“Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that’s ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain, yet we’re destroying the only home we have.”
— Jane Goodall
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
— Buckminster Fuller
OnTrackNorthAmerica is the catalyst and convener of the Continental Action Plan for Sustainable Industry
Industrial Systems and Commerce are not working. Our civilization can redesign its industrial systems, from agriculture and mining to consumption, recycling, and disposal, to support sustainable, peaceful life. We must do this quickly.
Core Question
What goals, measures, principles, characteristics, and benefits of industrial systems do stakeholders think would optimally serve a sustainable, peaceful quality of life in North America?
IntelliSynthesis: A new way to relate, think, and invest
The foundation of CAPSI
Advance personal and organizational interests within a dialogue for mutual benefit…edit
Expand your thinking to include the whole community and system
Radical Inclusion
Inquiry-Based Dialogue
Meeting Vitality
Every Person is Unique
Collaborative Industrial Optimization
Whole Industrial Systems Planning and Investment
Freight Transportation and Industrial Systems
North American Freight Forum
RE-SEED
RE-GLASS
REC/Rail Energy Efficiency IntelliConference
RE-FOREST Sustainable Forestry Business Plan
ATA/Trucking
Water
Freight Transportation and Economic Development
Freight Transportation and Rural Quality of Life
Freight Transportation and Urban Quality of Life
OnTrackPhiladelphia
Freight Transportation and Land Use Planning
Full Lifecycle Analysis of Industrial Systems
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Analysis and Tool
Stakeholders
Policymakers
Railroads
Investors
Corporations
Environmental advocates
Unions
Citizens
Superheroes.life
What are the key elements of an action plan?
A goal has been envisioned
Someone has committed to achieving that goal
The group is distinguishing the complexion of that goal
The group has determined who the goal impacts and who is best to have participate in the action plan
The group is thinking out how to embark toward that goal and then how to advance through all the phases
Our civilization can redesign its industrial systems, from agriculture and mining to consumption, recycling, and disposal, to support sustainable, peaceful life. We must do this quickly.
Welcome to the place for contributing your unique perspective to this inclusive, multistakeholder redesign. This is the Action Plan for conceiving and implementing that redesign.
The question of whether human nature is inherently self-centered or altruistic is answered over and over every day. It has been the outsize, long-lived impact of our negative acts compared to the short-term impact of kindness that has perpetuated this uncertainty. The world would not work nearly as well as it does if people weren’t predominantly looking out for each other.
Competition for self-interest that is too narrow has limited the efficiency of our industrial systems.
It is time to bring a new level of collaboration, coordination, and trust to the forefront of commerce, advocacy, and governance.
We are not short of intelligence or commitment, but we have been woefully short of the forums and methodologies for gathering and acting on that intelligence.
Let’s work together on this pragmatic approach to solving real problems. Now is the time to create a world that works.
Everything we need to accomplish at speed and scale can be successfully launched by first getting the use of the wheel right for moving heavy weight over land. The second is to appreciate that there is enough freight for all modes, and all modes will benefit from the design of an optimal multimodal system. We’ll be off and running then.
We lead with… An Action Plan for Rail Industry Growth in Service to All Stakeholders
Half-page SRF Background and half-page OTNA Background
OnTrackNorthAmerica (OTNA) is a non-profit, multi-stakeholder, action think tank for expanding the capacity and footprint of freight rail transportation in service to the economy, environment, and quality of life. OTNA advances a new model for business, commerce, and governance to solve the multi-dimensional problems of our times. We are spearheading the Continental Action Plan for Sustainable Industry (CAPSI), a breakthrough collaboration between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This critical initiative is undergirded with a complete set of principles, tools, and methodologies for accomplishing what most citizens know is now needed—a new path forward for our civilization. Our Collaborative Industrial Optimization infrastructure planning initiatives expand investment in rail transportation, implement advanced models for planning, and advance coordination and collaboration among industry, government, and community. By transforming the principles that have led our society away from efficient rail movement of goods and material over land, we will deliver cascading benefits to the economy, environment, and quality of life for all communities.
What are the stakeholder sectors that comprise do we catalog stakeholder groups into?
Academia
University programs
Think-tanks
Advocacy
Foundations
Nonprofits
Community
Residents
Represent
Government
Federal
State
Local
Industry
Rail-related
Suppliers
Shippers
Service Providers
Consultants
Associations
Landowners
Real Estate
Non-rail related
Labor
Unions and Membership
Non-union organizations
Media
Industry
Non-industry
RE-SEED, Rail Enabled Sustainable Environment and Economic Development
Why is now the time for a comprehensive freight rail growth strategy?
Environmental issues, increasing road congestion and costs, and battered public sector budgets present an opportune time for railroads to align their business models with the continent's best interests.
Railroads are vital to North America’s economic growth and environmental stability. Railroads are:
Environmentally efficient
Capital efficient
Space efficient
Railroads in North America are a $100 billion-a-year industry, while trucking is a $1 trillion-a-year industry. The growth opportunity for rail is immense.
Investors, infrastructure funds, and shippers will provide ample capital for this growth strategy, which aligns with the urgent need for sustainable supply chains worldwide.
Projects, companies, communities, and investors will enjoy a higher return on investment as part of a growing rail industry.
Freight Transportation efficiency is a cause the entire continent can rally behind!
Why does the rail industry need a new approach? (All solvable!)
It is content with long-term incremental growth while losing market share with no discernable industry-wide growth strategy.
Given railroads' inherent contribution to addressing public sector concerns, it has a mismatched approach to government relations.
It has a defensive approach to community relations that misses the opportunity to inspire a groundswell of support for railroads.
It has a weak relationship with capital providers compared to industries with less resilience, importance, and opportunity.
It is slow to adopt new technologies or technologies proven effective outside North America.
It has not been facile at the level of collaboration needed to work effectively with other critical stakeholder groups.
It has suffered from labor-management relations that are hurtful to all sides.
More than 90% of industrial properties are developed as truck-served only.
Landowners, developers, and shippers are challenged to address the complexity of rail logistics and infrastructure.
Borrowing the required capital for rail infrastructure is more challenging than funding land and facilities.
Most economic development agencies are inadequately trained in rail-enabled economic development.
Despite its inherent efficiencies, it is not reaching its potential for leading the continent to freight system sustainability.
Supply chain Sustainability
What new approaches will forward growth?
After years of losing market share to trucks, railroads now have an enormous opportunity to recapture volume and drive meaningful growth if they adopt a comprehensive growth strategy.
Positive, proactive government relations will lead to supportive policies and additional public sector investment in railroads.
The key is collaboration and letting go of the outdated expectation that competition is an appropriate driver of commerce and governance.
Rail projects will attract more investment when thoughtfully conceived to support entire supply chains and industrial systems.
Adopting new technologies, or those proven effective overseas, will bring innovation, safety improvements, and productivity gains to North American railroads.
Building positive relationships with shippers, carriers, governments, and other stakeholders will deliver enormous benefits and open new growth paths.
More collaborative and positive approaches to labor management will attract thousands of new workers, offsetting retirements in a difficult hiring market.
Railroads are an efficient and cost-effective way to move freight. Changing the way railroads do business will help everyone achieve their sustainability goals.
Here is a list from long ago
Current North American economic development offers the rail industry a historic opportunity to significantly increase its market share of freight movements.
The rail industry can adopt a growth-oriented vision and implement a comprehensive business plan appropriate for a national industrial sector.
Industry performance measures can be tailored to accurately portray the status of local rail service in relation to industry-wide measures.
Private-sector investment and debt financing for freight railroads can be dramatically expanded, removing the needless constriction of decades of limited capital.
Growth capital, abundantly available for acquisitions, can be brought to existing operations.
When we bridge their gap in understanding, banks in the United States and around the world will fund North American railroads to the highest level in history.
The Railroad Credit and Financial Analysis Tools Project, previously supported by the USDOT and approved for funding by former House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf, could provide much of the impetus for reconnecting private sector capital with rail-related businesses.
Public-sector support programs for rail development can be leveraged for more significant benefits by thoughtfully integrating with private-sector investment.
The railroad industry’s multi-million dollar lobbying investment can be more effective by embracing positive government relations with Congress, state, and local governments.
Our government relations will gain momentum when we lead with an educational program rather than the typical financial influence campaigns of inconsequential special interest groups.
Communicating the financial heft of the rail supply and rail finance community can powerfully shift Congress’ view of the importance of freight railroads.
The rail associations’ legislative efforts and subsequent legislation will benefit the larger operators best when designed to support the smallest rail operations and smaller shippers everywhere.
Legislated support programs would benefit rail-related companies more by connecting this support to individual and system-wide growth measures. The resultant growth environment will make better use of limited government funds and promote the best interests of all.
Multi-party, collaboratively conceived legislation will produce government programs that contribute to public and private-sector goals and become immediately functional and accessible.
By thinking outside the box, many government support programs could be brought to bear for railroads and rail-related businesses.
The time is now for industry marketing to portray the undeniable benefits of rail. We must shift from images of speeding locomotives to images of railroads’ contribution to air quality, road safety, land use, fuel consumption, and capital efficiency.
Here is a list of problems, USDOT Talking Points
The opportunity for the administration to champion the intelligent development of a North American freight rail and logistics system
What is really going on in the freight rail universe?
Abandonment stats
PA maps
Intermodal is a compromise, transition is inefficient, never-ending increase in trucks
Conserving costs by consolidating the network, less customer service, less marketing people, less operations, volume, not custom
Focusing on corridors instead of complete systems
Mired in competition, Ed Ellis, Iowa Pacific ethanol plants
“Its just as hard to do a small deal as a large deal, so why do the small deals
Myth that there is just less goods that ship by rail
NYC and Pepsi bottling plants, Brooklyn, 7000 truck trips to one plant
Demise of entire branch line network
PTC as an opportunity, rather than a burden
What can the rail industry bring to the table?
The most powerful dialogue the railroads can facilitate is: What do we want our rail system to do for us as a country, a continent, and a hemisphere?
Dynamic support for railroad growth is available from all sectors if the railroads develop performance measures that matter in serving our businesses, our communities, and our countries and then organize their business plans around those performance measures.
How many businesses are served by railroads?
How many towns are served by railroads?
What is the availability of local rail service in major metropolitan areas, both in the inner city as well as the surrounding region?
For businesses that are rail-served, does the quality of rail service support or limit their overall productivity?
Are rail-served businesses provided with access to the entire continental rail system, efficiently and reasonably priced, or are they prevented from buying from or distributing to parts of the continent because of competitive blocking tactics of the rail carriers?
The North American freight railroad system could be one of the most well-capitalized growth industries in the world.
There are several areas of activity that the industry must embrace for this to occur.
Take responsibility for its future.
The most important innovation for the long-term productivity of the railroad industry is to shift from competition to coordination and collaboration as the driving principle of interaction. Competition is for sports and games, not vital infrastructure arenas like transportation and energy.
Speak and act as a contribution to society.
Develop, communicate, and launch a growth business plan for the industry.
Bring its suppliers, customers, lenders, and investors into productive partnerships to grow the industry and encourage effective government support.
Understand that governments at all levels want to help.
Understand that citizens will wholeheartedly support government policy that encourages rail transportation.
Expand its industry approaches to financing and investment beyond appeals for superficial government support.
Co-create a continental freight rail growth strategy.
Place railroads, collaboration, and common sense at the heart of our economic and environmental revitalization.
A dynamic two-year action-planning process, followed by OnTrack2030, its five-year implementation.
Participate in a new approach to industrial systems design and investment for a sustainable world.
What shifts can we advance for the productive growth of railroads?
Knowledge Hoarding shifts to Knowledge Sharing
Competition to win shifts to competition to serve, which inherently moves to coordination and collaboration
Streamlining/Rationalizing shifts to Growth/Building
Secrecy/Mystery/Myth shifts to Communication + Education
The message of dire consequences shifts to a message of Great investment
Focus on long-haul shifts to Focus on long haul + local + inner city
Independent Communities, councils + commissions -> Large group, multi-stakeholder thinking
National uni-lateral planning shifts to North America International Coordination
Corporation law based on anti-trust and competition to win shifts to trust and competition to serve
There is tremendous pent-up support for freight RRs that can be unleashed if they claim their rightful place in serving society’s needs.
1. Growth Business Plan for Rail
Short-Haul
Commodities
Direct Rail
Opti modalism
Freight Transportation Public Policy Improvement; Comprehensive
Branch Line Viability
End R.L. Abandonment
Freight Transportation Land Use Code
Value proposition, principles
Commercially based goals and measures
Total stakeholder inclusion
Branch network integration
Modal optimization
Synergizing business, government, and private sector plans with public sector policies
Leading-edge communications technology
State of the art dialogue techniques
Goals and Measures
Direct rail service/direct truck service
Equitable access to continental marketplace for both sourcing and distributing
New grasp of commercial value of rail service
Develop industry wide integrated metrics and local carbon expense per ton/mile
Where all U.S. states are working in concert on growing rail service, streamlining supply chains, and returning to environmental stability.
What is missing in the rail industry’s current approach?
Industry-at-large
Gov’t relations
Capitalization
Market relations
Gov’t relations
Lobbyists sharp elbows – activities can be made more effective, shift from opposition to collaboration for growth
Message mismatched to the industry
Problem – RRs are one of the country's strongest assets
Remedy – Explored via 300+ meetings with Congress, Executive Branch
Rail industry-government relations are off the playing field
Problem – in most arenas where policy is happening
Remedy – we have identified all the arenas and established relations
Capitalization
Gov’t support programs developed without knowledge of private sector finance
Industry excellent credit record + stable asset/collateral base
Orient around a networked industry rather than a corridor industry
Open to innovation + entrepreneurship, smaller RRs, small business
Collaboration vs Competition
Market Relations
A pricing structure that garners ill will and offends many
Limiting customer access to one railroad’s service network renders the entire rail industry less useful and less attractive to the marketplace, thereby stifling growth
Land value in relation to single-line rail service and dual-line rail service vs. truck-only service.
Impact on sales/ cycle leader
Impact on sales price/ lease price
Impact on size of investment by buyer/tenant
Benefits/costs to local & state government
R.E. Sales tax
R.E. tax on tenants
Job creation within new companies
R.E. taxes on railroad land
Impact on local + state roads
Impact on future land sales
What isn’t working in industrial systems investment?
OBSTACLES THAT ONTRACKAMERICA WILL REMEDY
DISCONNECTED INTELLIGENCE
There are many individuals, entities and commissions producing studies, reports, and recommendations. They currently lack a forum and method for effective interaction.
RAILROAD INDUSTRY’S MISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT
Railroad management relates to government from an overly defensive posture that undermines the full possibility of effective government support.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD ARE ORIENTED TOWARD ADJUDICATING, RATHER THAN PLANNING
Transportation funding is administered according to individual programmatic imperatives. Their missions do not include system wide objectives and planning.
FACTIONS COMPETE FOR GOVERNMENT ATTENTION
We have mistakenly allowed competition in the marketplace to spill over into competition for governance of the marketplace. In the face of this jockeying for government attention, policy makers receive an incomplete picture of commerce and its impact on overall productivity and quality of life.
Shift the fundamental principle of commercial activity from capitalizing inefficiencies to capitalizing efficiencies at the whole-system, lifecycle level.
Implement an inquiry-based, large-group, multi-stakeholder dialogue methodology with the autonomy and integrity to convene without vested interest domination.
Enroll Class I railroad management in their own profitable opportunity of leading the country in economic and environmental regeneration from a surge in rail development.
But our systems for gathering that intelligence into smart commercial activity and public policy are woefully inadequate. Competition for individuals to gain straightjackets, otherwise smart individuals, riveting their intelligence and attention on their personal vested interests. Collaboration and coordination expand our individual and collective intelligence into productive plans and investments.
A society that ignores the fundamentals of the efficient movement of heavy weight and people over land has little chance of thriving in our new world of limited resources. We have to organize around the comparative benefits of each transportation mode without being attacked for “picking winners and losers.” Pitting trucks and railroads against each other in the marketplace is self-defeating when we need integration and collaboration for systemwide productivity.
Here, we must distinguish between the critical infrastructure and consumer product markets. Passionate marketplace competition is fine for toothpaste and beer. Still, when building sustainable infrastructure systems, we must move beyond the myth that the marketplace somehow alchemizes self-serving business activities into efficient systems.
Even while we now advise twelve North American ports on their rail development, we are facing a critical need to shorten international supply chains to support reshoring and reindustrialization. We must buck up and train ourselves to speak with our clients engaging and compellingly. From my experience meeting with thousands of individuals in government and the rail industry, we are not short of intelligence. There is ample intelligence as this is particularly an industry where people invest their entire careers. What we are lacking are the effective means for gathering that intelligence into smart policies and programs.
People are smart, committed and passionate. But our systems for gathering that intelligence into smart commercial activity and public policy are woefully inadequate. Competition for individual gain straightjackets otherwise smart individuals to rivet their intelligence and attention on their personal vested interests. Collaboration and coordination expand our individual and collective intelligence into productive plans and investments. When we first came to Washington, DC with our thinking about the value of railroads to the country and the opportunity of increasing attention and investment, we were received with open arms by Congress and the Executive Branch. Why that progress was shunned and stymied by the rail industry’s lobbyists demonstrates how otherwise good people will stand in the way of industry progress. We are almost all compensated now to maintain the status quo, which is usually gamed toward inefficiency. As soon as an idea for progress and efficiency comes along, it appears as a threat to our family.
There is substantial capital sitting on the sidelines or being invested in businesses that are not improving society but are only reconfiguring the game to produce profits for some, losses for others, and little progress for communities.
Our progress as a society depends on understanding that narrowly conceived, vested interest policies are predominantly a result of competition not corruption. Because we have embraced competition for government attention for individual gain, we have rendered whole system, whole community productivity impossible. In the process, we all suffer.
Let me relate a story that illuminates the problem. In 1998, I was meeting with the Assistant Secretary of Transportation, Jack Basso about a solution we had developed
Government officials taking campaign contributions from the private sector to favor vested-interests begins with has, or consultants taking money from government agencies and then writing reports that ignore the realities of private-sector vested interest domination of markets?
Hard to measure which is more common, but we do know that consultants leave behind a telltale trail of 2” thick reports. In the case of our industry, they are called State Rail Plans. These are otherwise good people, that don’t walk around thinking they are being bad. For the sake of our children’s future, we call on all of us to rise above our personal fears about making the next sale and stand for producing meaningful and honest plans that address the shortcomings of the current rail.
My story in the railroad industry begins 25 years ago when I found out two things. I was introduced to I stood and watched a 100-car Norfolk Southern coal train pass by going west out of downtown Philadelphia on its way to Harrisburg. Out of curiosity, I placed my hand on the track after the last car was out of sight and was surprised to find that it wasn’t even hot, and I could rest my hand in full contact with the steel.
Our founders championed a form of government that served the people. Yet we have made a national pastime out of belittling the possibility that the government can assist the private sector and communities in smart planning of complex commercial systems to serve more than vested interests. ----------------------
Can’t have Climate Smart Commodities with Climate Stupid Transportation
Establish a new approach to public-sector regulation of commerce that empowers “trust” rather than “anti-trust”
Objective Government Relations
Reorienting commerce and governance around collaboration and coordination empowers everyone’s individual and collective intelligence.
Competition as a guiding principle in commerce and policymaking has led to narrow, individualized, and localized gain. This orientation in society’s design is inefficient, wasteful, and outdated.
“Full employment” is a faulty objective for an economic system. It is time to reorient our society around “full enjoyment.”
Case studies and pilot projects are fine when you are out to repeat the past. When you want to create a new future, there are no case studies, only current dynamics and new possibilities. The Wright Brothers weren’t operating from case studies.
Solving problems begins with imagining a new future and then clarifying the gaps and the issues.
Imagine a world where all of the resources and effort applied to solve problems were instead applied to create new possibilities. The path to a world that works for everyone is to quickly transition commerce and governance from competition for narrow gain to coordination and collaboration for the greatest good. On that path, we can solve all of our challenges.
The world has only one way out of the mess we are in. That path requires us to let go of competition in business and governance and embrace coordination and collaboration for the greatest good. And supply chains are the perfect arena for examining and improving our conduct as individuals and organizations in business and governance. We have been doing frontline field research for 29 years and can report back that competition as a path has run its course. Along the way, we have investigated, conceived, discovered, and invented a complete set of tools for this large-scale multistakeholder thinking, planning, and acting. Our survival on this planet depends on our ability to use these tools to create a new future together. It includes everyone at every level. Relationships and dialogues are tools too. It’s all about energy, energy is the exchange.
We can think together. People are generally smart, our systems for gathering that intelligence into smart business activity and public policies are woefully inadequate.
The environment and the community have an increasing say in the marketplace. Both must have a full seat at any industrial planning process.
Our current system of commerce and public policy formulation has directly led to the underutilization of railroads and the overinvestment in rubber tires rolling on rough concrete and asphalt.
Any nation that continues to move capital toward the inefficiencies is heading for environmental and societal collapse.
Competition for individual gain straightjackets otherwise smart individuals to rivet their intelligence and attention on their own narrow vested interests. Collaboration and coordination expand our individual and collective intelligence into productive plans and investments. When we first came to Washington, DC with our thinking about the value of railroads to the country and the opportunity of increasing attention and investment, we were received with open arms by Congress and the Executive Branch. Why that progress was shunned and stymied by the rail industry’s lobbyists demonstrates how otherwise good people will stand in the way of industry progress. We are almost all compensated now to maintain the status quo, which is usually gained toward inefficiency. As soon as an idea for progress and efficiency comes along, it appears as threat to our family.
The railroad industry does not have a national whole industry growth plan. There is only so much an industry can advance without one. Instead of an industry with a powerful message of what railroads contribute to society, it suffers from a giant energy leak in its message delivery as it serves less and less of a growing nation.
There is substantial capital sitting on the sidelines or being invested in businesses that are not improving society but are only reconfiguring the game to produce profits for some, losses for others, and little progress for communities.
We must proceed with a whole system/lifecycle approach to constructing, locating, and integrating industrial activity with transportation. What we build and where we build is as important as where and how we move goods and materials. Give the Port of Long Beach BCA as an example.
Whole systems’ thinking, planning, and acting is not socialism or communism. It is smart. It is exciting, rewarding, intelligent, and profitable. Thinking, planning, and acting at the level of whole industrial, human, and ecological systems is the only path forward to a fully functioning world. The best news is that whole-systems thinking elegantly organizes all relevant ideas and plans so that progress is much easier and constructive, not destructive.
The railroad network is a system. Forestry products are a system. Trucking is a system. Mining and deployment of each natural resource is a system. As long as we continue to let workers and employees be the tail wagged by the big business dog, we will continue a downward slide into dysfunctionality. We are not thinking smartly at the national industrial policy level. SABIC investments, ethanol example, stranded investments.
Because moving heavy weight over land remains one of the most important elements of our society, getting the use of the wheel moving in the right direction can turn the entire society from waste to well-being.
When we integrate industrial systems with related transportation and energy infrastructure and land, we’ll have an investment environment that is compellingly growth-oriented, profitable and stable.
We can no longer consider that transportation can be developed in blind service to increased industrial activity.
Illuminate how rebalancing the road-rail relationship for moving freight and people is the key to unlocking a sustainable economy and saving the environment and the world.
Most research efforts are disconnected from each other
We are not providing thoughtful, objective counsel to the Congressional legislative process
Consulting firms are in the business of prescribing, not implementing
Consulting reports are mistakenly considered plans
Attention is riveted to the current firefight among vested interest representatives in DC
Special interest representatives are pulling the system in different directions, not toward optimization of the whole system
Departments of transportation are organized around project spending, not system wide results
Policy and programs are increasingly geared to major projects, while local transportation development languishes
There is a lack of whole system metrics that enable rational comparison of road and rail freight transportation
The problems are thought to be a matter of funding, while better planning and integration would ensure a greater return on investment
OnTrackNorthAmerica’s fund-raising is limited by folks waiting for the dominant industry actors to signal their blessing
Child behind a sofa-dysfunctional
Industry-level management housed in DC federal relations oriented organization
Risk & return thresholds
Competition/ Collaboration Friction
Have you ever heard of the Scheffel Bogie? Invented by Harold Scheffel in ______, it is the predominate truck design on railcars throughout South Africa. If you are a railroad mechanical veteran, or a member of the casting committee at AAR’s TTCI test facility you know about the Scheffel Bogie. “Bogie”, by the way, is the international name for what we call a railcar truck in North America. Now that a record 375-car, 26,000-ton train rolled down the track on Scheffel Bogies in South Africa, it is appropriate to reflect on why this remarkably efficient equipment would be resisted and ignored by North American railroad interests.
Is it due to the overarching observable dynamic that in our society, capital flows toward the inefficiencies in most major commercial arenas? Let’s consider the basics of how the Scheffel Bogie and the North American railcar truck compare. We begin with the screeching noise that we hear from the track when a North American train rounds a curve
Evaluate the full lifecycle impact of industrial activity on the local and global environment and quality of life
All supply chains are local, regional, and global
Develop individual real estate parcels, corridors, states, and regions with the entire global marketplace and its supply chains in mind
Competition is an insufficient, inefficient, and inappropriate orientation for designing industrial activity
The marketplace does not alchemize the inefficiencies of individual business investments into productive systems
Thinking in systems is not a distraction
Including all stakeholder perspectives is key to plans and policies that work
Beyond financial resources and man-made assets like equipment and structures, capital includes land, air, water, human intelligence, and quality of life
Getting the use of the wheel right for moving goods and people over land will deliver cascading benefits to the economy, environment, and quality of life
Design capital investment to reward investors for the benefits to the whole system or community, not a narrow slice of the system
The shortcomings of competition for narrow gain are not just evident in corporations, they are present in almost all quarters of commercial activity, academia, science, law, public policy, and planning
Almost all interactions, from one-on-one to large group discussions, meetings, summits, and conferences, utilize an inadequate design and can be transformed
Truth-telling is paramount
Past and current realities, gaps, agendas, biases
Future possibilities, challenges, and opportunities
Dirty big secret—Consultants
The difference between conducting BCA’s simply to earn more project grants versus conducting BCA’s to learn how to improve projects
Why so many consultants’ reports deliver content and not results, including who their biggest clients are
Our general blindness to the difference between studying problems and doing something about problems
The invisible barrier between government-sponsored planners and infrastructure entities and private-sector producers, distributors, and transportation providers.
Future population and economic growth will place a much heavier demand on our freight transportation system.
Railroads are the most energy-efficient, space-efficient, cost-efficient, and environmentally preferable method of moving heavy weight across the land.
Trains move one ton of freight on the same amount of diesel fuel four to five times farther than the similar movement by truck.
Our freight highway system is at or near capacity. Future capacity increases are only possible at significant expense in dollars, highway casualties, congestion, aesthetics, and damage to the environment.
Rail freight transportation is underutilized. Railroads can expand capacity with economical investment and minimal costs to environment, space, and aesthetics.
Railroad capacity can be expanded by: 1) double and triple tracking along existing roadbeds, 2) increased use of technology, 3) removal of bottlenecks, 4) laying new lines, and 5) maintaining and upgrading existing lines.
Class I railroads often operate in a fighting mode when real partnerships would serve all interests better.
There is a large and costly disconnect between public policy for economic development and freight rail transportation planning.
While increased public investment in railroads is appropriate to rebalance our utilization of the various modes, ample private sector capital could be invested in long-range freight transportation projects. Significant railroad investment does not have to come solely from the U.S. Treasury.
Barriers to the flow of private-sector capital investment in the rail industry exist. This undercapitalization constrains the industry's capacity to serve our country's growing demands.
Strategic Rail Finance has identified these barriers and is generating the political program and coordinated action to expand the railroad industry's access to capital.
Class II and III freight railroads operate in a legislative and regulatory environment diminished by outdated, illogical requirements.
Public awareness and appreciation for the value of railroads remains largely dormant. When this reservoir of potential support is effectively harnessed, the public will approve of legislators in a mutual concern for railroads.
The situation calls for effective communication of a good cause, resulting in the reorienting of national transportation planning and investment.
We have conceived new, innovative legislation to remove the regulatory barriers to railroads accessing more capital in the private sector. Strategic Rail Finance is effectively coordinating this program in Congress and the Executive Branch to introduce and pass progressive rail legislation.
How we invest in industrial development, residential development, land use, and transportation is critical to sustainability-they are all related
Progress revolves around collaboration, whole-system planning, and the efficient use of the wheel
Currently, the driving principle in the world is that you are supposed to move capital into projects, industries, regions, and countries in a way that maximizes your return on investment as quickly and narrowly as possible, sharing as little of the benefits from the efficiencies that that capital makes possible. As little contribution to the surrounding ecosystem and community as possible.
Perhaps the most negatively influential notion in history was when we allowed business leaders in the 19th century to mischaracterize what Charles Darwin said and wrote in Origin of Species.
Competition has been embraced as the primary orienting principle in commerce and governance. No marketplace mechanism somehow alchemizes individually centered actions into efficient, well-working systems.
Collaboration and coordination offer a decisive reorientation of human affairs from interacting to win and take to interacting to contribute and give. This applies to two-person meetings, national governance, and entire industrial systems’ planning.
The United States Constitution was a breakthrough in its time. Unfortunately, it was based on a belief that humans would always form into factions, and the best we could do was manage these factions from gaining too much influence.
We can’t reform business or government effectively by continuing to think that we can somehow manage our mistrust by pitting entities and individuals against each other. Instead, we must establish both government and commerce “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
As a civilization, we have not gathered around a set of goals and ethics for life as a human species. It is no wonder that we are in chaos.
We are suffering from an ongoingly increasing transactional cost of mistrust.
It is time to reorient society and its commercial and governing interactions around trust.
We are not getting out of here alive if we continue to view other human beings as untrustworthy.
This does not mean that all individuals are immediately trustworthy, now and in the future. We still have to shift to parenting and educating children to be loving, peaceful, and trusting and deal appropriately with aberrant behavior.
A National Action Plan for Sustainable Industry is a collaborative cradle-to-grave system plan for all supply chains of critical products for human life to co-exist with the environment and communities.
Transportation, infrastructure, and supply chains too often developed in local and organizational silos must be reconceived as whole industrial systems.
Industrial development must not only have commercial viability but must also serve the environment and communities.
Building sustainable industrial systems requires complete lifecycle benefit-cost understanding and a correlated revamping of performance measures.
While truck transportation must continue its important role, rail transport's energy, space, and capital efficiencies must be optimized and integrated for a well-working society.
Rail service, though requiring more planning, coordination, and investment, often offers more advantages than the default mode of trucking, which has the public sector providing a network of roads for easy access.
If we continue to invest capital, that being money, land, resources, and human ingenuity, in silos and individual commercial projects without the industrial systems approach that I am advocating, we will build ourselves into a bigger hole than the giant one we are already in. Fortunately, it is much more profitable to think, plan, and invest in whole systems. We cannot spend our way to a new future when those investments exacerbate and amplify existing inefficiencies. We have to understand and address the underlying flaws in how civilization has misconceived itself. This is not about philosophy or a fight over this ism or that ism.
But we must first grasp the current futility of how capital flows chaotically into new industrial development.
The world is not hurtling toward environmental oblivion because of a lack of awareness or intelligence. It continues along this ruinous path because we are stuck thinking that if we only compete more and better, we will somehow get out of this mess. There is one fundamental truth that must be embraced right now. We are only getting out of here alive through unprecedented collaboration, coordination, and trust.
Humanity's greatest mistake has been focusing capital deployment, resources, and commerce on personal gain rather than the community and individual projects rather than systems. We have to recognize that important logic confidently, and stare down once and for all those claiming we are better off if we are all competing. More than ever, we can reconceive the critical industrial supply chains on a global level, such that each project and each community is well-placed and connected locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We have to shift into placing each phase of the key industrial systems we need to survive in logical juxtaposition with all other elements of these supply chains.
Teaching CIO to planners, government agencies, economic development directors, and logistics professionals so they can co-lead the shift from the status quo to the community -based decision a
Of course, we don’t only need a new strategic mineral supply; we need to be mining, transporting, processing, and distributing sensibly to minimize logistics impacts.
We have been barking up the wrong tree by emphasizing individual intelligence and now Artificial Intelligence while missing our collective intelligence.
The world’s embrace of rubber tires on rough asphalt and concrete as the primary method of moving heavy goods and people over land provides unequivocal proof that we have gone down the wrong path
I continue to apply as much influence as I can to contribute this message to the Biden administration. Our anticipated federal investment in transportation infrastructure has been conceived with a fatal flaw. With its primary focus on increasing supply chain capacity and throughput, the underlying inefficiencies of our current freight transport land use system will only be further exacerbated, diminishing our future sustainability.
We will not solve the supply chain problem by narrowly thinking we have a supply chain problem. We have a societal problem.
This societal problem can be addressed, but only by thinking beyond the supply chain problem, railroad problem, ports problem, ocean carrier problem, trucking problem, China problem, labor problem, or consumer problem. The problem is in the principles and methods for interacting and planning together. Many otherwise intelligent and experienced individuals, for little fault of their own, are operating at a fraction of their potential productivity. That is a direct outcome of pitting individuals, businesses, organizations, and political jurisdictions against each other. Our collective progress has been throttled due to a societal problem that must be addressed. Each individual domain of supply chain activity is contributing to inefficiency and environmental degradation because there is next to no whole systems planning and absolutely accounting of what all these activities add up to.
The competition that we are all mired in is perfectly fine for horse races and toothpaste. It is wholly inadequate and outdated as a principle for society to base its infrastructure and social service delivery systems.
We can no longer allow superficial pride in “the American way” or “Capitalism” to distract us from understanding that we have built into our institutions and our way of life, really our society, a fundamentally flawed expectation that competition in the marketplace and competition for political power can deliver intelligent, efficient systems.
All progress depends on systems. Everything is systemic. Each of us is a system. And we exist within other systems, both natural and societal. Understanding this empowers us to be effective in turning our inefficient systems into well-functioning ones.
We included in the 2021 Nevada State Rail Plan, a concise section on the effectiveness of this deployment of “Radical Inclusion.” We are proving in Nevada, working with over 250 stakeholders from all corners of the state, which including all perspectives improves, rather than constricts, collective progress.
This is not just an American issue. Nations across the globe have embraced various forms of competition that benefit some, not all. Humanity must now rapidly shift beyond competition for narrow gain to embrace coordination and collaboration for mutual benefit. Our productivity will soar, and we will find ourselves equipped to address what currently has us in peril.
Understanding that including all perspectives is the key to successful policies and plans, we have created the North America Freight Forum to facilitate the most important stakeholder dialogues for optimizing the efficient deployment of land, space, energy, materials, and human and financial capital toward supply chain systems that serve all of our needs.
There is no shortage of individual intelligence or commitment to the common good. We simply chose the wrong path in the 19th century when America was at the forefront of answering civilization’s critical question of the fundamental nature of human beings and how we should organize “modern” society. Those already in powerful control of commerce and government thought it quite handy to promote a mid-reading of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Darwin emphasized the collaborative orientation of communities in nature.
It is critical to our future to reflect on what Darwin actually said, not what we have been told he said. What we find is that Charles Darwin almost never uses the term “Survival of the Fittest.” Instead, he wrote that species, ecosystems, communities, and individuals organize themselves around the long term interests of the community and future generations. In nature, the community provides the best perches, the best food, and the best resources to those amongst them that are strongest and therefore produce the healthiest offspring. He was inspired by the sacrifice and commitment of individuals to place their communities’ best interests before their own. Harmony with the community, not domination of the community, is what he observed. Charles Darwin said that individuals in nature are inherently social and communal and that is what provides sustainability.
So how did we come to misapply what Darwin wrote in Origin of the Species? We remember that this was the mid-19th century when American and British industrialists desperately wanted a belief system to justify their accumulation of large amounts of control and cash in their own hands, not spread around to their brethren. So, they sponsored members of a new intellectual field called Social Philosophy, Herbert Spencer among them, to promote a misreading of The Origin of Species and give their domination cover. The public’s access to the actual book was rare, influenced instead by public talks and articles by these social philosophers.
I will never forget what I discovered from my readings of Charles Darwin’s own writings outside of The Origin of Species. He relates that as he observed the complex interworking of plants and animals, in tide pools and hatcheries, he was struck by enormous intricacy, beauty, and selflessness. He said that after all explanations are posed, including Natural Selection, he arrived beyond rationality where he simply appreciates the presence of God.
As we face a world where environmental stress and extreme violence are having an outsize impact on our peace and prosperity do, we continue to think, plan, and act as if people are inherently self-centered which clearly limits our power to address these challenges, or do we embrace the reality of man’s inherent commitment to the community and our offspring?
Working collaboratively among business, government, and communities, we can move beyond incremental progress to place railroads at the dynamic center of an optimal transportation system for a revitalized economy and environment
Infrastructure is more than roads and highways. Warehouses are infrastructure; factories are infrastructure; utility service is infrastructure; air and water are infrastructure.
One of the top five societal breakdowns is the lack of awareness of the implications of featuring roads and trucks to move freight instead of rail lines and trains.
United States, Mexico, and Canada are squandering land like Brazil is burning up the Amazon Rainforest as we rapidly build truck-centric warehouses, factories, ports, and mines.
The continued misuse of the wheel for moving goods and people over land tells us everything we need to know about what is not working in society and infrastructure planning.
The purpose of business must now shift to serve the community, the environment, and the shareholder in that order. Any other orientation is investment folly.
In the 21st century, we can fully attend to the entire lifecycle impacts of industrial activity, including transportation, to optimize for a greater return on investment.
We are shuttering military bases, coal-fired power plants, and rail lines with little grasp of their potential value in new industrial supply chains, like forest material processing, recycling, and new energy production.
Rail is critical to solving major national issues like forestry management and strategic mineral production, yet government and the transportation industry are not working together effectively.
Orienting society around competition was the most significant human error in history.
Of course, 19th-century business leaders fostered a misreading of Charles Darwin’s explanation of how communities support their healthiest members for the long-term best interests of the species.
We are still suffering from the ongoingly increasing transactional costs of mistrust. There is no way to get out of our mess through more competition. Society can now make the productive leap to reorienting around collaboration, coordination, and trust.
Specialization without systems thinking is utter stupidity.
Following our current path, we can fund every infrastructure project possible, and we will still end up with a calamitously inefficient system.
We must evolve supply chain planning beyond our narrow focus on shipping more stuff faster.
All supply chains are local, regional, national, continental, and global.
Smart economic development understands how your locale can serve these supply chains.
Thinking, planning, and investing in industrial systems is more elegantly productive and profitable than project-by-project business development.
Artificial Intelligence is an absurd focus for a civilization that urgently needs to practice Collective Intelligence.
Smart folks are conducting volumes of academic research that is rarely read, let alone applied to solving the issues in commerce and government.
Getting our industrial systems organized from extraction and agriculture to processing, manufacturing, distribution, transportation, storage, and consumption is vital to healthy communities, regions, nations, and a world that works.
We are investing in new strategic mineral production with no attention to the coordination of the steps in the supply chain and the transportation efficiency between each step.
With each project approval, our infrastructure investments are taking us two steps ahead and three steps back.
Foreign companies are buying our land at a record pace, and we are making our resources, infrastructure, and space available in the most wasteful manner.
Towns, counties, and states are competing unnecessarily with each other for the subsequent industrial development when collaboration and coordination are required for siting new facilities logically.
Thinking and investing in systems is not communism, socialism, democratic socialism, or any ism. It is just being intelligent and mature.
We are modeling investment that is purposefully designed to synergize with the community and its stakeholders and the environment, generating the return on investment from contributing to the sustainability of the whole system.
We are positioned to shepherd global investment into North American rail-enabled sustainable economic development as a model of the investment strategies that are now needed to improve whole arenas of industrial activity and related public policy.
In order for that investment to have whole systems impact, the “whole system” must be clarified with impact measures. There are no externalities in nature.
The North American Freight Forum is a new model for transparent, productive, multi-stakeholder public policy development and planning.
The wheel is the driving principle that our civilization (“modern civilization”) has applied to commerce and governance, that being… competition for narrow gain. This was a wrong turn for civilization, particularly in the 19th century when “modern” industry, commerce, and government were wrongly twisted for narrow gain. We should have selected collaboration, coordination, and trust. We can transform our civilization and solve all of our life-threatening problems by utilizing a new set of principles, goals, metrics, methods, tools, and practices for the level of effective acting and investing now required for our survival. To learn from every perspective, I have engaged for 40 years with the world’s leaders, its scholars, scientists, policymakers, planners, land developers, transportation providers, elected officials, regulators, citizens, industrialists, and business managers.
This shortcoming is particularly evident in our industrial transportation systems, that misuse the wheel for moving heavy weight over land by over-utilizing rubber tires on rough pavement. At the same time, energy- and space-efficient railroads have 1/10th the overall revenue of the trucking industry.
“North America is severely underutilizing freight railroads at a time when highway congestion, air pollution, and oil dependence threatens our economy and quality of life. While governments are increasingly looking to support rail development, they are challenged to coordinate with businesses that operate on privately-owned infrastructure. Planners and policymakers at all levels need this new framework for effective engagement with the private sector. We can only produce the much-needed expansion of long-haul and local freight rail service through thoughtful, collaborative planning.
OnTrackNorthAmerica, a not-for-profit transportation consultancy and think tank, is spearheading a cutting-edge process for local, regional, national, and continental transportation projects and systems called Collaborative Industrial Optimization
Collaborative Industrial Optimization is a planning and implementation process for ensuring that transportation investments produce measurable and targeted economic, environmental, and community benefits.
This process is our response to the complex challenge of creating an optimal freight transportation system that maximizes the effective utilization of railroads.
What is our responsibility as leaders in industrial activity to our fellow human beings?
How effective is competition for conceiving productive systems?
At the height of our rail network build-out in 1914, when we realized that it would be beneficial to pave roads to access rail lines, instead of orienting around coordination, we leaned on competition, and we are paying the price ever since.
Where would you say environmental impact should be in the order of design priorities of major infrastructure systems?
We can’t recover from the ecological nightmare we are in through more competition.
Basing national funding of infrastructure on a competition for grants among individual project sponsors is wholly inadequate and does not evidence a smart nation.
Investing in a future of increasing freight moving through large ports in the middle of cities across the globe where people are increasingly congregating, and the oceans are rising is a civilization committing suicide.
If there are ten possible locations in the world to mine for lithium, should we be deciding as a civilization that shares one planet where to mine that enables the most efficient logistics and the minimal environmental impact?
One of the biggest hurdles we have right now is that the most successful individuals are only experienced in the marketplace of the last four decades, while that marketplace is no longer here, and the one we have now is about to go through an upheaval unlike anything we have ever seen
Transportation is integral to industrial activity, yet we are not designing them in tandem.
The farther west a state is, the greater rail volume, but the less rail service. This creates a drag on our nation.
Why do you think public-sector transportation plans are almost never read again, the implementation rate is close to zero, and the consulting firms that produce these plans don’t say a word about this dynamic?
Why do you think major consulting firms scrub their publicly funded studies of anything that would anger their primary private-sector clients?
There is no need to compete between modes. There is enough stuff for all modes to move.
Competition for narrow individualized, localized gain throws a wet blanket on the level of thinking brought to commercial activity. Systems are multi-dimensional. Capital investment in the future has to be conceived at a much more multidimensional level than the superficial project level of yesteryear.
Imagine the federal government makes available $30B in low-interest, principal deferred, 35-year term financing for 100% project funding and the capital intensive industry
As we speak, before any of the upcoming massive federal investment is deployed, capital from around the world is already surging into American goods movement infrastructure in the least intelligent manner. The economy is heating up on top of multiple levels of built-in inefficiency that threaten to overwhelm our environmental and congestion relief efforts for years to come.
Ask any of the ten largest industrial development companies in North America how busy they are. They will enthusiastically relate that they are busier than any time in their history. Then ask what percentage of these new buildings are rail-served. They’ll tell you that it is less than 10% and perhaps as low as 2%.
These are not small, inconsequential construction projects. They are in fact, large cement slab and steel buildings covering hundreds of thousands of square feet each surrounded by acres of concrete and asphalt, enabling 100% truck access and onsite trailer parking.
In the Philadelphia metropolitan area, Amazon alone has fifty-seven warehouses completed or in development—all served by trucks and roads, further stressing the increasingly congested I-95 corridor, and completely curb-kicking the opportunity of utilizing the energy-efficient, space saving railroads.
At this critical moment of looming environmental catastrophe and rising concern and investment by communities and government, our private-sector enterprise is flooding capital into long-term infrastructure assets in the most chaotic, unplanned, unsustainable manner possible.
At the forefront of our transformational strategy for sustainable rail-enabled economic development, we mapped all the large warehouses in the state of Nevada. Out of 137 warehouses, primarily built in the last ten years, only one uses rail.
As Nevada is not the only state experiencing a warehouse boom, it is highly relevant to relate how the continuation of this dynamic dooms our ability to address supply chain issues. Consider Pennsylvania and New Jersey, my home and birth states, as the geographic flip side of Nevada and California. Think of how many warehouses have cropped up in Easton, Allentown, Lancaster, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania as well as up and down the New Jersey Turnpike.
Since 70% percent of every truck moving in Nevada is driving to or from California, and since the warehouse and manufacturing boom in Nevada has occurred east of Las Vegas and east of Reno-Sparks, these trucks are driving through the two most populated areas of the state, often coming from California to warehouses and processing facilities in Nevada and then back to California for the next step in the supply chain.
More than the impacts at industrial development sites, the consequences of the goods and people that then move to and from each site are what negatively impacts our environment and quality of community life. Yet, no one, or better said, no institution or agency is at the helm.
How can we finance a freight rail expansion plan?
FREIGHT RAIL FINANCING: GROWTH VS. REHABILITATION
TODAY’S DISCUSSION POINTS
NEW MINDSET: Think Growth to Fund Rehab
The continent needs system-wide “growth”
The railroad industry can grow
This growth calls for unprecedented coordination and collaboration
Capital will flow to a growing rail industry
NEW MINDSET: Think Growth to Fund Rehab
Growth pays for track upgrades
Business demand should drive the upgrade investment
Applies to project level, state level and system level
Example: Iowa Northern Railway/IDOT
CONSOLIDATION WORKED, BUT NOW WHAT?
Freight demand is increasing
Yet rail market share has been decreasing:
Industry has left many geographic markets
Rail lines have been abandoned
Urban rail service has declined
Rural rail service has declined
Smaller shippers have been underserved
Many freight commodities have been ignored
Shorter haul, hi-density lanes have gone to trucks
OBSTACLES TO GROWTH
Rationalizing for decades, now lacking a growth orientation
Lack of a central organizing industry plan
Industry communicates dire needs and impending crisis, rather than opportunity
Industry appeals to government to either:
avoid new legislation, or
establish unconditional tax credits, or
win “turf-battles” with other industry stakeholders
OBSTACLES TO GROWTH, p.2
Shortline railroads and smaller shippers are under supported
Paper barriers and pricing protocols limit market reach of rail users
Rail-related businesses are misunderstood in the lending community
Rail industry does not have a coherent strategy for expanding access to capital
CONTINENT NEEDS SYSTEM WIDE RAIL GROWTH AND WILL SUPPORT IT
There are opportunities to increase market share and serve the continent:
Reemphasize branch line and local, as well as long-haul rail service
More service for smaller shippers as well as large
Redeveloping rural and inner-city service
Address underserved freight commodities
New approaches for hi-density, short-haul movements
Serve the customer with flexibility and dependability
THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR GROWTH
Ongoing freight market demand projected for 30+ years
Operates on a broad base of existing physical infrastructure
Inherent competitive advantage of fuel efficiency
No technological replacement on the horizon
Rail assets are numerous, stable, and appreciating in value
Railroads rarely go out of business
Contribute to state economy by serving other businesses
Outstanding repayment history on state loans
GROWING THE PRIVATE SECTOR RAIL SYSTEM WITH PUBLIC SECTOR SUPPORT
Expand communication of best practices
Develop or expand state rail loan programs
Thoughtful collateral positions on government loans
Stimulate coordination between public and private sector funding sources
Extend due diligence of rail line candidates to include growth capital
GROWING THE PRIVATE SECTOR RAIL SYSTEM WITH PUBLIC SECTOR SUPPORT, p.2
Transform state rail plans from inventory and assessment to growth plans
Insist on system wide (state, regional and national) performance goals
Stabilize regulatory environment to attract more investment in rail growth
Gather stakeholders in unprecedented consensus process for determining what we want from rail system
GROWTH SOLVES FUNDING CHALLENGES
Capital will flow to a growing rail industry
There is evidence of that already
Individual projects will be much easier to finance
Many more projects will be developed and financed
Currently, all industry growth plans are housed within the proprietary business plans of individual rail companies with anti-trust limitations stifling cohesive, industrywide planning
This will not do for such an essential component of our national infrastructure
The expansion plans need to be more comprehensive, multi-faceted, multi-sectored, and collaborative than what we are used to
Businesses, government, capital providers, and the community can work together in support of these expansion plans if the rail industry embraces the full range of public policy goals, including passenger transportation and direct rail service
In every railroad engagement I’ve taken on, I’ve brought a breakthrough in how the community around that railroad understands and appreciates its value. With that understanding, I was able to enroll partners and supporters, from shippers to local banks, county representatives, and state agency staff. Out of that set of partnerships and collaboration, we invented funding approaches that enabled that railroad and that community to grow.
The rail industry can re-orient to serve small as well as large shippers, multi-destination shippers as well as simple origin-destination shippers, and short-haul as well as long-haul freight movements
The lending community and government agencies must be reintroduced to the outstanding creditworthiness of smaller freight railroad projects
State and local governments can establish new freight transportation land use plans that preserve rail rights-of-way for rail development and prohibit development of potential rail-served freight facilities on non-rail served land
Industry and government can align support around the development of private-public sector expansion plans for every line segment in the system
Industry and government can build out and support the branch line network to gather and deliver as much business as possible for the system
The more complete the geographic coverage of the rail network, the more attractive the system is to the shipping community, as they can then access more of the marketplace for selling and sourcing goods and raw materials efficiently without having to add modal transfers
The federal government can apply full environmental and land use cost accounting to investing in and taxing transportation providers’ and shippers’ use of transportation infrastructure
Suppliers and contractors can pin their development and investment strategies around this expansion plan and the accompanying stable regulatory environment for growth
The rail industry can take the lead in reversing the 170-year history of adversarial relations among railroads, shippers, government, and the community, thereby unleashing massive pent-up support for this environmentally- sound, space-saving, economical transportation mode
Conclusion—Pessimism and resignation are the primary impediments to the success of this comprehensive approach. The only path to successfully addressing national policy challenges must include a new level of collaboration and coordination fueled by optimism and mass-produced positivity.
Triple Bottom Line Infrastructure Fund
Advances OnTrack 2025 by providing a vehicle for deploying billions of dollars of capital in infrastructure projects and systems
Committed to the analysis and mitigation of the entire lifecycle impacts of the industrial activities and systems its investments will fund
Capitalized by a community of like-minded private, foundation, and sovereign fund investors
A meaningful alternative to unsubstantiated ESG investing
Enhances ROI for investors and the planet by orienting capital toward long-term sustainable supply chain systems
Amplifies the results of infrastructure investments by integrating private sector capital with upcoming major public sector initiatives
Return-on-Investment
Environmental sustainability
Quality of community life
Community support
Increased profitability, lowered risk
Smart Land Utilization and Land Value Growth
Scalable, networked investments
Long-term marketplace stability
What does OTNA bring to the table regarding a comprehensive, multi-faceted campaign of PR, education, and policy consulting?
Initiatives that lead the way
Collaborative Industrial Optimization redesigns whole industrial systems because moving resources from nature to market sustainably is fundamental to a well-working society.
North American Freight Forum convenes stakeholders around the most significant opportunities for improving supply chain planning and infrastructure investment.
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Project reinvents benefit-cost analysis to guide sustainable highway and railway goods movement investments.
Stakeholder collaboration
We form and facilitate high-performance teams of public and private sector professionals committed to achieving a breakthrough in how their state or region plans and implements industrial development.
We supercharge their process and results with proprietary collaboration practices and tools, elevating the level of collective thinking and action way beyond conventional means.
Our approach was perfected over three decades as trusted advisors overseeing small and large transportation and infrastructure projects across the continent.
Strategic Rail Finance is committed to capitalizing a 5% per year increase in North America’s utilization of freight rail transportation resulting in a cleaner environment with less congestion, and better use of land and other nonrenewable resources. We Design Industrial Systems and Investments for a Sustainable World
OTNA is a non-profit in the business of getting things done.
The Investment Platform for Sustainable Freight Transportation
Where North America creates a national freight infrastructure investment strategy
A Systems Approach to the Profitable Deployment of Capital, Land, Space, Resources, and Supply Chains
Private capital for public benefit for states, regions, Canada, the United States, and Mexico
A 501(c)3 non-profit advancing freight policies, practices, and partnerships to benefit communities, the economy, and the environment.
Stimulate railroads’ contribution to North America’s economic and environmental improvement.
Halve the impact of supply chain logistics by 2030
OnTrackAmerica champions doubling North America’s transportation performance by 2025 through tri-national measures, baselines, targets, and action plans.
OnTrackAmerica champions a tri-national action plan for doubling North America’s transportation performance by 2025.
OnTrackAmerica champions continental, national, and local action plans for doubling North America’s transportation performance by 2025.
OnTrackAmerica champions action plans for doubling North America’s transportation performance by 2025.
OnTrackAmerica champions doubling North America’s transportation performance by 2025.
Transform the inefficiencies within supply chain logistics through new principles of collaboration and coordination
Advance a new paradigm in state rail planning
Establish the full lifecycle benefits and costs of land freight transportation modes. OTNA applies a complete set of lifecycle benefits and costs to measure transportation projects and regional and national systems.
What are we doing?
Collaborative Research and Future Testing
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Analysis
Stakeholder Convening and Problem Solving
OTNA conducts action planning processes that are inclusive of citizens, industry experts, developers, transportation providers, shippers, and government stewards
North American Freight Forum
An IntelliMatrix for North America’s stakeholders to collaboratively design infrastructure and supply chains to support a sustainable future.
OTNA’s North American Freight Forum will provide the new venue and methodology for creating effective policy and programs that support smart industrial development, land use, and freight transportation.
North American Freight Forum convenes stakeholders around the most significant opportunities for improving supply chain planning and infrastructure investment.
Whenever I hear it said that we need “a national dialogue,” as in “we need a national dialogue on gun control,” or police reform, or voter’s rights, I wonder, “where exactly would we have that national dialogue?” In the newspapers? Social media? Courts? The North American Freight Forum is a new institutional model, now urgently needed for government, businesses, and citizens to co-create policies, plans, and investments for a sustainable world. This principled design for the digital age utilizes all participants’ time and intellect to efficiently gather a collective body of thinking across stakeholder groups, jurisdictions, and sectors while preventing any vested interest from controlling or narrowing the dialogue or its outcomes. Until now, there have been no effective forums for “having a national conversation” or solving any issue rationally.
Our nation’s industrial systems, meaning the The National Action Plan for Sustainable Industry sets a new direction for principle-based industrial development.
Until now, there has been no productive venue for “national conversations” about anything, let alone a need as critically urgent as a National Action Plan for Sustainable Industry. The North American Freight Forum answers that compelling need.
Its design allows representatives from all stakeholder groups to integrate their important perspectives into whole systems solutions.
Designing sustainable industrial systems requires the equal involvement of businesses, investors, governments, and citizens.
The NAFF methodology and sponsorship allow vested interests to be expressed without dominating other equally important concerns.
NAFF is stewarded by a large group of respected transportation and infrastructure policy advisors, operating from a vital set of ethical principles.
Collaborative Industrial Optimization, Industrial Systems Design and Investment
A Systems Approach to Accelerating Infrastructure Finance
Corridor and Regional Strategies
Collaborative Corridor Economic Development
Dallas to Texarkana I30 Corridor Strategy
Regional and Statewide Rail-Enabled Economic Development
2021 Nevada State Rail Plan
Multi-State Supply Chain Coalitions
Southwest Supply Chain Coalition
Logistics-Driven Land Value Growth
Supply Chain Strategies
Sustainable Forestry Business Planning
leads diverse stakeholders across the country and the federal government to revitalize forests and communities confronted by past and potential forest fires.
New Mexico Sustainable Forestry Business Plan
Strategic Mineral Supply Chain Strategies
Nevada Mining…
Power Plant Industrial Conversions
Mt. Pleasant Rail Park
Waste-to-Value Logistics
Construction Materials and Aggregates Distribution Systems
Placing railroads and collaboration at the center of the world’s environmental sustainability
Rail service and capacity is as basic to a community as internet service. Yes you can have a community without either but opportunities are thwarted and costs and impacts are exacerbated.
Rail-related companies need to orient around a continental growth strategy that aligns business plans and public sector support with the best interests of the community
Convene the rail industry, Wall Street, Washington, and environmental and labor leaders to establish new financial performance metrics and a freight rail service growth strategy to support these environmental, social, and commercial goals.
Do you want to see the growth of freight rail service?
Do you want to participate in creating the action plan?
If you answered YES to both questions, such and such
Do you want to receive updates on the IntelliConference?
I’ll quickly add that our orientation regarding rail growth at SRF/OTNA brings attention to the now-overlooked necessity of returning to direct rail pick-up and delivery. The industry and most of its even knowledgeable observers have devolved their vision down to thinking that local rail operations are too costly. This is very much influenced by ignoring or externalizing the efficiency of loading and unloading rail cars versus trucks. Someone else bears that cost, as well as what we know are the socialized costs of truck transportation.
There are 600 non-Class I railroads in the US, and they average 72 miles each and are, for the most part, profitable. Additionally, when you go to any steel mill, you don’t find them moving material by truck. They use rail cars for less than one-mile moves. So, we must watch when we talk about rail operations and what is profitable. We can’t let Class I economics override these inherent comparative efficiencies. The most profitable segment on the Conrail system was a .75-mile segment from an auto parts facility to a factory.
Services:
Advisory:
Collalborative
Site logistics optimization
Supply chain efficiency planning
Regional transportation planning
Freight data analysis
Stakeholder engagement (Presently as part of our work, not standalone service)
Lifecycle BCA and project sustainability
Training
Sustainable Freight-Based Economic Development
Sustainable logistics training
Sustainability leadership training
IntelliSynthesis
Rail business development
Research
Lifecycle BCA
Projects
National rail properties database
Convening
North American Freight Forum
Thought leadership
National Infrastructure Policy and Investment
Leading the Continent to Sustainable Economic Development
Industrial Transportation Land Use Planning
What tools have we developed?
People
Stakeholder identification
Community life
Commercial relationships
Elected bodies
Public agencies
Academics, consultants, advocates, citizens
Stakeholder onboarding
Stakeholder communication and management
Stakeholder convening
Inquiry-based dialogue
People Tools
ACT
North American Freight Forum
IntelliConference
Discuto
Land and Structures
Properties
Structures
Logistics Infrastructure
Land and Structures Tools
Mapping
Materials, movements, and processes
Commodities and goods
Industrial processes
Manufacturing
Recycling and disposal
Outputs
Impacts
Data
Materials Tools
360 Freight Market Intelligence
The current paradigm of data analysis
Over-reliance on unreliable data. Critical decisions are made daily based on inaccurate and incomplete information about shippers, commodities, trade lanes, and future plans.
Data is hoarded rather than shared, so new technology that is brought to market simply exacerbates underlying inefficiencies
No single data source provides a complete picture, yet no system for bringing it all together exists…except ours.
Analyzing electronic data without live input from business leaders and investors on near- and long-term plans compounds the risk of inappropriate decision-making.
Freight forwarders and intermodal marketing companies preserve their vested interest by keeping this customer information cloaked.
500 shippers account for 33% of US Import volume, and the next 3100 shippers account for an additional 17%. 495,000 shippers account for the other half of all imports. Ports and railroads generally don’t have visibility or direct relationships with those beyond the top 500. Are the rest inconsequential, or are they the heart of our economy and communities?
What is 360 Freight Market Intelligence?
Sourcing and analyzing the full spectrum of critical freight and transportation data to produce comprehensive market opportunity reports and recommendations for stakeholders across the supply chain
How it works
Advanced integration of multiple datasets enables clear decision-making and action planning in complex commercial markets
Synthesis across GIS, Transearch, STB Waybill Sampling, FreightWaves-Sonar, Piers, and Panjiva data sources
Augmenting digital data with human intelligence gained through stakeholder dialogues clarifies who shippers are and their volumes, trade lane preferences, and future plans, leading to breakthrough commercial opportunities and systemwide efficiencies
Collaborative stakeholder facilitation utilizing 360° Stakeholder Relationship System and IntelliConference Methodology
How does 360 Freight Market Intelligence create value?
Informs relevant and long-term supply chain planning undergirded by operational realities and commercial objectives
Enables conception and modeling of new trade-lane strategies and freight infrastructure
Cargo-density findings are used to determine optimal location for new interior point intermodal (IPI) facilities. Port of Mobile’s raw reporting from Panjiva reported 321 TEU’s to the state; our deeper dive revealed 70% more, as well as BCO information and international trade lane behavior. As a result, Alabama governor approved $231 million rail improvement project to support rail cargo mobility in the state.
Provides shippers, ports, and other stakeholders to enhance their supply chain design and operations
Pragmatize the nation’s research activities to inform the NAPSI
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Tool
Pinpoint the full lifecycle cost and benefit factors of industrial activity, including extraction, agriculture, processing, manufacturing, and logistics, including building, maintaining, and using roads, railroads, waterways, pipelines, and the skies.
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Project reinvents benefit-cost analysis to guide sustainable highway and railway goods movement investments.
Establish USDOT/NIH funding for a large-scale “Collaborative Research Initiative” inviting researchers to assume their appropriate component to complete the “Full Industrial Lifecycle Costs and Benefits” guidance expeditiously and with consensus
360° Stakeholder Relationship System
System for inviting, convening, and optimizing a network of inter-relationships
Team Management
Relationship Management System
Shortcomings of typical stakeholder engagement
Typical stakeholder outreach features unilateral communications from the project sponsor or planner to gain community endorsement for plans already created. Stakeholder engagement narrowly focuses on departments of transportation, engineering firms, and transportation providers, missing the broader eco-system of other government entities, companies, shippers, academics, and the community. Rarely is attention paid to the opportunity of integrating all perspectives and the potential for collaboration between stakeholders within an entire region or supply chain.
What is the 360° Stakeholder Relationship System?
A supercharged stakeholder database approach, developed since 1994, and a set of practices that enable the mapping of complex interrelationships between individuals and entities across every segment of industry and community. Plan or project managers proactively research and catalog stakeholder groups and individuals within each group relevant to a given project or region that comprise a complete ecosystem of stakeholders.
Every individual and their organization are cataloged by geographic location, entity role, projects, concerns, and commitments.
How does it create value?
This approach is a catalyst for community and systems thinking that generates significant collective intelligence efficiently.
Critical dialogues can be quickly called to order with diverse and robust sets of participants for any topic area.
Targeted and timely updates to the right people avoid stakeholders being overwhelmed by irrelevant communications.
All communication is captured for future reference
Coalition and team building is accelerated and simplified
Scalable to interact with other regional, national, and global initiatives.
Identify and enter the network of relationships and conversations
Mapping the physical system
How can we assemble large amounts of geographic data?
Who
INPUT – Who would input the data, and how can we make that task easy and enjoyable? Are there incentives?
THROUGHPUT- Once data is logged into the system, will there be other operations? (Example: verification? Edits to incorrectly logged data)
OUTPUT - Who are the primary and secondary user groups?
What
WHO – DATA INPUT Imagining the parties who would contribute data…
INDIVIDUALS: Rail fans, Geo-nerds, students?
PRIVATE SECTOR: Rail Operators, shippers,
PUBLIC SECTOR:
WHO – DATA OUTPUT Imagining the top-level beneficiaries…
PRIVATE SECTOR: Rail Operators, shippers (existing and potential), industrial developers, real estate actors, investors, trucking companies (yes!) Rail construction, maintenance, and supply businesses.
PUBLIC SECTOR – Transportation – DOTs, EPAs, Civil Planners
PUBLIC SECTOR - Commerce – EDCs, MPAs
Mapping the financial system
Hands-on-access company and project management tool-HOA
Transforms business turnarounds
Transforms business financing and refinancing
Transforms access to capital
Transforms business growth
Clarifies project management
What else are we doing?
Education Program
Educate land planners, economic developers, government planners, and supply chain designers on using rail
Educate/Influence land planners, economic developers, government planners, and supply chain designers on seeing regional/corridor/multi-party supply chains
Enable/Facilitate the collaboration needed to build more effective, efficient, environmental, and rail-focused supply chains
Influence/Enlighten government and industry policy leaders to resolve the supply chain crisis
Building a consensus/support of the rail industry to commit their support to make this happen
What else are we doing?
Enact! trains leaders to apply IntelliSynthesis to problem-solving in other regions and arenas.
What dynamics currently hinder rail development?
Community resistance to infrastructure expansion is a significant challenge for railroads today.
Communities, as well as companies, are frustrated with current methods of interacting around projects.
OnTrackNorthAmerica is advancing a productive framework and methodology for these interactions to be fruitful for business and community. This is our IntelliSynthesis methodology delivered within our Regional Stakeholder Consulting Practice.
Sustainability is only thought of superficially in most companies and industries. Talking about environmental degradation isn't popular within most companies and industries.
Forward-looking, long-range corporate and public sector plans must now consider the environmental disruptions happening and will continue if we don't alter business as usual.
OTNA's Freight Transportation Land Use Strategy (FTLUS) and Transportation Action Planning (TAP) are the two intelligently conceived approaches to thinking and planning that must be advanced to make the best use of limited space, resources, and transportation capacity in support of sustainable economic development.
Fast-moving technology developments in transportation, including autonomous vehicles, drones, Amazon delivery services, PTC, and supply chain control, require visionary thinking and action.
Incorporating environmental, spatial, and infrastructure construction and maintenance costs into the uptake strategies of these technologies is crucial to their business success.
At the same time that the state of California is developing Governor Brown's mandated "Sustainable Freight Action Plan," warehouse and distribution are expanding across the state as truck-only sites without environmental, spatial, and financial efficiencies of rail service, relegating whole swaths of the state to the increased impacts of truck traffic on road congestion, air quality, road maintenance costs, and the economic limitations and isolation of not having direct rail service.
See http://theworldlogisticscenter.com/about-us/ for a 2600-acre, 40 million-square-foot truck-only development in Riverside, California.
OTNA has developed a Research and Case Study (see attached) forensic analysis of this development conception.
Michael is in ongoing dialogue with Caltrans and the Governor's Cabinet and can advance OTNA's impact on behalf of the rail industry and the state with the active support of BNSF, UP, Genesee & Wyoming, FRA, and the California shortline association.
The USDOT's Freight Fluidity Performance Measures Project and the US Department of Commerce's Supply Chain Competitiveness Council are both leading efforts that are narrowly focused on shipping time, reliability, and shipper cost, excluding any attention to the environmental, social, land, spatial, and financial costs of building, maintaining, and operating transportation infrastructure.
Michael's recent conversation with California's Assistant Secretary for Rail and Ports expressed that when the DOT thinks of “lifecycle analysis,” they refer to how long different pavement surfaces last, not the comprehensive Triple Bottom Line analysis that OTNA embraces.
OnTrackNorthAmerica's National Transportation Lifecycle Costs and Benefits Project addresses this gap.
In support of the need to aggregate freight customers in sensible land use patterns that optimize transportation infrastructure, Michael has co-founded a rail growth investment company.
Government Policy and Financing
We lack a rail transportation growth plan that our country can rally around
Wall Street investment is not oriented to long-term investment and growth
Government funding programs are developed independent of private-sector expertise, funding sources and coordination
The regulatory environment is continually uncertain, failing to provide a stable foundation for investment
Federal tax credits for individual projects are legislated without sensible system-wide requirements
As new developments (e.g. ethanol) are introduced, government incentives and private investments proliferate without a coordinated, continental plan
Federal policies, regulations, and funding programs increasingly ignore smaller rail industry projects and companies
Economic Development and Land Use Planning
Coordination between state departments of transportation and economic development is minimal
State support for individual railroads does not integrate town, county, and private-sector support into a comprehensive development plan.
State funding is authorized for specific improvements (e.g. track upgrade) without a logical plan for overall service growth.
Few states have created directories of available land and buildings along railroad rights-of-way
Available land along railroad rights-of-way is not set aside via purchase options, zoning, or other programs
Available adjacent land is limited, yet is being developed for truck-only facilities
Factories, warehouses, and distribution centers are being built without direct rail service
Port facilities are developed in competition with other ports, when coordination of complementary services would make better use of limited resources.
Port services are minimally integrated with rail services
Rail Industry Dynamics
Rail industry stakeholders squander tremendous resources lobbying against other stakeholder groups
Branch lines are deteriorating, due to (among other things) lack of coordinated public-private support
Rural and urban direct-rail service is diminishing as the industry consolidates to high-volume terminals and corridors
The freight rail industry has essentially given up on expanding local service in large swaths of the country, including the entire state of California or the Wasatch Front in Utah, in spite of the road congestion, environmental pressures, and freight growth these areas face.
Customer needs are often met with resistance rather than collaboration, pushing shippers to other modes
Class I staff levels are at an historic low relative to volume, making increased attention to existing and new customers difficult
Customers who need to start out with smaller volumes are discouraged from using rail
Increasing modal share of many commodity groups faces a lack of rail cars, commitment, and coordination
Stakeholders are forced to submit to Class I railroad industry dynamics, suppressing contribution to growth
Rail labor and management have yet to achieve a culture of mutual respect and consideration
Policymaking Process
Railroads are underappreciated by government policymakers as a path to economic revitalization
Continental transportation planning has not transcended our national borders with Canada and Mexico
States, MPOs, and Counties all produce plans that fail to identify business needs and opportunities for public-sector transportation investments
Academic experts and other knowledgeable industry observers are not effectively integrated into the policymaking process
Excellent research, studies, papers, and reports are minimally coordinated and disseminated
Worthwhile perspectives that run counter to the business plans of dominant industry players are marginalized
Communities are not invited into the rail growth planning process early enough
The public’s long-dormant appreciation of railroads has not been raised to the level of a national commitment
Public policy attempts to support rail development, e.g., RRIF and tax credits falter because of the incomplete, fractious process for creating the policies. Even if successful, they fall short of integrating with, and stimulating, private-sector investment.
The rail industry’s government relations strategy is mismatched to the real value and opportunity railroads represent for our country. Major rail industry stakeholder groups are positioned not to join in the chorus of support for progressive rail policies, but to fight other stakeholder groups and congress. For instance:
Railroad contractors’ government relations budgets and plans are focused on fighting labor-backed initiatives. Labor groups are powerful enough to stifle congress’ desire to support railroads.
Many operational issues between railroads and car owners need to be resolved or there is going to be another combative lobbying effort on the field.
Many shippers, even large, prominent companies, find it increasingly difficult to do business with railroads, and are building and expanding facilities with 100% truck service. Resolution and collaboration are needed among shippers and railroads, once and for all, for real rail growth to be supported.
Government support is, therefore, unstable and incidental. This instability creates an ongoing drag on private-sector investment in the railroad industry.
The industry lacks an inspiring growth vision and plan of action that would rally the public, who are critically vital as we look to increase capacity and traffic through their neighborhoods.
State and local governments and the community resent the industry’s focus on large volume customers and lanes, as the government tries to address economically challenged areas, which are not helped by the ongoing reduction in direct rail service to rural and urban shippers.
Place in sections above…
Irrational federal policy development og. Unfunded mandates + anti-trust exemption termination
Subsidization of truckers + freight
Ongoing use of land along ROW for non-rail residential + commercial development
Resistance of communities to freight rail development
Public sector reluctance mobility to invest in private sector railroads.
Challenges of passenger rail development.
Shippers + commercial property developers have limited consciousness and appreciation for accessing rail services.
How can the rail industry improve its approach to government relations?
"A MORE PRODUCTIVE APPROACH TO THE RAILROAD INDUSTRY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH CONGRESS"
While the issues surrounding railroads and federal oversight are numerous and often complex, they cannot be solved by the industry's reluctance to relate productively with the United States Congress. Strategic Rail Finance is generating a significant breakthrough by forwarding the perception of the industry’s value on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress and their staffs have been mostly uninformed by the industry and are therefore unaware of the value and potential of the U.S. freight railroad system.
We address this void via face-to-face meetings with Senate and House members and their staffs. Strategic Rail Finance has established active, productive relationships with 65 Senate offices, 68 House offices, key committee professional staff, and relevant departments in the Executive Branch. This new network represents much-needed progress toward educating and engaging Congress in preparation for innovative freight transportation legislation.
The industry's representatives have focused on individual case representation and crisis response, relying on self-defeating communication of dire need, deferred maintenance, and standing derailments. At best, this has produced an occasional short-term victory while unnecessarily delaying lawmakers' understanding of the remarkable opportunity of a long-term commitment to freight railroads and multi-modal connectivity. Railroads continue to provide a vital service to the country, and they make real sense for the environment. The intelligence and logic of a well-supported freight rail system can be communicated powerfully in Washington.
The freight railroad cause is best advanced through a disciplined, non-partisan strategy. We are in action with relevant committee members, leaders of both parties and particular members with a personal interest in infrastructure issues. There are many underlying reasons why this program is appreciated and understood on Capitol Hill. By informing, educating, and speaking for the country's good, we appeal to both parties and all regions, focusing on intelligent long-term planning rather than reactionary, politicized efforts.
Strategic Rail Finance communicates powerfully in Washington because its work is grounded in integrity and purpose. The case is made on merit, not on threats and favors. This approach leverages the pure logic and efficiency of freight railroading into the appropriate government support this indispensable industry deserves.
Railcar Development
Aerodynamics
Scheffel Bogie
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How have previous railroad mergers impacted the rail network? Needs editing and applying elsewhere.
Mergers in the past 30 years have done very little to grow the rail network and its service to the continent. Freight rail industry revenue in North America is about 10% of the trucking industry's revenue, including rail line construction, maintenance, and taxes.
The CP-KC merger has been evaluarincted at a high level, not low enough to the ground to consider the reality of industrial development. Manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and other industrial development continue to expand as truck-only, with rail servicing a small fraction of new facilities.
The best way to support the success of individual businesses, both providers and shippers, is to institute whole systems planning that acknowledges each business's role in local, regional, national, continental, and global supply chains.
It is critical to our environment and economic future that we come together as a society to reverse the shrinking rail network. With the energy and space efficiency of moving heavy weights over land on steel wheels on steel tracks, we must take advantage of this fundamental physics. This is not a Class I railroad problem but a societal one.
Only 4% of the freight moving in Nevada, for example, moves by rail, even though mining is its number two industry—less than .25% of its freight moves by rail from and to Nevada businesses.
This dynamic of fewer goods moving by rail is happening all over the continent. Rail increasingly moves through a state without serving that state or province.
All modes and service providers have plenty of goods to move. Competition is outdated and inefficient, especially within infrastructure systems. We must refocus our thinking, planning, and investment on collaboration, coordination, and trust.
This large railroad merger or subsequent mergers won’t address this urgent need and opportunity.
What stakeholder groups do we want contributing to the intelligence and progress of RE-SEED?
What has OnTrackNorthAmerica positioned to accelerate this growth?
Regional and corridor infrastructure planning, AutoDesk
Statewide and multi-state freight and rail planning, AECOM
State Freight Advisory Committees
IntelliSynthesis
North American Freight Forum-what technology company, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Matt Rose or Gil Lamphere, Act
NAFF is a project of OTNA.
OTNA defines and sets the overall vision.
OTNA is the 501c3 house for attracting and stewarding funding.
OTNA is the primary tool of education, collaboration, and action to actualize that vision.
What consulting does OTNA do?
What consulting does SRF do?
Unparalleled cataloging of 30,000 relevant stakeholders across the industrial, political, and geographic landscape
What has Strategic Rail Finance positioned to accelerate RE-SEED?
Collaborative Industrial Optimization
GIS-Enabled way of thinking and designing sustainable industry and communities
Applied economic and demographic data analysis
How proper investment leads to multiple growth opportunities
OnTrack Industrial Properties Project
Collateral and Financial Engineering
Strategic Rail Bank, guy in Nevada, Jeff Steilgelman
Strategic Rail Fund, Bon French, Macquarie
Rail Customer Funding
Strategic Rail Finance Trusted Advisory, RailPros
How can we make rail utilization a national cause?
What approaches will reinvigorate the public's long-dormant appreciation for railroads, thereby generating active approval of legislators who support transportation efficiency?
How can the national rail fan community be more effectively involved in influencing policy matters and expanding public support?
How can media support for rail transportation be expanded?
In the U.S., how can the value of supporting our network of railroads be communicated more effectively to Congress and the Executive Branch, State Legislatures and Departments of Transportation, Local Governments and Economic Development Entities, and Metropolitan and Regional Planning Organizations
What are the government and planning entities in Canada that have to be better informed about railroads and enrolled in a continental strategy for increasing freight rail utilization?
What are the government and planning entities in Mexico that have to be better informed about railroads and enrolled in a continental strategy for increasing freight rail utilization?
How can the rail industry broaden its communication to the market?
How can railroads and economic development agencies collaborate to catalog and market existing and potential rail-served sites?
How can the freight rail system be more attractive and profitable by expanding single rail line sites to dual line service?
How can rail service marketing to the shipping community be more widespread and effective?
A commercially-viable, sustainable industrial systems approach.
What is the current path of social and economic policy discourse?
Identify problems leading to more realization and recognition.
Hear complaints leading to more resignation and cynicism.
Competing influences jockey for position, leading to more blame.
Debate biased “facts,” give voice to ungrounded opinions, and take “sides,” leading to more conflict.
Compromise around solutions that promote competition and narrow the possibilities, leading to a diminished future for all.
Over time, this orientation leads to a loss of vision and enterprise.
“Much of the disorder stems from the reform-minded who seek to redo the system without effecting real change in the attitude of the people running it.” Eugene McCarthy, No Fault Politics
Debate is typically thought of as the ideal path to intelligent policy and good governance. Yet, a debate is essentially a contest of individual intelligence and will. Choosing debate winners does not deliver well-rounded approaches. Online forum options provide participants the opportunity to input and spectators to read but with little creative integration. Productive dialogue, whether between two people or a multitude, requires quality facilitation. Now, more than ever, we need to transform whole systems through well-facilitated, thoughtful dialogue. And the wider the scope of interests gathered and served, the more intelligent and valuable the solution. OnTrackNorthAmerica convenes and facilitates critical conversations for transforming freight transportation in North America.
What new path to effective policy discourse can we implement?
A new path for policy discourse is needed, one that acknowledges existing thinking and then maximizes the collective intelligence to create new thinking. This maximization and expansion is derived by promoting cooperation and collaboration as the driver of effectiveness rather than competition and compromise.
We must create and cultivate:
Cooperation rather than Compromise
Collaboration rather than Competition
Discussion rather than Debate
Customization (adaptability) rather than Standardization (one size fits all)
This is accomplished through:
Reexamining the original vision to either rekindle it or speculate on a new vision.
Redesigning questions that reveal, empower, and expand thinking.
Develop existing listening skills, including listening for and identifying contribution, relatedness, commitment, possibility, boldness, creativity, and appreciation.
Facilitating dialogue that encourages, empowers, and exhilarates.
Generating and outlining new ideas and possible actions from uncovering what’s missing.
We are inventing new designs in the fundamental game pieces of the relationship among government agencies, businesses, academia, researchers, and consulting firms. That is the RFQs, RFIs, RFPs, Proposals, Contracts, Work Scopes, Reports, Action Plans.
Welcome to OnTrackWorld, Applying IntelliSynthesis to the Creation of Sustainable Industry and Communities
What do we call this approach to supply chain-oriented industrial development?
Focuses on existing businesses and their supply chains
Focuses on existing supply chains and new businesses and infrastructure that could serve the community
What do we call this approach to land use?
Industrial Land Value Optimization
Embraces whole supply chains rather than just individual projects and properties
What do we call this approach to industrial investment?
Sustainable Systems Capitalization
What do we call our stakeholder convening platform?
North American Freight Forum
What are our thoughts about railroads?
Rail-enabled Supply Chain Optimization
Advance the growth of railroad services to sustainable supply chains and communities.
What are the Principles of OnTrack2026?
Minimize Lifecycle Impacts
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Calculator
Moving toward a world that works for everyone
Vision and commitment in place resignation and cynicism
Integrate productive collaboration with beneficial competition
Principles for Humanity
Collaboration
Sustainability Commitment
Problem-Solving
What is OnTrackNorthAmerica’s Code of Ethics?
See
What principles for action does RE-SEED stand on?
This is speaking for a new future, not reporting on or commentary about the state of affairs, nor is it projections or prognostication
What has OnTrackNorthAmerica accomplished to date?
We have entered the North American Freight Rail Industry from scratch and established a respected identity and a respected team
We have established an international network of admirers and intellectual and commercial allies
We have acquired an in-depth understanding of government and commercial relations that enables us to see and share powerfully.
We have built a unique stakeholder mapping technology and created the most comprehensive database of an entire arena of industrial activity and related government actors
We have created a collaborative convening methodology, IntelliSynthesis, that elevates everyone’s contribution and results
We have researched and field-tested a regional and national forest-to-market action plan for scaling up sustainable forest management and forest material harvesting
We have researched and field-tested a statewide industrial economic development strategy
We have created a complete industrial brownfield transitioning and redevelopment methodology.
We have invented an approach to property development that improves land value and the sustainability of industrial supply chains
We have established OTNA as the leading researcher and thinker in the full lifecycle analysis of transportation investments
We have created a breakthrough in freight data analysis that gathers and integrates a variety of data sources into the most commercially relevant information
We have a thinking process that respected industry leaders are attracted to participate in
What metrics do we use to track our progress?
Number of individuals who have taken the OTW Collaboration Pledge
Number of companies
Number of government entities
Number of OTW Certified Sustainable Developments
Number of corridors, regions, states, commodity sectors, industrial arenas, nations that have embraced Collaborative Industrial Optimization
Funding
How will you know when the promise has been or is being kept vs. not?
IntelliSynthesis is taught in schools and universities
Nations and states have rewritten their Constitutions to newly accommodate collaborative dialogue, thinking, and planning
Land developers and planners guide their activities through collaboration rather than competition
Railroad modal share is steadily increasing
Industrial actors are guided by global sustainability in their individual business activities and planning
Given we are committed to delivering results beyond just being thought leaders or being admired, what are some specific outcomes/results we are promising?
Natural resource utilization that works for a sustainable earth and world
The earth is returned to being a safe home for us and our future generations
People embrace IntelliSynthesis as their opportunity to think and act together for breakthrough solutions and results
The answers are generalized, speaking mostly about what OTNA considers it’s accomplishments, it’s reputation, it’s being admired. If these were put into action, applied/used to produce results in the world, results that could be quantified, measured, have monetary values, infrastructures that were built or redesigned, results beyond just possibilities, or hopes about what can be accomplished, then we would have a much more concrete notion of how impactful all of this will be in bringing about solving the worlds problems, or even just our the problems and unworkability you are highlighting.
In the 2nd question for instance, how do you quantify “increasing awareness”? Most of these answers seem to represent hoped for accomplishments for OTNA’s reputation. What real world results will this produce in the world? In the freight systems? In impacting government practices/procedures/contracting/legislative outcomes?
What results does “Biden endorses Collaborative Industrial Optimization” produce?
What results has, or will a completed online version IntelliSynthesis produce? What’s your evidence?
What productive partnerships have been established across the transportation modes
IntelliSynthesis is taught in schools and universities – How many schools and universities. Which are the first ten?What are the first five states to rewrite their constitution and by when?
When will you be able to show the first land developer who adopts collaboration rather than competition?
How much will modal share increase over the next five years due to adoption of you practices/programs/approaches?
Which industry(ies) will be first to adopt global sustainability as their principal approach to doing business and by when?
RRIF – no built-in contingency for collateral release
Usually when we think of financial smarts, we think in terms of larger and larger transactions. This is antithetical to the proper development of a healthy continental railroad system. The whole dynamic of orienting policies, marketplace domination, regulation and finance around the biggest railroads is stifling the growth and profitability of the whole system and the whole country.
What is the ideal use that we want the datahub to fulfill
If we have this geospatial continental hub that aggregates information, within that we would be abel to reun analysis as to where
Improve rail
Identity and design network expansion
Design industrial systems
waste
What are the ability factors of various user groups that we want to design our tool and training program to address?
What are the continent’s natural resources that we want to map?
How are we going to do that?
How has data been gathered to date by the relevant stakeholder groups?
What assistance can be provided to early stage data sufferers so that they can bring their data system into optimal alignment with this initiative?
What level of governments are best involved with the aggregation for each geo-level of data?
What are the time factors for each step in this initiative?
What data format would make the process of gathering data from
What are the keys to statewide rail and freight planning?
Planning for results: the Nevada State Rail Plan
Plans are for action
Stakeholders are partners, not just survey respondents
Rail and roads are one system
Freight analysis must include truck data, even in rail plans
The right tools make the right data actionable
Plan whole supply chains, not just projects
Building viable freight infrastructure requires serving multiple supply chains
Integrate freight planning with economic development
Freight transportation is inseparable from land use planning
Capital is available for all well-conceived projects
Principles of CAPSI
So much of our world is assumed to be fixed, unchangeable. But this isn’t really true, things change all the time. It’s time to step back, test our assumptions and find new ways to move North America
North America has an opportunity to re-think transportation policy and find a better way
An opportunity to change how North America moves freight
Trucking is the predominant mode today for both long-haul and short haul lanes
There are much more efficient ways to move long-haul freight
We believe that in the future, long-haul freight will move on rails
North America can invest in this future by developing intermodal capabilities today
Why are we focusing on freight first?
Freight Transportation drives the economy
Freight movement represents 2.9% of US GDP. Investments in freight infrastructure generate real rates of
return for everyone. Truck transportation represents .8% of overall GDP, four times the share of surface passenger transportation
9% of retail and wholesale revenue goes to transportation services; for other industries, this percentage is even higher
Research shows that investments in roads reduces transportation costs of goods and materials. Improving rail services and infrastructure reduces costs even further. These lower costs allow lower prices and greater demand, driving growth in output
Change can benefit everyone
Short-haul trucking is efficient trucking
Aside from the positive aspects of investing in freight mobility, we also know that of all road transportation activity, freight trucking generates the largest impacts on wear, safety and pollution
Shifting long-haul truck traffic more efficient modes can be good for everyone, including truckers
There are many opportunities to convert long-haul trucking lanes to intermodal and rail alternatives; using trucking for final mile and short haul moves just makes sense
Shorter hauls also create efficiencies for trucking companies, eliminating unproductive layovers, and reducing linehaul and fuel costs
Importantly, short haul truck drivers are generally happier, easier to retain, and have a better quality of life
National systems must meet local needs
Local needs are paramount
What states need most is infrastructure designed to support local economic development and local transportation needs
Developing infrastructure that properly supports national and international supply chains begins with building systems that support local needs
Congestion, pollution, and wear mostly impact local communities, not far-flung reaches of rural interstate
Building multi-modal freight facilities and local rail infrastructure delivers a high ROI on public dollars to communities and states
Adopting a whole-systems, common-sense approach to logistics, distribution, transportation, and land use benefits all stakeholders including shippers, carriers, and the general public
How to begin
Investing for the future of North America
North America can start by encouraging construction of the right kinds of infrastructure to support freight activity in local markets
These investments will provide triple-bottom-line benefits to carriers, shippers, and local communities
Concentrating freight activities in well-planned commercial and industrial areas has the potential to greatly improve efficiency and quality of life while reducing overall operating costs
Building local infrastructure that encourages intermodal shipping provides benefits locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally
International freight offloaded at the Port of Long Beach is shipped to North America via truck today. What would happen if this changed? Let’s explore what this might mean
Something Ambitious
North America has an opportunity to…
A.
B.
C.
D.
What are we doing about it?
An innovative approach to planning
In concert with North America DOT, we are employing a new freight data analysis approach to better understand what is moving and what opportunities exist to adopt more efficient, cost-effective solutions
We are inviting stakeholders in North America and neighboring states to collaboratively develop a freight transportation system that makes optimal use of truck and rail transportation, and most importantly land
As part of our process, we will document and promote the commercial and societal advantages that can be achieved by increasing our use of rail transportation
What benefits will come from this work?
Building a better North America
We will deliver new opportunities for North America through the application of combined Freight Transportation and Land-Use Planning
We are developing new avenues for private sector investment in North America’s rail freight infrastructure
This effort will deliver multi-sector, statewide economic development opportunities
This is a new practice with great promise for alleviating congestion, improving the environment, enhancing quality of life, and reducing infrastructure costs
APPENDIX
Port of Long Beach Pier B
Clearing congestion in Long Beach will provide benefits to many stakeholders
Smoothing the flow of containers at Pier B in Long Beach has the potential to benefit
international supply chains, steamship lines, terminal operators, railroads, Los Angeles area communities, and North America
Today, rail congestion in the Port of Long Beach is driving inefficient operations and limiting rail service options
In concert with the Class I railroads, Anacostia & Pacific, the Port of Long Beach is seeking to redevelop a large parcel of portside land to accommodate improved rail operations
The planned new facility will allow for local servicing of locomotives, railcar running repairs, storage, and improved flows for outbound and inbound trains as well as intra-port rail movements
On-dock rail as a percent of total Port volume is expected to increase from 24% to 35%, eliminating hundreds of truck movements, reducing cost, and improving quality of life for adjoining communities
These improvements will reduce the cost to serve the Port of Long Beach via rail, and eventually allow profitable shorter hauls for the Class I railroads, further reducing truck traffic to California and bordering states
Pier B is an example of how public-private partnerships can drive triple-bottom-line benefits
Delivering similar projects in North America within the guiding logic of “Lifecycle Benefit-Cost Analysis” will build a future of freight movement that supports the quality of community life for local communities as well as communities in nearby states
What key industrial systems in the state are most important to map?
What is the current state of GIS Data gathering in each county?
Topics, subjects, phrases
You think and write in questions, and in order?
How can RE-SEED assist government in addressing policy shortcomings?
How can the rail industry re-orient to serve rural North America better?
Class I railroads need to empower Class II and III railroad operators to provide the local and direct rail service that rural communities desperately need for their resilient, sustainable economic development.
Pricing rail services from origination to destination when multiple rail companies have to be involved in the movement must be competitive with trucking to enable businesses located in rural areas to utilize the rail network.
Railroads need to improve their flexibility, reliability, and willingness to serve the needs of small shippers and early-stage shippers that may grow into high-volume shippers, not simply the highest-volume shippers.
Railroad service providers need to reorient their network operations to support shorter haul movements that facilitate economic beneficiation. New manufacturing and processing facilities can then be located closer to the points of extraction and agricultural production. Transportation between source, production, and final processing can be done by rail rather than the more socially costly, environmentally impactful road and truck system.
Full social and environmental cost allocation should be assessed for all modes of land freight transportation so that the full lifecycle impacts of truck, rail, and waterway systems can be accounted for in the marketplace.
Marketplace combat between competing railroads should be transformed into “collaborative service provision” to expand marketplace access for rail system users. All stakeholders, including the railroads themselves, would benefit if railroads accommodated instead of fighting off “competing” railroads for serving a customer, property, state, or region.
What will it take for Class I Railroads to transform?
Possibility of a major marketplace shift in support of rail growth
Public sector aligned on rebalancing truck and rail transportation
Private sector that thinks smartly about its freight needs
Private-sector capital invested in supply chain infrastructure
What principles have to be applied to establish rail service?
Do not assume nearby rail is accessible
Develop a well-informed infrastructure and operating plan
Utilize existing assets as much as possible, especially at the outset
Give railroad staff the opportunity to express all of their reservations
Carry the flag of the possible, not the limitations of the past
Why Railroads Matter
For the Long Term
For the Environment
For Space and Land Use
For the Economy
For Communities
For Infrastructure Investment
Where We Are Now
Railroads are doing well, but we need more
Capitalization approaches are project based, not systems-based
Infrastructure is considered a cost, not an investment
Intelligence and support abounds but coordinating intelligence is limited
A Possible Future
Bridge the trust and coordination gap between industry, government, and communities
Systems level growth plans
Rail transportation as well as all other modes are used optimally within a balanced industrial system
How Do We Get There
What does OTNA do?
The application of inquiry-based discussion to design projects that organically integrate with local, regional, and national industrial systems.
Projects are conceived to meet our multidimensional return metric
We flip the funnel, start with a multidimensional return metric, and then design development to serve those stakeholders with the highest return.
Capitalists decide what return they want, and then they think about land, infrastructure, logistics, industrial assets, and activity that maximizes their narrow conception of “return.”
OnTrackNorthAmerica Founder’s Statement:
“Increased federal and private infrastructure spending is exacerbating the inefficiencies in our supply chains. We need to think and invest at a multidimensional level that guides where we site new facilities, how we transport goods, and where we move material to and from. Our only path to sustainability is to move as much freight by rail as is logical in better coordination with trucks. Rebalancing our multimodal freight system will deliver cascading benefits to the rest of the economy and the environment. That requires re-thinking supply chains, clear metrics, and inclusive dialogue.”
What are we doing?
Industrial Systems Design and Investment
Corridor and Regional Strategies
Collaborative Corridor Economic Development
Dallas to Texarkana I30 Corridor Strategy
Regional and Statewide Rail-Enabled Economic Development
2021 Nevada State Rail Plan
Multi-State Supply Chain Coalitions
Southwest Supply Chain Coalition
Logistics-Driven Land Value Growth
Industrial Systems Strategies
Sustainable Forestry Business Planning
New Mexico Sustainable Forestry Business Plan
Strategic Mineral Supply Chain Strategies
Nevada Mining…
Power Plant Industrial Conversions
Mt. Pleasant Rail Park
Waste-to-Value Logistics
Construction Materials and Aggregates Distribution Systems
Collaborative Research and Future Testing
Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Analysis
Stakeholder Convening and Problem Solving
North American Freight Forum
Hierarchy of Attention
New Principles and Goals as a Species/Civilization
Saving the World-Enact.world
Collaboration + Coordination + (Trust) for common good rather than competition for narrow gain
IntelliSynthesis-Multidimensional thinking versus
Industrial Systems Design + Innovation
Supply Chains as Key Components of Industrial Systems
Railroads - $as a business growth strategy for the industry in service to the continent
Why Railroads Matter
What is the North American Freight Forum?
Government, business, and community thinking together for breakthrough solutions, Convening for Action
NAFF is the forum that facilitates the gathering of stakeholders’ collective intelligence and input.
Rail Growth Capitalization
Rail Business Culture Transformation
Rail Management/Rail Labor Relations
Rail Regulatory Excellence
Rail/Trucking Coordination
Containerized Freight Flow
Reinventing the Rail Carload System
Rail Technology Uptake
Rail Energy Efficiency
Freight Transportation Land Use
Trucking Regulatory Excellence
Origin of the Freight Forum:
The Freight Forum is an outgrowth of dialogues between four national policy veterans who, along with many others in their professional network, see the vast potential for a new era of supply chain efficiency. This new era will feature multi-level economic opportunity, greater service to communities, and a drastic reduction of environmental impacts. These benefits can be realized through an industry-wide collaboration — the platform for which does not exist. With that in mind, the North American Freight Forum was born.
Founder’s Statement on NAFF: Our supply chains are unorganized. The truth is that neither marketplace dynamics nor vested interest lobbying leads to smart supply chains. For North America’s future prosperity, they must be reconceived with a long-term vision. The problem is not a lack of intelligence—there are so many smart, committed people in industry, government, and the community. What we have been lacking are effective forums and methods for gathering that intelligence into smart policy, programs, and marketplace improvements.
What result are we out to produce with OTNA?
We are out to remove the limits to the number of stakeholder groups and participants that can be coordinated in large-scale conversations for thinking, planning, and acting. This is the breakthrough that modern democracy desperately needs to truly serve our multi-faceted, interwoven world.
E-Naction is fully developed and in use worldwide, E-Naction Academy and certification program, Institute for Systems Transformation (organize and engage academics and thinkers and researchers).
We are out to demonstrate that commerce and economics organized around collaboration and community service, rather than competition for individual profits is more fulfilling for participants, stable for shareholders, and sustainable for our communities.
E-Nact is launched and well known worldwide and has well-respected initiatives in gear.
We are out to shift commercial culture to support the most efficient, effective use of the wheel for moving heavy weight and people over land.
North American freight performance action plan has been developed and embraced by stakeholders and is in the early stages of implementation.
How will we improve freight transportation performance and increase railroad’s role in serving the continent’s growing freight transportation needs?
We are building a life-cycle costs and impacts comparison of road and rail investments that once and for all places rail in its proper place in the minds and decisions of policy makers and citizens-MEASURES (of efficiency)
We will address the glaring gaps in coordination and collaboration among business, government, and communities that it now takes to build and locate infrastructure
PLANS (of action)
We will convene all stakeholders to work through issues and commit to long-term sustainable plans, so that capital flows productively to transportation investments
INVESTMENTS (of capital and natural resources)
Shifting society’s mindset from treating infrastructure challenges as intractable problems to valuing them as opportunities
Shifting intractable problems into valued opportunities, to be measured, prioritized, and capitalized
Platform
Systemic capitalization
Collaborative Infrastructure Development consulting
Performance analytics
North American freight transportation as an investment beacon
Continental collaborative moon-shot for the freight system
Capital flow from local to regional to national to continental
Life cycle costs and life cycle return on investment
Balancing and integrating freight modes for optimal performance
Improving sustainability by reducing emissions, light and noise
New model for transportation planning and implementation
Commerce and governance at their best
What is different about this site and this movement?
This is difference-making
Institution outside of dominant influences
Meaningful, real policy, real business, real infrastructure
Measurable
Leading-edge use of the Internet for large-scale, multi-stakeholder thinking, planning, and acting
Comprehensive network of intelligent conversations and related resources
Exploration and demonstration of large-group collaborative thinking, planning, and action
What is our Code of Ethics?
Objectivity
The North American Freight Forum does not accept financial sponsorships that require prioritization of individual business agendas over common interests.
Inclusivity
The North American Freight Forum will invite representation from all involved stakeholder groups and facilitate “level playing field” dialogues wherein all participants’ perspectives are appreciated. Inclusivity is also a core to our approach to planning — to include all regions and all-sized projects.
Nonpartisanship
The North American Freight Forum maintains the autonomy of a politically non-partisan entity.
Coordination and Collaboration
The North American Freight Forum will advance the thoughtful integration of collaboration with useful competition.
Whole System Attention
The North American Freight Forum embraces programs, policies, and planning that advance system-wide benefits.
Multimodalism
The North American Freight Forum supports the utilization of all transport modes within a sound multimodal system.
Sustainability
We hold ourselves accountable to current and future generations by working only on projects that align with a sustainable environment and a healthy quality of community life.
What are the personal principles of collaboration for breakthrough results?
Assume Responsibility
We call on ourselves to be responsible for the quality of our relationships, focusing on bringing out the best in ourselves and others. In each conversation, we can see beyond our immediate reaction and choose the best response to seize the opportunity for mutual learning and progress.
Thrive at Our Learning Edge
Producing the results we stand for calls us to work at our learning edge. We welcome the next opportunity for personal growth while understanding that what we are doing has never been done before, and we’re constantly being trained. Bring it on!
Articulate Questions
Writing and speaking in questions is powerful for sparking new thinking and ideas. Statements tend to presume an easy answer or express concerns as if they are inevitable. Asking questions is the conversational move to master for the sake of learning and bold solutions.
Lead from Community
Initiatives succeed or fail based on strong leaders who stand for the results until others see the vision and stand for the results as well. When leadership is working, those around us trust us to advance the greatest good, integrating their concerns and questions into the best path forward.
Gather all Perspectives
It’s a myth that including everyone makes things more complicated. In fact, expanding the circle of people contributing their ideas and intellect to our projects leads to smarter, more elegant solutions than we can imagine. When it comes to collective intelligence, more is truly the merrier.
Celebrate and Energize
Leaning into positivity is vital to any concerted effort. We must value each other’s participation and communicate our appreciation.
Be Accountable
Say what we mean and mean what we say so people know they can count on us. When we make a promise, always say by when. Then, complete it on time or give a heads-up to the team and commit to a new time. There is power in clarity.
Embrace Transparency
Within a system based on collaboration, coordination, and trust, sharing rather than hoarding information, ideas, and wisdom accelerates productivity.
Commit to Sustainability
We hold ourselves accountable to current and future generations by working only on projects that align with a sustainable environment and a healthy quality of community life. This is the North Star for our commercial and political activities. See the OTNA Sustainability Statement here.
Step into IntelliSynthesis™
IntelliSynthesis™ is the logic and intelligence that is all around us but so often hidden from view by posturing, positioning, and politicizing. When we engage with others entirely in the community’s best interest, collective intelligence naturally moves us toward a world that works for everyone.
What are the shortcomings of competition?
Competition has become the overarching force in commerce and relations between counties, states, and regions
Competition leads people to focus on individual gain and narrow parochial interests when we need to be thinking, acting, and investing in systems
This impacts how people and organizations think, engage, and talk with each other
This is no way to organize an infrastructure system
We are suffering from the ongoingly increasing transactional costs of mistrust when trust is known to be a key accelerator of high-functioning economies
It is time to shift from anti-trust to trust in commerce, governance, and investment
What is the current reality of transport planning?
Planners, economic developers, and businesspeople work in silos
Public agencies adopt consultants’ plans that are not actionable
Ineffective plans fail to attract private-sector investors
Disparate entities appeal to congressional delegation for funding without a systems approach
Rail service has evolved to move freight through regions, not serve regions
Nearly every region is logistically-challenged
What Does This Mean for Most Regions?
Truck and rail services are not coordinated
Local, direct, and short-haul rail service is dwindling
Inland rail service to ports is inadequate
Many rail lines have been abandoned
Access to local and distant markets is fragmented
Logistics shortcomings create barriers to investment
Supply chains are proving to be fragile during national emergencies
Neither the marketplace or government alone can advance regional supply chain strategies
How Has This Impacted Nevada?
83% of the rail activity is moving thru the state, not serving the state
Only 4% of all freight is moving by rail to or from a Nevada business
Only 1 warehouse out of 188 adjacent to a rail line uses rail
Only .25% of all freight is moving by rail between Nevada businesses
Advancing an Alternative in Nevada: Collaborative Infrastructure Development
Stakeholders throughout government, business, and the community came together
Typical lengthy and often ignored planning process transformed into fast-paced action planning
What is Unique About This Approach?
Proactively interact with all relevant stakeholder groups
Generates commercially-relevant action plans, not more studies and reports
Aggregates individual business needs and opportunities into corridor and regional infrastructure plans
Builds regional strategies for entire supply chains
Integrates transportation, economic development, and land use, with private-sector investment
What Are the Benefits of This Approach?
Improves supply chain efficiency and reliability
Lowers environmental impacts of logistics
Enables value-added processing, manufacturing, and recycling
Expands market reach for shippers
Appeals to private-sector infrastructure investors who favor well-conceived strategies
Builds infrastructure that serves and is funded by the private sector
Facilitation team synthesizes input, saving participants’ time
Methodology organizes input to optimize group’s intelligence
Emphasizes idea generation/ De-emphasizes vested interest and political posturing
Seeking underwriting and development partners for the customized platform
Advancing Collaboration in Our Industry
Uses IntelliConference methodology to gather industry professionals, government staff, and community members to think together
Asks the most important questions for supply chain efficiency
Leads to action-oriented thinking and solutions
Find out more at Freightforum.org
Who are the partners for RE-SEED?
Class Is
What is our approach to the Class I’s regarding branding and advocacy?
Tom Tisa, Joe Hinrichs, Gil Lamphere
Send Blueprint to Class I Execs
Estimate carloadings in Nevada
50 x 5,000 250,000 cars x $4,000, $1B x 15= $15B contribution to gross operating revenue, $5B contribution to net operating income, $30B with Ca, UT, AZ, What if even half of this comes true?
Transform GoRail into a likable, trusted initiative, make a proposal on this
Shortlines, Jack Hellman/ASLRRA
States
California-Tom Eddington-Mike Likosky
Iowa-Jeff Kurtz
Pennsylvania-Josh Shapiro-Mike Carroll
Check state rail plan schedule and bid
Chris Parker, Connecticut
Infrastructure investors
Foundations, particularly associated with corporations
Write memo on each rail stakeholder group benefits, offer invitation
Not to use:
Civilization Engineering… this is the model Buckminster Fuller would be quite proud of!
Civilization Engineering: Civil engineers design the bridge from one side of the river to the other. Civilization engineers bridge the divide between what exists now and what is optimal for a sustainable world.
