Welcome to The Buzz, Solutionary Rail's monthly newsletter where you can hear what's happening in the SR world of putting rail in service of public interests, what’s coming up, and how you can be part of the action. This is our first edition; so we hope you’ll read on!

Coming Up: March Hive Call

RSVP for Solutionary Rail's Monthly Hive Call happening next Tuesday. 
Tue, March 11 at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern.

On this month's call, we’ll share some latest updates, share resources, and get reports back from our various teams (Railyard Switcher Inventory, Trains Can Save Salmon, SR Ambassadors, and the Rail Can’t Wait Campaign).

Sign up HERE to get the Zoom Link. 

What’s the Hive?

The SR “Hive” is a talented swarm of volunteers and collaborators who take initiative in various ways around the country to promote the SR vision. Everyone works autonomously, with specific teams addressing some of the key priorities. We share information and learn together via a monthly call, usually the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern. NewBees welcome!

The Railyard Switcher Inventory Team is developing a grassroots strategy for accelerating the electrification of railyards, where the dirtiest most polluting locomotives concentrate harms on neighboring communities and workers. This bar chart shows how few railyard switchers are even qualifying for the "Tier 1-4 system" - as we and our allies push for Zero Emissions (Tier 5) switcher locomotives:

We invite you to learn more at our monthly gathering. RSVP today.

Reconnect America Podcast & Rail Bites

Our brand new Rail Bites series presents you with some of our favorite clips from our amazing guests on the Reconnect America podcast. Our longer form podcast is tightly edited to serve as a sort of Solutionary Rail curriculum.  

Rail Bites are digestible bites that satisfy your hunger for more knowledge and give you more access to our incredible guests. So, look forward to more frequent, shorter-form content in between our carefully crafted longer episodes. Here are the first three bites to get you going:

Rail Bite #1: John Robert Smith on Why Passenger Rail Matters for Communities

Mr. Smith discusses the expected economic benefits of soon-to-be-restored Amtrak service along the Gulf Coast; how initial opposition from the Class I railroads was overcome to achieve this; and how reconnecting rural towns and small urban centers with passenger rail could be a way of doing justice to the crucial role that these places have in the country as a whole.

Rail Bite #2: Meredith Richards on Virginia's Passenger Rail Renaissance

Those who follow U.S. passenger rail closely know that Virginia has accomplished a lot in the last several years, and Mrs. Richards has been one of the figures at the center of it all. Meredith Richards discusses how transportation officials in Virginia came to prioritize moving more people by rail as an antidote to rampant congestion on Virginia’s highways.

Rail Bite #3: Professor David Alff on the Expectation that Trains Turn a Profit

Mr. Alff is associate professor of English at SUNY Buffalo and author of the 2024 book The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region. In this timely meditation, author and professor David Alff probes the inner tension of rail transport in the U.S.: that it is expected to make a profit while providing an essential public service.

The Reconnect America podcast and Rail Bites are available at SolutionaryRail.org/podcast, the SR Substack, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Washington State - You Did It!

Solutionary Rail is a member of the Rail Can’t Wait Campaign in Washington State.  In addition to our 2025 Legislative Priorities, we have a bill in the legislature this year, Establishing intercity passenger rail improvement priorities.  

Check out this Seattle Times article by editorial board member Josh Farley explaining the importance of our Intercity Passenger Rail bill, “Why high-speed rail will fail without better local train service.”

Over the last few weeks, literally thousands of people in Washington state took action to support this simple, standard-setting legislation. Over 1,000 people signed in "PRO" for the House hearing, then over 1,200 people signed in "PRO" to the Senate hearing, with only 5 signing in opposed. 

And Washingtonians’ support made a difference.

Last week, on February 27th in Olympia, WA, our bill HB-1837, with the able leadership of Rep. Julia Reed and support from the Transportation Committee Chair Jake Fey and Ranking Member Andrew Barkis, passed out of the House Transportation Committee with a "Do Pass" recommendation.  We are grateful for every vote and for the great statements of support.

Says SR Director Bill Moyer who testified (with Sasha Elenko, Assistant SR Director, at right) at both the House and Senate Hearings, “We are particularly encouraged that three Republican members of the committee saw our support for common sense rail to be worthy of their support. I believe this is wise and shows vision for a future that is about returning reliable rail service to all communities.”

There's more work to be done before this bill becomes law in Washington State.

Take Action (for those in Washington State):

Now we are respectfully putting pressure on the Rules Committee to move it out of Rules and onto the House Floor for a vote, and then subsequently to move to a Senate Floor vote. 

If you are in Senator Liias’ District (LD 21), please write to him, asking for his full support of SB 5667/HB 1837. If your Senator is on the Senate Transportation Committee, contact them to ask for full support of the bill. If your Representative is on the House Rules Committee (particularly in the 34th, 28th, 42nd, 41st, or 21st LD), write to them to respectfully request that HB 1837 be pulled from Rules and moved to the Floor for a full House vote.

Articles from the Hive:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

• The Association of American Railroads (AAR) published a propaganda piece against rail electrification this past week. Maybe you've seen it. The editor of Railway Age was so unimpressed that he made sure to collect some scathing comments to accompany the report. Read here. 

  But the AAR may have done more harm to their cause than good. Weak on credibility already these days, this could be interpreted as a sign of desperation not strength. Here are some thoughts Bill Moyer, ED of Solutionary Rail shared with others who were scratching their heads about why the AAR would release such an obviously flawed piece:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

The AAR can't get the FRA to produce a bogus study, so they commissioned their own. They tried that a decade ago. The Solutionary Rail team caught them and it was taken off the FRA site because the math was wrong.

Thankfully, the excellent team that produced the recent Univ. of Texas Austin report has provided a reality based foundation to build upon. (more below)

As they demonstrated, the battery technology that makes discontinuous electrification possible is a game changer.

At this point, EJ communities, railroad workers, workers at locomotive manufacturing facilities, electrification and transmission industry, and policy makers are joining forces to propose common sense solutions.

The public's interest in everything from increased transmission capacity to mode shift of freight off roads increases the public's interest and stake in how these corridors are invested in and utilized.

Reconnecting communities and industries that have been left behind, reshoring industry and localization all depend on rail. So, the folks that voted for this administration in hope of delivering that kind of change are going to be sorely disappointed if they do not get "change they can believe in" again.

Ending the poisoning of communities through diesel pollution concentrated at rail yards and the historic pattern of testing new technologies at rail yards combine to show a clear next step in this process.

This bogus study is a sign of our collective strength.

Forward Together!

Bill

• This video of an excellent seminar last fall goes over the lessons learned by the Univ. of Texas Austin team that produced a landmark study on the feasibility of rail electrification that factors in the new potential for discontinuous electrification.
  
  In contrast to the propaganda piece released by Association of American Railroads (AAR) the Texas study was a reality-based study that developed actual metrics to determine feasibility. Had this work not been freshly on people's minds, many may not have seen through the fog created by the AAR.
  Slides from the seminar are HERE.
  
  
• "It’s Happening!" Metro-North to introduce battery- and electric-powered locomotives
  

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Please Pitch In If You Support this Work

Solutionary Rail is tackling big projects and ideas. We’ve expanded our team because the work ahead is monumental. Can you pitch in to help sustain Solutionary Rail’s momentum and impact? Your tax-deductible donation is critical. We especially need monthly donors to keep this work sustaining - sign up for a monthly donation HERE.

THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THIS WORK!