CASEY JONES, YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR SPEED :

Taking a maglev for a test drive (DEBBIE MESSINA, May 28, 2002, The Virginian-Pilot)

The power was switched on. The motors hummed. The 12-ton car ever so slightly and effortlessly lifted a half-inch in the air.

Ronald Tola, ODU's facilities manager, hoisted his video camera to his eye.

Then, slowly but surely, the train started moving along the track. It wasn't graceful, but it rumbled along, reaching 10 mph on a 500-foot stretch of test track cutting through Florida's lowlands.

Robert L. Ash, ODU's interim associate vice president for research, reached deep into his aerospace engineering background and declared with a wide grin: ``This is so cool.''

The automated train stopped within inches of its mark.

"It's amazing," Tola chortled. "How did they do that? Can we go again? How did they do that?"

After only a year of development at a remote Florida test track, the nation's first magnetic levitation train is almost ready to be delivered to its permanent home at ODU. [...]

If successful, this sleek, 45-foot car--converted from a boxy, electric people-mover vehicle that never took off in Florida--could revolutionize mass transportation.

Magnets and electricity combine to lift and propel the train along a guideway. Because it uses no moving parts and creates no friction, the technology could eventually whisk passengers along at speeds upwards of 300 mph.

This is another reason to believe that the age of the city may be ending. If you can get to work in an hour from 300 miles away, why live in a cement highrise surrounded by asphalt and other people? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 28, 2002 1:00 PM