La Brea to Doheny? Now WeHo’s Nick Garzilli is Talking High Speed Transit from NYC to Beijing

Nick Garzilli didn’t get much traction as a candidate in the last West Hollywood City Council race with his call for a privately funded, solar-powered “Personal Rapid Transit” system featuring car-sized pods hanging from rails that would speed a WeHo resident along Santa Monica Boulevard from La Brea to Doheny in about four minutes. (Much faster than the PickUp Line’s trolley ride from Fairfax to Robertson!) But billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s recent call for a “Hyperloop” that would whisk one from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes has sparked new interest in high speed transport and in Garzilli ET3 business.

Garzilli, chief operating officer of ET3 , a Colorado-based company that bills itself as a developer of “Space Travel on Earth,” was interviewed on BBC World News Tuesday (Aug. 13) about his concept for a solar-powered system that would speed one from New York to Beijing in two hours (that’s 45 minutes from NYC to WeHo). Garzilli told BBC World News’ Tim Willcox that the technology already exists for a transportation system that would move at 400 miles an hour. Getting to the 4,000 mile an hour speed necessary for the two-hour NYC-Beijing trip will require 15 to 20 more years of work, Garzilli said.