From SR Executive Director Bill Moyer:

On Friday, I returned from a mind blowing few days in Washington, DC. While my work over the last two decades has taken me to DC several times each year, this was both my first time testifying at a Surface Transportation Board hearing AND my first meeting inside the White House compound.

These, along with three meetings with Senate staff working on rail, were arm-in-arm with a crew of kickass allies from the Moving Forward Network.

I would say that this is the culmination of a lot of research and work, but there's no end in sight. The learning curve is steep and humbling. That said, the details of the Rail System We Have - VS - the Rail System We Need are coming into focus. The limitation of greatest consequence is our capacity to imagine a pathway from one to the other.

My statement to the STB is meant to be agitational. I refuse to accept that the status quo is inevitable or that we shouldn't dream big. Of course we should dream big. Our future depends upon it. There are no easy answers, but common sense and honest conversations are being impeded by an imbalance of power and misalignment of incentives. That's unacceptable.

I look forward to continuing to learn from the genius of friends and allies working to put US railroads in service of public interests and to sharing those lessons with you. My team and I could not do this work without the generous support of people like you. Thank you for supporting Backbone Campaign and our Solutionary Rail campaign.

Forward Together!

Bill Moyer

PS: To listen to my testimony and view the slides I put together, please click the image above or visit our new Substack. A PDF version with key slides is HERE. The image with calculations of external costs of truck versus rail transportation is a screenshot of a tool that was developed for Solutionary Rail by Jeff Silverman. We'd be happy to provide you a free copy of it for your own use.