, the guideline uses the scope of the project to create innovations in off-road construction machinery, where it is more difficult to develop parameters in order not to cause emissions.

The agency already stipulates that all such devices must meet the highest emissions standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Tier 4). This policy has significantly reduced project emissions and removed 172,000 pounds of potential air pollution to date.

This implementation strategy will go further and stipulate that by 2030, as far as possible, 10% of the off-road equipment at the beginning of a contract should be ZEV and not just Tier 4.

In addition, the goal of 100% ZEV for such devices is set by 2035, if this is feasible.

This is the latest step the agency is taking to ensure that California’s high-speed rail line is the greenest infrastructure project in operation and under construction.

The agency has recorded or avoided more than 180,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions from planting more than 6,000 trees and other forest projects.

The project also prevented more than 180,000 tons of construction materials from being landfilled, with a 97% recycling rate for construction waste.

In December, the agency received national recognition for its sustainability efforts with the Envision Platinum rating.

The Envision Platinum Rating is the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s highest award and the first time a program of the size and complexity of this project has received such an award.

The agency is responsible for planning, designing and building a 100% renewable high-speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles and Anaheim via the Central Valley.

With the system capable of speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour, the journey between San Francisco and Los Angeles takes less than three hours.

Find out about the construction progress at www.buildhsr.comExternal and for more information on sustainability practices that were already carried out during the visit to the agency www.hsr.ca.gov/sustainability.

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