VitalRail: A Continental Freight Rail Growth Initiative

RE-SEED: Rail Enabled Sustainable Environment and Economic Development

RE-SEED is a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the sustainability and productivity of our industrial systems by expanding freight rail service. The need and opportunity for railroad development to address environmental challenges and transportation efficiency has never been greater. However, we need more from railroads than they can do themselves. Fortunately, railroads do not need a government bailout; they outperform many other industries. That stability, combined with rail technology’s inherent energy, space, and capital efficiency, will deliver a high return on investment when the involved groups work together on a comprehensive expansion of the rail transportation system.

RE-SEED engages thirteen “Interdependent Stakeholder Groups”: Class I Railroad Executives, Class II and III Railroad Leaders, Investors/Banks, Rail Employees, Citizens, Customers, Suppliers, Economic Developers, Transportation Planners, Land Developers, Researchers, Other Transportation Services/Modes, and Elected Leaders.

OnTrackNorthAmerica has identified an initial set of essential dialogues for expanding North America’s freight rail service. These dialogues are called IntelliConferences.

• Rail Growth Capitalization
• Rail Business Culture Transformation

• Rail Management – Rail Labor
• Containerized International Freight
• Revitalizing the Rail Carload System
• Rail Energy Efficiency
• Freight Transportation Land Use
• Rail Technology Adoption
• Rail Trucking Coordination
• Rail Regulatory Excellence

Executives

Rail Business Culture Transformation IntelliConference

The Class I rail industry’s historical and cultural dynamics have contributed to a decline in post-2006 market share and volume. Focusing on short-term profitability, cost-cutting, and an outdated corporate culture has negatively impacted customer success and satisfaction, employee morale, expertise retention, and innovation. There is a compelling opportunity to transform the railroad business culture to support a more vital contribution to supply chain efficiency and satisfaction, success, and safety for all stakeholders.

Core Question:

What reorientation would transform the rail business culture to balance investors' interests with key stakeholders' professional and personal interests?

Investors

Rail Growth Capitalization IntelliConference

North American freight railroads require significant capital investments and strategic alignment among multiple stakeholders. One core cause of diminished growth capital is that freight railroads operate over private networks compared to other modes that operate over public networks. This has created an imbalance of risks and rewards for investors. Intelligent collaboration among the private sector investment community, rail management, and government will foster a rail growth strategy that strengthens a multimodal network, incentivizes public and private investment, and optimally serves supply chains. The key to facilitating this long-term growth strategy is to broaden investors’ valuation horizons, integrate public policies, and empower rail management.

Core Question:

What performance measures, financial incentives, and public policy adjustments can investors, rail management, and government reconceive to expand capitalization of the modernization and growth of North American freight railroads and enhance their strategic value to supply chain efficiency?

Employees

Rail Management – Rail Labor IntelliConference

Railroads and rail unions are filled with people dedicated to safety and organizational success. Their relations are often fraught with misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Creating a collaborative and trusting environment will leverage the strengths and contributions of all railroaders and is essential for the industry to grow and prosper.

Core Question:

What aspects of the relationship between rail management and rail labor can be improved to boost productivity, safety, quality of working life, and service?

Customers

Containerized International Freight IntelliConference

Globalization of supply chains has exacerbated congestion and chaos in how containerized freight is moved through North America. Stakeholder groups involved in containerized international freight face significant inefficiencies in the current use of ISO containers, chassis, trucks, railroads, ships, and related infrastructure.

Core Question:

What improvements can stakeholders identify for moving containerized international freight through supply chains to improve efficiency, capacity, and commercial benefit with the least impact on the environment and community?

Revitalizing the Rail Carload System IntelliConference

There is an urgent need to reflect on and reinvent our rail carload system in light of the decline of coal shipments, reshoring and reindustrialization, new natural resource development, increasing population and freight demand, and urgent environmental, congestion, and financial challenges.

Core Question:

How can stakeholders work together to build a rail carload system that best supports the nation’s sustainable prosperity?

Suppliers

Rail Energy Efficiency IntelliConference

There is an urgent need to improve the sustainability of freight transportation. Many disparate commercial actors and policymakers are advancing technologies aimed at reducing the energy requirements of moving railcars. Progress on these developments can only be accomplished effectively through large-scale collaboration. It is time to transform how we collectively evaluate and commit resources to significant new technology options.

Core Question:

How can technology developers, railroads, investors, and policymakers make the wisest energy-efficiency decisions so that North American railroads contribute to lowering the emissions and resource requirements of freight movement?

Land Developers

Freight Transportation Land Use IntelliConference

The industrial development planning paradigm has excluded the implications of site selection on the movement of freight to and from a property. This blind spot in land planning has had negative economic, environmental, and social consequences. Ensuring the quality of community life in municipalities, regions, and continents requires thoughtful coordination of land use decision-making with local and national supply chains, freight networks, and industrial systems.

Core Question:

How can we institutionalize integrated planning of land use, freight transportation, and industrial systems among public and private-sector stakeholders?

Researchers

Rail Technology Adoption IntelliConference

Technology adoption by freight railroads has a long history, driven by internal business agendas, external regulation, and shipper requirements. Existing technologies can either be improved incrementally or replaced entirely by new technological advances. The dynamic pace of change is challenging to manage, exacerbated by organizational silos and varying perspectives among vendors and in-house developers. Technology is increasingly relied on for safe and efficient operations and business processes. There is an inclination to replace human labor with technological automation because of its assumed superiority. However, human intelligence is broader and more nuanced. The goal must be to optimize the interaction between technology and humans in complementary systems that empower situationally aware decisions.

Core Question:

What level of cooperative interaction among stakeholders is required to implement technologies that effectively improve business results, increase safety, support growth, and improve customer service while promoting a culture of empowerment and inclusion for railroad staff at all levels, from executive management to craft labor?

Other Transportation Modes

Rail Trucking Coordination IntelliConference

Rail and trucking each have their strengths and limitations. In an unplanned system, those limitations leave unwelcome performance gaps. In an integrated system, each mode’s strengths can be optimized. It is time to apply collaboration and coordination to create a freight system that best leverages and integrates modal strengths and enhances financial returns for each mode.

Core Question:

What new business interactions and public policy adjustments would improve the working relationship between trucking and rail systems to benefit shippers, providers, investors, labor and other staff, communities, and the environment?

Elected Leaders

Rail Regulatory Excellence IntelliConference

Rules and regulations are promulgated in reaction to various events and experiences. Often, they develop a life of their own, untethered to the original intent and absent the awareness of system consequences, frustrating stakeholders. Improvements are challenging when individual industries and companies beseech the government from a vested interest point of view. A robust set of recommendations informed objectively by all stakeholders is critical to meet urgent safety, productivity, financial, and environmental goals.

Core question:

What regulations can stakeholders agree are either outdated, de minimis, redundant, or counterproductive or can be improved or replaced to support the growth and safety of railroads and their service?