United States of America
Laurence E. Blow is the founder of the "MaglevTransport consulting group".
Laurence E. Blow is an elected member of the International Maglev Steering Committee (ISC). He served as spokesman of the IMB for Norh America for more than a decade.
Larry Blow is the founder of the "MaglevTransport consulting group", created in September, 2005, which makes available to clients Mr. Blow's broad experience in the field of magnetic levitation technology solutions.
Since April of 1999, he was the Senior Project Manager in Transrapid International-USA, Inc.'s Washington D.C. office, providing technical support to public- and private-sector clients for pre-construction planning projects involving high-speed maglev around the United States.
Leading up to TRI-USA, he was a corporate program manager for General Dynamics Corporation; a technical coordinator for the Argonne National Laboratory; and a senior associate with Strategic Insight. These were maglev-related positions that included high-speed rail project monitoring and outreach.
Given his significant federal experience, having also worked in the Navy Department as a civilian engineer, it can be said that few other individuals possess this depth of practical working experience in the field of maglev transportation.
Recent Work Experience
Transrapid International-USA, Inc.
Mr. Blow spearheaded TRI-USA's technical conduct of the federal Maglev Deployment Program (MDP), acting as chief technical expert to the six demonstration projects around the country. His specialty area is the technical planning and design of high-speed Transrapid maglev projects, integrating the various planning disciplines to conceive a practical high-speed transportation corridor, considering right-of-way constraints, environmental effects, operational requirements, Transrapid system performance and potential cost impacts. He worked with the technical staff of the parent consortium in Berlin, Germany, to coordinate all technical support activities.
Strategic Insight
In August 1998, Mr. Blow led Strategic Insight's corporate effort to secure a contract with the State of Maryland's MDP initiative. He authored the federal grant application and acted as expert technical consultant to the State in selecting an engineering consultant team for the program. He also spearheaded several technical studies featuring adaptations of maglev technology for NASA's Highly Reusable Space Transportation program. He acted as the company representative on working committees of the High Speed Ground Transportation Association, serving as chairman of the Maglev Task Force from 1994 to 1998.
Argonne National Laboratory
At the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, Mr. Blow was the Maglev Program Coordinator from 1991 to 1994. Based in Washington, D.C., his responsibility was to provide technical and planning support to the National Maglev Initiative, a four year, federal interagency effort involving the Department of Transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Energy. As the Laboratory's representative, he was involved in top-level program planning, key technical studies and outreach to the private sector.
General Dynamics Corp.
Mr. Blow was a corporate program manager in the Defense Initiatives Organization, a strategic business planning group chartered to capture long range, non traditional business for the corporation. Approached by the German Transrapid consortium in April, 1988, he led a company team in structuring a business plan for pursuing maglev technology as a potential U.S. manufacturing partner with the German companies. He also joined the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (D NY) Maglev Technology Advisory Committee, whose final report, Benefits of Magnetically Levitated High Speed Transportation for the United States (Senate Report 101-47), signaled the beginning of renewed interest and a national debate on magnetic levitation technology applications for transportation needs.