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The past several years have seen a level of greed, abuse, and dysfunction on the part of America’s largest railroad corporations that has many comparing them to the infamous Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century. Captive to the interests of aggressive “activist” investors intent on extracting ever-more profit through stock buybacks and price-gouging, today’s Class I railroads have failed to meaningfully grow their volumes over the past two decades. The quality of their service, meanwhile, has only deteriorated. They are, however, making record profits.

The service meltdowns, threatened strike, and disastrous derailments of recent years had already drawn scrutiny to the industry when Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced their intention to merge. If approved, the merger would leave more shippers captive to the monopoly control of a single Class I railroad and leave the nation with just five of them, at most. The prospect of further defensive mergers is widely seen as less a question of if than of when.

Though the crisis has only recently broken into the public eye, its origins lie much further back.

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Dear Friends,

I first interviewed Michael Sussman five years ago. He had recently completed the 2021 Nevada State Rail Plan, which remains a landmark in ground-up planning that puts collaboration and sustainability first, while harboring no special allegiance to the status quo.

What struck me at the time was Michael’s deep concern with the underutilization of rail for moving freight in this country, and with the gradual withdrawal of rail service from rural places over the past several decades—concerns shared by Solutionary Rail.

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Time flies when you’re having fun—and also, it seems, when Congress actually does something that materially benefits the country.

It’s already been five years since the landmark Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)—also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)—was passed. This legislation made historic investments in the nation’s passenger rail network. It allowed Amtrak to upgrade its fleets, as well as repair and replace its crumbling bridges and tunnels; and it gave states an invaluable pathway to expanding existing service and restoring discontinued routes.

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In this time of corporate impunity, pay to play politics, and acquiescence to demagogues and the oligarchs that pull the strings, Robert Primus has demonstrated a refreshing immunity to manipulation by either party or patron. As a member of the Surface Transportation Board (STB)—and in his stint as its Chair—his penchant for fairness, ability to ask hard questions in defense of the public interest, and his integrity were always apparent. So too was his well calibrated bullshit meter and impatience for obfuscation.

This of course made him simultaneously absolutely critical to the public good—AND —very poorly suited to service under Trump Inc. Being the sole vote against the last railroad merger (Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern into CPKC) during the Biden Administration—not to mention being a deeply experienced African American sitting on a powerful, independent regulatory board—put a target on his back.

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“In the 10 years from 1970 to 1980, America’s relationship to its railroads underwent a profound reorientation of purpose, a paradigm shift that—if we examine it carefully—helps us understand and interpret the circumstances we find ourselves in today.”

So begins Episode 5.

As we saw in Episode 4, this paradigm shift was meant to address a profound crisis within the railroad industry: faced with competition from other modes of transport—which, unlike railroads, were heavily subsidized by the public—the nondiscriminatory service and pricing that we had required of railroad corporations for almost a century was now driving several of them into bankruptcy.

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Last week, Solutionary Rail welcomed a panel of environmental justice and labor organizers to discuss how we can shift U.S. rail from being a source of harm to an infrastructure that benefits us all.

Our friends at Pace e Bene were calling for Solutions Circles as part of this year’s Earth Week, and we were honored to collaborate by hosting such incredible guests.

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This conversation rounds out a trio of interviews that explore the 46-year aftermath of the deregulatory Staggers Act. Our guest is Arnav Rao, who serves as a transportation policy analyst at the Open Markets Institute, where he works with previous Reconnect America guest Phil Longman.

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We have been exploring the effects of the deregulatory interventions that the U.S. implemented from 1970 to 1980—extraordinary measures that aimed to rescue railroad corporations and keep the infrastructure they operate under private control.

As we continue this exploration, we wanted to share a perspective that vividly brings to life the significance of what happened at that time and in the years that followed—not just the harms that were inflicted, but also the opportunities that were missed, the potential that remains untapped, and the enduring urgency of attempting to turn things around.

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As we gear up for the release of Episodes 5 and 6 of Reconnect America, we wanted to share some of the conversations that have been guiding us toward a deeper understanding of the last 46 years of U.S. rail transport and the evolving relationship between this critical national infrastructure and the businesses and communities that depend upon it.

My guest for today’s conversation is John Strong, professor of finance at the College of William and Mary. Professor Strong is the author of a handful of articles that have proven uniquely valuable in illuminating some of the interconnected issues that we are grappling with—in particular, the development of the operating model known as Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) and the rise of a class of activist investors who have aggressively forced this model upon railroad managers in North America.

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Earlier this month, I reached out to Jess Conard in the hopes of interviewing her for the Reconnect America podcast. I hardly expected that just a few days later we would be meeting face-to-face—along with my friend Beka Economopoulos, co-founder and Director of The Natural History Museum—in my cabin-studio in the woods of Vashon Island, Washington.

Jess is a resident of East Palestine, Ohio, where the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train and the subsequent decision to vent and burn over 115,000 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride caused an environmental and public health disaster whose consequences will be unfolding for decades to come.