GoRail : Uniting rail stakeholders with community leaders and the public.

As the 117th Congress began its work in January, GoRail’s state directors reached out to the chiefs of staff, legislative directors and transportation legislative assistants for all members in the 34 states GoRail covers, sharing “Rail 101” information, 2021 policy priorities and state-specific info on the local importance of freight rail.

GoRail, together with folks across the freight rail community, from Class I and short line railroads to their suppliers and contractors, helped make the first-ever virtual Railroad Day a resounding success. The format allowed us to involve more advocates than any previous fly-in. Social media messages, in coordination with AAR and ASLRRA, reached an audience of 1.5 million and generated engagements and tweets from a dozen members of Congress.

We recruited 100+ local leaders on a letter to members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and a letter to Senate Commerce members. We also activated our online Action Center, generating over 800 grassroots emails to congressional offices. The letters and grassroots messages conveyed priorities like restoring the Highway Trust Fund, ending modal inequity and preserving balanced economic regulation.

In July, the Biden Administration issued an Executive Order that included language directing railroads’ economic regulator, the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB), to consider issuing a rule mandating reciprocal switching among railroads. Rapidly following this announcement, GoRail recruited 31 moderate Democratic and non-partisan rail advocates from 25 states to sign a letter to the Secretary of Transportation, the Chairman of the STB, and the Deputy Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration expressing concerns about unintended consequences of regulatory overreach in the EO. In addition to issuing a press release covered by Progressive Railroading, AJOT, Freight Waves and Transportation Today, we also coordinated an op-ed co-authored by several of the letter signers, “Rail Revolution Requires Smart Policy Choices.”

After Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) led a member letter to the STB in August—urging the board to consider the impact of its regulatory actions on freight rail spending—GoRail secured local grasstop thank you messages to House Democrats who signed the letter. A few months later, following passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law in November, GoRail State Directors worked with local rail advocates to generate thank you messages to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members who supported the legislation. We also took this message to social media, developing a thank you graphic that we used to thank all Senate Commerce and House T&I members supportive of the IIJA on Twitter, resulting in several engagements from members of Congress.

In response to the release of the 2021 Infrastructure Report Card by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), GoRail developed letters to the editor from our state directors highlighting rail’s positive grade and urging Congress to consider rail’s user-pays approach. Letters were published in The Denver Post, Daily Commercial (central Florida), Santa Fe New Mexican, Staten Island Advance, Post and Courier (Charleston) and the Dallas Morning News.

Railroads have an environmental edge within the goods movement industry, cutting down on greenhouse gases (GHG) by 75% on average over heavy trucks. GoRail continued to highlight this environmental edge across all organizing and in all communications, for example coordinating two Earth Day op-eds published in MassLive/The Republican and the Knoxville News Sentinel. We also calculated and added a new state-specific statistic to our website showing the amount of “GHG Saved” by rail in each state annually.

Southwest Operational Restrictions

GoRail’s Texas and Arizona State Director worked throughout the year to educate local leaders in those states about proposed border crossing restrictions and the prohibition on moving liquid natural gas (LNG) by rail. As a result of outreach this spring, the Lake Houston Chamber and the Economic Alliance of the Port of Houston sent letters to local House members and Senators Cruz and Cornyn opposing the proposed LNG prohibition. The North Texas Commission met with Reps. Colin Allred (TX-32) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30) on both issues ahead of the Transportation and Infrastructure committee’s markup of the INVEST in America Act. Also, the Laredo Economic Development Corporation (EDC) brought the border crossing issue before the Laredo/Nuevo Laredo working group, which includes governmental and economic development stakeholders on both side of the U.S.–Mexico border.

Indiana Truck Weight

GoRail joined Indiana’s railroads and the Coalition Against Bigger Trucks in opposing proposed truck weight increases in Indiana. We organized in targeted state house districts that overlapped with that of Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, resulting in five advocates contacting the local state representative. Additionally, Mayor Dennis Buckley of Beech Grove and Indiana Rail Road President Peter Mills co-authored an op-ed in the Indianapolis Business Journal. We also sustained a two-month paid Twitter campaign on the issue, driving over 150k impressions of educational content among a targeted local audience.

Across meetings and GoRail communications, we provided a breakdown of the situation from a rail perspective. A popular “explainer” blog post discussed what railroads have done to maximize throughput and address the challenges they confront as the “middle miles” of the U.S. supply chain. Additionally, State Directors issued state-specific newsletters to local advocates with information on the 24/7 operations of railroads.