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Wow, we interact with a lot of activists and advocates. What’s fascinating about this conversation is that amongst all of our guests thus far—Byron Porter is uniquely industry-adjacent. He brings together history, regulatory knowledge, and experience as a rail shipper and equipment provider for the railroad industry. You are gonna learn a ton from this incredible conversation—and that knowledge is gonna be very useful in the coming Endgame fight over the biggest rail merger in history.

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In the coming year or so, the Surface Transportation Board will determine whether to approve or block Union Pacific’s $85-billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern. This signals an attempt by Wall Street to squeeze yet more from this critical infrastructure in order to maximize returns for shareholders.

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I hope you'll take some time this Labor Day weekend to listen to my conversation with former Congressman Peter DeFazio, aka Tiger of the House (an honorific and comparison with the great Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, the Tiger of the Senate).

Greg Regan is president of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO. He has been an outspoken advocate in defense of workers and shippers over the last several years, as Class I railroads have made deeps cuts to both their workforce and the quality and reliability of their service in pursuit of stock buybacks and dividends for predatory “activist investors.”

Phillip Longman is Senior Editor at Washington Monthly and Policy Director at the Open Markets Institute. He has also written for publications like Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, and the New York Times Magazine.

Basel Musharbash is principal attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel, where he practices antimonopoly and trade regulation law. By taking on corporate power, his work on behalf of farmers, small businesses, and workers seeks to secure the conditions for small-town economies to thrive.

Bill Hutchison and Ed D’Amato are co-founders and co-chairs of the Lakeshore Rail Alliance, a coalition of seven passenger rail advocacy organizations across six states in the Great Lakes Region, working to revitalize service between New York City and Chicago. They are also board members of All Aboard Eerie.

As you may have seen, we recently published Episode 3 of our main Reconnect America series. It delves into the creation of Amtrak in 1970 and investigates why Amtrak failed to preserve the robust passenger rail system that it took over from the private sector.

To celebrate the long awaited release of Reconnect America's Episode 3. Amtrak's genesis and the ongoing struggle to reclaim the public purpose of passenger rail, Solutionary Rail used our monthly Hive Call with folks around the country as an opportunity to have a discussion with three of the nationally recognized passenger rail champions we featured in the episode:

• John Robert Smith, Chair of Transportation for America and former Amtrak Board Chair.
• Meredith Richards, National Chair for the Rail Passengers Association.
• Tom White, Co-founder of Climate Rail Alliance and veteran rail planner and author with nearly 60 years in the industry.
  
  

These are three of the leaders who shaped our recent episodes and who are shaping our thinking about rail in the public interests. Each  talk about their past and present work, and build upon the content of Episode 3 and update us all on the current state of affairs with Amtrak, what they see happening in rail today, and where we go from here.

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Why was Amtrak created? What impact did that have on US passenger rail service? How is Amtrak’s story part of a broader struggle between public purpose and private profit that has consistently plagued U.S. railroading?