You may have dismissed the Hyperloop project as something from the pages of a science fiction novel, but the UAE is pressing on with the idea.

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This week, the Roads and Transport Authority said that it has made “considerable progress” on a study that examines the technical and economic feasibility of the project. And the authority has identified the routes that the UAE’s Hyperloop would take.

In case you haven’t heard of the Hyperloop, it’s essentially an enormously fast public transport system. It uses large, vacuum-sealed tubes, through which vehicles travel using an electromagnetic propulsion system.

In plain English, small pods use magnets to levitate slightly above the ground within these vacuum tubes. And because they’re operating in a vacuum, there’s no resistance of any kind to slow them down. This means they can travel fast without burning loads of energy.

And when we say fast, we mean really fast. In theory, the pods could travel through the tube at 1,200 km/h. Or, to put it another way, they could transport you from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes.

The RTA reckons that, if it goes ahead with the Hyperloop, it’d want to transport around 10,000 passengers per hour between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Certainly, it’d mean that long commutes are a thing of the past.

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Naturally, it’ll also be a luxurious way of getting about – this is the UAE, after all. The RTA says that the Hyperloop will come with leather seats, deluxe interiors and “cutting-edge” displays.

Now, the RTA hasn’t started building the Hyperloop yet – it’s just conducting a feasibility study on the project right now. But if the numbers add up, expect to see this futuristic mode of transport available in the UAE over the next 20 years.