Reconnect America

Dear Friends, 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 path...

Listen and subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or Youtube . Dear Friends, 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 a...

Listen and subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube .  “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 s...

The audio-only player above features a version of the discussion that has been edited for clarity and brevity. Watch the full, unedited video recording of the panel here: Dear Friends, 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...

Dear Friends, 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. An astute student of the history of the U.S. railroad industry and a keen observer of the present m...

Dear friends, 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 an...

Dear friends, 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...

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, whe...

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, whe...

Though the railroad industry was deregulated in 1980, the public was always supposed to retain access to rail service that it could rely upon at a competitive price. That promise has been broken, and Wall Street is only partially to blame. A lack of clarity and specificity in the statutes that authorize the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to regulate U.S. railroads has also prevented this agenc...

We recently released Episode Four of our main Reconnect America series. It explores in depth the story of the unique U.S. experiment in private ownership of the critical national infrastructure that railroads constitute, and the concessions we have made over the course of a century and a half to sustain that system. If you haven’t listened to it yet, we highly recommend you check it out. As we pre...

Listen and subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube . Rail systems around the world are mostly owned and operated by the public. But the U.S. has only ever flirted with public ownership, and mostly in moments where this seemed like the only way to preserve a functional railroad system. Instead, for almost a century, we pursued a model of regulating corporate railroads...

Wow, we interact with a lot of activists and advocates. What’s fascinating about this conversation is that amongst all of our guests thus far—Byron Porter is uniquely industry-adjacent. He brings together history, regulatory knowledge, and experience as a rail shipper and equipment provider for the railroad industry. You are gonna learn a ton from this incredible conversation—and that knowledge is...

In the coming year or so, the Surface Transportation Board will determine whether to approve or block Union Pacific’s $85-billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern. This signals an attempt by Wall Street to squeeze yet more from this critical infrastructure in order to maximize returns for shareholders. In 2023, Surface Transportation Board (STB) member Robert Primus was the sole board member to vot...

I hope you'll take some time this Labor Day weekend to listen to my conversation with former Congressman Peter DeFazio, aka Tiger of the House (an honorific and comparison with the great Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, the Tiger of the Senate). Serving as chair of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the last four of his 36 years in Congress (and as a member for all 36),...

Greg Regan is president of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO. He has been an outspoken advocate in defense of workers and shippers over the last several years, as Class I railroads have made deeps cuts to both their workforce and the quality and reliability of their service in pursuit of stock buybacks and dividends for predatory “activist investors.” We got a chance to tal...

Phillip Longman is Senior Editor at Washington Monthly and Policy Director at the Open Markets Institute. He has also written for publications like Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, and the New York Times Magazine. Last October, Phil published the essay “ Train Drain: How deregulation and private equity have gutted the U.S. freight rail system—and with it, the promise of America’s industrial renewal...

Basel Musharbash is principal attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel , where he practices antimonopoly and trade regulation law. By taking on corporate power, his work on behalf of farmers, small businesses, and workers seeks to secure the conditions for small-town economies to thrive. In September 2024, Basel authored the landmark report “Kings Over the Necessaries of Life”: Monopolization and the Elim...

Bill Hutchison and Ed D’Amato are co-founders and co-chairs of the Lakeshore Rail Alliance , a coalition of seven passenger rail advocacy organizations across six states in the Great Lakes Region, working to revitalize service between New York City and Chicago. They are also board members of All Aboard Eerie . Earlier this year, Bill and Ed published a white paper titled “ Creating a Robust Americ...

As you may have seen, we recently published Episode 3 of our main Reconnect America series. It delves into the creation of Amtrak in 1970 and investigates why Amtrak failed to preserve the robust passenger rail system that it took over from the private sector. One of the factors we explored was the decision to leave U.S. rail infrastructure under the ownership of freight railroad corporations, who...

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 Episode 3 : * 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 Cli...

Listen and subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube . Why was Amtrak created? What impact did that have on US passenger rail service? How is Amtrak’s story part of a broader struggle between public purpose and private profit that has consistently plagued U.S. railroading? In this third episode of the Reconnect America series, we continue our deep dive into the histor...

In this Rail Bite, Meredith Richards, who is chair of the Rail Passengers Association (RPA), articulates two principles that lie at the center of successful passenger rail systems everywhere. First, that passenger rail is an economic engine. Using reports and modeling tools developed by or in partnership with other institutions, the RPA has demonstrated that passenger rail routes often catalyze ec...

Why is it that many Americans suddenly seem obsessed with building high speed rail, when most of us don’t even use the 21,400-mile passenger rail system we already have? It’s not as though regular passenger trains are incapable of going faster than the cars we choose to drive instead. Many Amtrak trains can top 100 miles per hour, given the right track conditions. And who can claim that being stuc...

Amtrak was established by the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 and began operations on May 1, 1971. It was created to relieve the struggling railroad corporations of their historic obligation to carry passengers. Half a century of public investment in highways and air travel had undermined the ability of railroads to provide passenger service at a profit and was causing a crisis in the industry....