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Dear Friends,
The interview we’re sharing with you today is a special one.
Recorded in March of 2024, it is one of the first interviews we did for this podcast. And it was a conversation that helped confirm that we were looking in the right direction with the Reconnect America theme.
From the beginning, we have been exploring the idea that railroads, and the corridors trains operate on, offer immense potential to reconnect our country—both literally, by restoring economic links to rural places that have been left behind, and figuratively, by providing an area in which to find common cause across the political spectrum.
Our guest, Mike Beard, is living proof of both aspects of this idea.
After spending the first part of his career working in the railroad industry, Mike went on to spend 24 years as an elected official in Minnesota, including 12 years in the state legislature. During that time, he helped write and pass bipartisan legislation to support Minnesota’s short line railroads.
Financially speaking, short line operations can be extremely precarious, due in part to the fairly small amount of freight moving through the rural areas they serve. In fact, most short line railroads only exist because the lines they operate were not profitable enough for the larger Class One railroads that used to own them.
However, the service that short lines provide is a lifeline to smaller cities and towns across the state of Minnesota, and the rest of the country.
The ability of a short line to rehabilitate a deteriorated section of track can mean the difference between the railroad continuing to operate or having to shut down. Access to that service can itself make the difference between a grain elevator or a factory staying in a town or having to relocate to another town or city that is rail served. And in small towns, whether that facility stays or goes can make the difference between the town growing and thriving or shrinking and in some cases eventually disappearing from the map.
The fact that Democrats and Republicans continue to come together in Minnesota to support short lines through programs like the Minnesota Rail Service Improvement Fund—which Mike helped to expand—shows that the importance of this infrastructure for rural communities and economies transcends partisan divides.
To be clear, these programs do not necessarily constitute a panacea. As we will see in the coming episodes, the obstacles that short lines face are inseparable from the deeper crisis facing the U.S. railroad industry—a crisis rooted in the fundamental tension between the public purpose of this critical national infrastructure and the private purposes of the corporations that are entrusted with its ownership and operation.
Nonetheless, the bipartisan collaboration Mike describes in Minnesota—and the demonstrable impact it is having for small town economies—offers a beacon of hope in the fight to harness the power of rail to reconnect America.
With Gratitude & Solidarity,
Bill Moyer
Reconnect America is hosted by Bill Moyer, co-author of the book Solutionary Rail: A People-powered Campaign to Electrify America’s Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future. Check out the essays and supplemental posts that complement this podcast HERE.
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