Letter: Light rail serves better in snow

Seven feet of snow, rails shut down, passenger cars all but useless, freight on trucks languishing on the side of the road, and airline traffic halted ["Buffalo area preps evacuation plans amid flood threat," News, Nov. 24]. It's an all-encompassing transportation nightmare, but it needn't be so. There's an alternative.

Maglev, the magnetically levitated train patented by Gordon Danby and James Powell of Brookhaven National Laboratory, can operate on a monorail 30 feet in the air and float on a magnetic cushion a few inches above the guideway. Snow at that height would simply blow away. Ice, if it did accumulate, would not interfere with the operation.

We could have had such a system in this country if the House of Representatives had joined with the Senate in 1990. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) spearheaded a bill that called for the investment of $750 million to begin the first phase of Maglev.

We are very concerned about national security, and protecting our population from natural disasters should be part of that thinking.

We have to stop bickering about small potatoes and go after the endeavors that in the past have caused the world to sit up and take notice.

Ernie Fazio, Centerport

Editor's note: The writer is the chairman of Long Island Business Action, an advocacy organization, and communications director for Maglev 2000, a company developing the technology.