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.

John Robert Smith addresses 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. (Also featured in Rail Bite #1)

Meredith Richards has shared with us how transportation officials in Virginia came to prioritize moving more people by rail as an antidote to rampant congestion on Virginia’s highways and the impressive results of economic benefits studies conducted by the Rail Passengers Association, and how adding trip frequencies led to a ballooning of ridership numbers on one Amtrak service. (Also featured in Rail Bite #2 & Rail Bite #8)

Tom White,  says that part of the problem is that we have forgotten how to make good use of the trains we have. Current U.S. intercity passenger rail service is often so unreliable, infrequent, and inconvenient in its scheduling, that most people who take an Amtrak train once or twice are given little reason to do it again. Top speed is just a number when you’re stuck behind a parked freight train for thirty minutes; and even overall trip times count for little when the only available trip starts or ends in the middle of the night. (Also featured in Rail Bite #7.)