Advocate explains that corridor collaboration is the key to regional rail

In this episode of Train Time, we spoke to Meredith Richards, president of the Virginia Rail Policy Institute and a member of the Board of Directors of the Rail Passengers Association. She explains how she helped build a statewide coalition to connect, and reconnect, Virginia by passenger rail. She tells an instructive story about the way Amtrak ticket allocation left Virginia business passengers without train service even though trains stopped in their towns en route to Washington DC. Her account includes details that are relevant to those in other regions, including the Northeast. She explains how important it is to build a coalition, to change the way transportation funding is allocated, and to ensure that short-distance, regional service is given due attention.

Meredith Richards is a former Charlottesville City Councilor and Vice Mayor and today is president of the Virginia Rail Policy Institute and a member of the Board of Directors of the Rail Passengers Association. In 2005, Meredith established a Charlottesville-based non-profit to advocate for enhanced passenger rail for the Virginia Crescent Corridor and subsequently organized a consortium of twenty-two political jurisdictions along the US29 corridor into the Piedmont Rail Coalition. Their collective, multi-year effort succeeded in bringing the Lynchburg-DC Northeast Regional, the first new passenger rail service for the corridor in over a half-century and Virginia’s first state-sponsored intercity passenger train, to the corridor. She led a successful effort to significantly increase transit’s formula share of the state transportation fund and while serving on Governor Mark Warner’s Commission on Rail Enhancement for the 21st Century, she helped establish Virginia’s first dedicated fund for rail capital projects. More recently (2021), as a co-chair of Virginians for High-Speed Rail, she helped build public support for establishing the Commonwealth Rail Fund as a permanent division of the state transportation fund and for the newly established Virginia Passenger Rail Authority. In 2020, Virginians for High-Speed Rail created an annual Legislative Achievement Award in Meredith’s name.

Bob Yaro joins us to explain the history and concept of North Atlantic Rail, a project that has attracted great interest because of its scope and ambition. North Atlantic Rail is an initiative aimed as building a high-performance rail network to serve New England and downstate New York, connecting New York and Boston with high-speed trains and reconnecting smaller cities of the region with high-performance passenger service.

We expect it to stir debate in the North Atlantic region and nationally, as the United States begins to look seriously at infrastructure investment for the 21st century. Bob’s breadth of experience is unparalleled and we’re delighted to have him explain the vision for North Atlantic Rail with Train Time.

Biography: Bob Yaro worked in regional and transportation planning in metropolitan regions and megaregions in the US and abroad. He also knows rural America, having been a professor of regional planning at UMass Amherst, where he founded and led the Center for Rural Massachusetts. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the president of the Regional Plan Association, where he led strategic planning initiatives for the New York Metropolitan Region for 25 years. At RPA he led advocacy efforts for more than $100 billion in transportation investments. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut and developed the North Atlantic Rail concept with his long-time colleague Kip Bergstrom. See https://northatlanticrail.org for more details.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was created using AI and will be edited for readability BUT THIS EDITING HAS NOT YET BEEN DONE YET! The AI transcript is time-stamped , which is useful as a guide to finding a point in the recording, but the time-stamps are not a perfect match to the podcast because we’ve added an introduction and did some editing.

SPEAKERS

Karen Christensen, Robert Yaro

Karen Christensen  00:02

Welcome to Train Time, Bob. It's a thrill to have you with us today.

Robert Yaro  00:07

Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your audience.

Karen Christensen  00:14

I don't know, it seems like a long time ago since we were first introduced, I suppose it was about the time that you were starting that project that was then called rebooting New England. 2017.

00:26

Yes, that's right. Yeah, we started this and again, it was remains unabashedly, a, a regional economic development project. Excuse me. You know, our goal, our focus, initial focus was on strategies to revitalize the older industrial cities or legacy cities of New England, places like Pittsfield and Springfield, and Waterbury and others, you know, they're 30 or more of these places that have never quite recovered from the loss of manufacturing in the in the 1970s. And 80s. You know, when, for example, in Pittsfield, when GE left town, you know, they just it was like, they pulled the plug on a large part of the economy of Pittsfield in the Berkshires. And we just went spray Left, left, North Adams. And, you know, there have been some really important steps taken since then to revitalize the economy of these places, but it's hasn't been sufficient.

Karen Christensen  01:24

How did this come together? In your mind, I will tell us a little bit, I will certainly put biographical information online. But I'd like to hear a little bit of your story how you came into this?

Robert Yaro  01:38

Well, I've had, you know, it's been a 50 year career working on City and Regional Planning and everything from rural I started ran the Center for rural Massachusetts, at UMass Amherst back in the 80s. And to urban, you know, I ran regional plan Association for 25 years in New York. And I described it as getting into the belly of the beast in the metropolitan area. So, you know, I've been, and I lived in Western Mass for a number of years, when I was teaching there, we were putting in North Hampton. And we hav

We spoke with Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton (D-6th District) on January 13, 2021 about his bold plan for high-speed rail in the United States. He filed his “American High-Speed Rail” bill last May. The prospects for investment in rail look far better now and we will be following developments in federal infrastructure recovery, knowing that Rep. Moulton will be one of the leading voices for rail.

This podcast is shorter than usual, because Moulton and his aide were delayed by the increased security in Washington, and he had another interview scheduled. Later that day he voted on impeachment, so we were especially pleased to catch him.

Rep. Moulton is no stranger to conflict, having served four tours in Iraq. And he has dealt with the challenges of building a new train system, since he worked for Texas Central before turning to public service. We spoke about passenger rail as something to be approached as a 21st-century project: not preserving something from the 1950s but building something for the 2050s. This "moon landing" approach is bigger and bolder than the approach of many in the rail advocacy world. Take a listen and see what you think! We’ll be picking up the conversation as the Biden transportation team gets to work.

See below for an edited transcript of the interview. And here's a link to Rep. Moulton's proposal for American High-Speed Rail.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was created using AI and then lightly edited for readability. It is time-stamped , which is useful as a guide to finding a point in the recording, but the time-stamps are not a perfect match to the podcast because we've added an introduction and did some editing.

SPEAKERS Karen Christensen, Seth Moulton

Seth Moulton

It's a delight to be here. And yes, it's nice to be able to talk about the future at this difficult juncture for our country.

Karen Christensen

So we will be talking about your vision for high speed rail and higher speed rail. But tell us a bit about yourself, you have an unusual background in rail.

Seth Moulton 00:47

I've been interested in rail, particularly high speed rail, as a way to quite literally move our country forward for a long time. And it was actually a bit of an academic interest in appreciating the benefits, economic benefits, environmental benefits and other things of rail transportation over the alternatives. It's something that I studied in school, both when I was quite young. And then up into grad school, I did a financial analysis of the California high speed rail proposal as a graduate student at Harvard Business School, for example. But when I was really young, I said, I just need to learn more about this industry. And I had an appreciation for how unique it is, how it has its own language and terminology. And I decided that I couldn't really learn it at a fundamental level if I didn't have on the ground experience. So I was fortunate to have an opportunity to work at a short line in New Hampshire. And I can't tell you how much I learned from that experience.

Karen Christensen 01:55

What stands out?

01:58

What stands out is how it is a unique industry that is hard to understand from the outside. But it has a lot of people who work in it who are incredibly dedicated to making it a success. Because this was a short line, it hired a number of people who had retired from larger railroads and I worked with an engineer, for example, who ran trains in the Korean War for the US Army in Korea, who came back and ran commuter trains out of Boston when they were still powered by steam, who told stories of running crack passenger trains up into northern New England, knowing the route well enough that he could, shall we say, safely exceed the speed limit when you pick up really romantic stories from the past, but this was also a man who put in hours and hours of hard work who took tremendous pride in his trade, and was damn good at it. I was proud of him.

03:01

I hadn't realized that you've done

Former governor Michael Dukakis has strong views on the importance of public transportation. He thinks it's an important investment but he's also a believer in keeping costs in check. We talk here about rail as a regional issue and national imperative, and hear his views on how should governors and legislators should be thinking about rail infrastructure, and about the importance of a connection to New York, especially for Berkshire County, as well as the East-West Rail project and the North-South Rail Link.

See below for an edited transcript of the interview.

Michael Dukakis is known as Democratic presidential candidate and long-serving governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has served as Vice-Chair of the Amtrak Board of directors and today is a professor of political science at Northeastern and UCLA. He's also known for his transit advocacy and for his recent efforts to promote the much-needed North-South Rail Link in Boston. He grew up and still lives in Brookline.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was created using AI and then lightly edited for readability. It is time-stamped , which is useful as a guide to finding a point in the recording, but the time-stamps are not a perfect match to the podcast because we've added an introduction and did some editing.

Karen Christensen

We began our conversation by talking about his childhood interest in trains.

Michael Dukakis 01:44

Well, I wanted a train set when I was a kid. And those days line was the brand. And my father wouldn't get it for me for Christmas. I was probably nine or 10. And he made the right decision, because two years later, I would have been interested in something else. In anyway, that's when it all began. But you know, I grew up in Brookline, which had a and has always had a public transportation system for a long time. And it was just so obvious to me that the Commonwealth was in desperate need of a first class, public transportation system. And beyond that, you know, the country needs a great real system, and just got into it, and have been in it ever since. I think we made a lot of progress when I was governor. But we're not making any progress these days.

Karen Christensen 02:38

Yes. And you've been in in recent years, you've been very much known [for your work on rail.]

Michael Dukakis 02:44

And I'm not the only one. I mean, they're a good group of people that strongly for this. And we've been working hard at it, but we can't move Baker. His Transportation Secretary is a nice person, but she's not a builder. And so here, we said, with great opportunities, and we're just not moving. And

Karen Christensen 03:13

We have a new president coming in soon, a new administration, who loves trains. This is certainly made me smile, many, many aspects of it. It's made me have made me smile. How does that create opportunity and for those of us who are advocates for rail, in, in the state and in the nation, what can we best do now? I do want to talk specifically about North-South Rail Link, but perhaps some general thoughts from you on what this new administration can do for the country and for our futures?

Michael Dukakis 03:57

Well, Biden is a great advocate of this, probably as strong as anyone in the Congress. And he has been for a long time. So I'm feeling optimistic. I was blessed as governor with a Secretary of Transportation in the form of Fred Salvucci. There's nobody better. I don't know if you ever met Salvucci?

Well, Fred's the son of an Italian immigrant bricklayer who came over here, and eventually created his own brick subcommittee as a subcontractor. Fred's one of these guys who went off to MIT and got two degrees. He’s got political smarts coming out of his ears, and he's a rare combination of extraordinary intelligence and political skill. And we worked together on this for a long time while I was governor. He also had a great talent for picking people, and picked great people. He had a terrific team, includ

Welcome to Train Time. I’m Karen Christensen, and we’re talking today with Jim Mathews, CEO of the national Rail Passengers Association, about innovative ways of looking at the value passenger rail brings to our country and to our communities.

We spoke about Jim’s awareness from an early age that trains make things happen, that all kinds of activity takes place wherever trains bring people. As he became professionally involved in the train world, he saw plenty of evidence that this was so. But he wanted to move from anecdote to data about rail as an economic engine. In this podcast he explains some of the things the Rail Passengers Association is doing to produce that data and to look at network scenarios.

We're speaking with Chris Dempsey, director of Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA), about the “us or them” mentality that often pervades transport funding, and the efforts is making to build connections across the entire state, including out to weste

We spoke to Jay Flynn, officially “Bus Lead” but generally known as one of the TransitMatters gadflies. Jay worked in government for years before becoming a transportation advocate with TransitMatters. We’ve observed that TransitMatters seems to be good

Just over a year ago we interviewed Massachusetts Senator Eric Lesser about his efforts to bring frequent, fast passenger rail service from Boston to western Massachusetts. This week, we caught up with him again, talking about the COVID-19 pandemic and w

Welcome to Train Time, a podcast from the Train Campaign, working to connect cities and rural areas because we’re convinced that passenger rail as the essential framework for efficient, sustainable transportation in the 21st century. Train Time is hosted