PORT ANGELES — Inventor Karl “Jerry” Lamb has completed the $208,000 first phase of an elevated test track to demonstrate his LEVX magnetic levitation technology, the city of Port Angeles’ building department said.
Lamb is building an approximately $1 million demonstration project at a facility he leases at the Port of Port Angeles’ Airport Industrial Park, Port Executive Jeff Robb said recently.
When all four phases are done, the track will be about the length of a football field, drawings show.
Lamb, a Forks native, also founded and is president of Magna Force Inc., which opened an office in late 2010 in Port Angeles in the former Bank of America building at 102 E. Front St.
Lamb did not return calls for comment on the project.
Though Lamb was in his Airport Industrial Park office several days ago, he was not available for an interview, said an employee from behind a locked gate.
“We’re not doing any press releases now,” the employee said.
Lamb’s LEVX technology uses a cushion of magnetic energy to move large, heavy objects, such as trains and 40-foot containers, seemingly on air and without effort.
Magna Force also focuses on energy-saving magnetic coupling devices that eliminate friction between pumps and motors.
The test track is intended to demonstrate how the container boxes, commonly carried on semi-trucks and railroad cars, could be transported on a LEVX track, Robb said.
“It’s zero friction, essentially, to move up and down a track,” he said.
The first 240 feet of the track was completed in January, said engineering consultant Gene Unger of Port Angeles in a March 14 letter to the city building department, which permitted the project.
When completed, a straight portion of the track will be about 450 feet long, according to a plan Magna Force submitted to the city.
A curved portion that loops off the main track is about 400 feet long.
“The next section will wait for the test vehicle to be complete and tested on this section,” Unger said in the correspondence.
“Once this is accomplished, the next section of track construction will be undertaken.”
Robb said he expects a container to be mounted on the track by the end of May.
About a dozen company shareholders visited the demonstration project site in November.
LEVX track costs $6.5 million a mile, according to the company’s website, www.levx.com.
The technology’s pricetag was one reason the Port of Long Beach, Calif., rejected proposals by LEVX and at least two other magnetic levitation companies a few years ago.
The firms offered to move cargo from the Port of Long Beach and the adjoining Port of Los Angeles — the busiest container port in the U.S. — to nearby freight yards, Port of Long Beach spokesman Art Wong said.
The goal was to reduce air emissions by reducing truck and train traffic.
But magnetic levitation technology is not “financially feasible,” Wong said. “There is not a business model that would allow them to work yet.”
“It’s got to compete with trucks and trains that already exist, so who pays for that on an ongoing basis is it.”
Lamb, who is in his early 50s, started LEVX in 1993 with $1,200 in savings in the garage of his Port Angeles home.
Four years later, he had 18 U.S. patents and 114 foreign patents.
In one of his two interviews with the Peninsula Daily News over the past 13 years, he said in early 2011 shortly after the Magna Force office opened that the company is selling LEVX technology worldwide, including in Singapore.
“We’re trying to stay low-key,” he said then.
In 1999, Magna Force was awarded a $2.1 million contract from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which promotes energy-efficient technology.
Lamb sought the public spotlight in 2002, demonstrating LEVX technology to then-Gov. Gary Locke by magnetically levitating a Chevy Corvette above 40 feet of guide rails on the Capitol grounds.
In 2004, Locke’s successor, Gov. Chris Gregoire, rode the mag-lev system at the industrial park as part of a campaign stop.
That same year, Bellevue-based MagnaDrive Corp., which had exclusive rights to Lamb’s magnetic technology, was recognized by the accounting firm DeLoitte & Touche USA LLP as one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.
By the end of 2004, Magna Force systems had been installed by the city of Port Angeles at a wastewater pump station, by Nippon Paper Industries USA and at what was then Port Inc.’s lumber mill in Forks.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
