When I think of WV, the main thing I think of is opioid addiction. Other than that and coal mining I don't really know anything else about WV. So, why WV?
If this experiment works it might enable much more of WV to be considered a suburb of DC. That could be good or bad, but most likely both in different areas. It would definitely be profitable.
WV is being taken for a ride, but not the sort they hope for.
Anyway, WV is between NYC and DC, and there was a good site available for them to build their prototype.
Interestingly enough, I was reading an article[0] about how Wheeling and Pittsburgh were competing to be the gateway to the west. When the National Road bypassed Pittsburgh, that was a big win for Wheeling. Most of the rail ended up going through Pittsburgh, though, and then the PA Turnpike opened a path through the mountains that further solidified Pittsburgh's advantage.
For WV's part, I could see them being very motivated to try and bring a new mode of transportation through their state.
From the perspective of the major NE railroads, the New York Central traveled through the same Mohawk Gap that the Erie Canal uses, and then travel along the south bank of Lake Erie. The Pennsylvania Railroad followed the route of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal system, that traveled Philadelphia-Pittsburgh via Altoona.
The B&O (originating from a state that had no access to the Ohio River) tried playing off Virginia and Pennsylvania against each other, but Pennsylvania stopped playing ball when it committed to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Virginia forced the B&O to pick Wheeling over Parkersburg to make it harder for B&O to bridge the Ohio River and push on to Chicago. (The B&O would eventually reach Parkersburg, cross the Ohio there, and continue to Chicago, but this happened a generation later).
The Pennsylvania Turnpike was based on the route of the South Pennsylvania Railroad, which was never built.
A number of federal agencies have offices there, including the FBI. I believe it's the central fingerprint data facility.
There are tens of thousands of people who work in DC, but live in West Virginia because it has fewer taxes than Maryland or Virginia.
If you managed to create a commuting hub that allowed 30 minute (plus time to hub, etc.) commutes to Pittsburgh, Durham, DC, and Philadelphia you would have a major hub with a great deal of value, akin to Chicago in the height of the railway days. That's a pretty big if though, and would take a lot of work, money, and politics.
If they did it though they could expand the hub:
* Add a station in Richmond, and a line to VA Beach * Expand north with a line from Philadelphia to NYC * Once you are in NYC, expand north line a line to boston * Finally, expand sound to Atlanta and then to Orlando.
Lot of ifs in there, and not sure I would be on it happening, but if it did the benefits would likely be amazing in terms of less pollution from cars, less unemployment since your pool of workplaces is much higher, potentially less shipping costs,etc. It's something I'd love to see.
WV is a really crappy state to build any sort of hub in. Geographically, it's dominated by a desiccated plateau: every watercourse carves a gorge, with the depth of gorge largely determined by how big the watercourse is. The population of WV is really spread out with no concentrated urban areas. The most concentrated regions are along the major river courses of the Ohio, Kanawha, and Monongahela Rivers, along with the population in the small sliver of the Great Appalachian Valley within its borders.
> with a marketed Hyperloop speed (emphasis on marketed) of 670mph
That is the targeted top speed, AIUI. However, geography hits your butt hard here: it's a simple consequence of physics that higher speeds make your engineering headaches grow more than linearly. Your curve radii grows quadratically with speed, and curve transition length is cubic. Trying to reach max speed in the environment of the Appalachian Plateau will be extremely expensive in terms of viaducts or tunneling, and making up the height difference between the Plateau and the valleys to the east is also going to be challenging.