Ted: Hello. I’m Ted, and I’m a host here at Coffee Break. I’m really glad to be filming another episode, particularly to be joined by a friend of many years, Betsy Cantwell, President of GoRail.

Betsy: Hi, Ted. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ted: Good to have you here with us. This is a new enterprise here at the AAR. We work together on lots of things, particularly communications and things of that nature, but we’ve never done a podcast.

Betsy: Never done a podcast together.

Ted: So, we’ll see how it goes, and our listeners will let us know one way or another.

Betsy: Great. I look forward to that feedback.

Ted: So GoRail, what the heck is that, and what do you guys do?

Betsy: What the heck is GoRail? GoRail is a national grassroots organization that works on building political and public support for freight railroads and for a robust national freight rail network. We have a field staff that goes around the country and meets with local leaders and constituents to talk about freight rail 101. I think folks don’t necessarily understand the freight rail network and how it differs from, say, the passenger rail network, or all the public benefits of freight rail: that it is privately invested, its environmental benefits, its economic benefits, and the ways it impacts their communities every day in ways they don’t see.

So, our team does that field work, tells the freight rail story, and then we work to mobilize those folks when there are political issues. Politics is local, right? So, it’s about building support for freight rail from the ground up, from the communities that benefit from it the most. So that’s, at a high level, what we do.

Ted: You raise a good point. It’s this B2B sector. We live in it, but most people don’t, right? They don’t think about rail day to day necessarily. Obviously, we want to change that. What surprises you? In the course of your career at GoRail, it’s been, what, 12 years now?

Betsy: Twelve years, yep. I’m in my 12th year. What surprises me? When I mention rail to people, they’re always like, “Oh, so you work for Amtrak.” I think that surprises me. Trains don’t operate on highways next to people, so people just don’t think about the impact and the amount that rail moves.

So, I think that surprises me. But there is also the love you see for trains. The moment you mention you work in rail, people’s faces light up. I think that is a positive surprise to working in the industry that we do.

There is a lot of goodwill toward trains. From the moment you’re little, you play with trains, so I think we’re just trying to evolve people’s understanding of what that actually is today and how it works in the real world.

Ted: And why it matters, right? Why it matters to your life. I spent the better part of an hour at the pool this weekend talking to an 11-year-old about trains. I was shocked by his knowledge. He knew so much about the intermodal double-stack train five miles from his house, and he knew it soup to nuts. So, we need more people, and I think GoRail is doing the Lord’s work in trying to make sure more people understand what trains are and, to your point, why they matter to our lives day to day.

Betsy: I agree 100%.

Ted: So, you recently stepped into the role as president. Your background was largely in communications. What opportunities in this role are you most excited about? What does the future look like for GoRail and the industry out in the communities?

Betsy: Sure. There are quite a few things. Top of mind is our grassroots advocacy program, Rail Champions. We have always worked on the grassroots side, building constituent support in addition to working with local and state leaders. But the Rail Champions program is newer in its naming and in the resources we’ve put behind building up that program. We’re 90,000 folks strong now with Rail Champions, so that’s really exciting. Maybe we’ll hit 100,000 this year.

Ted: I think this episode will do it.

Betsy: Yes. Please go sign up. You can go to railchampions.org or gorail.org. That’s exciting because, as Ted said, these issues matter, but they are sometimes in the weeds. What we really try to do through the Rail Champions program is make it easy to be an advocate and give you the tools you need to understand the issues we’re talking about, whether it’s surface transportation reauthorization, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, or cargo theft.

These are issues that affect every day Americans, and we really try to make it easy and bring you along in the Rail Champions program. So, I’m excited for that. I’m excited for the work we do on grants, which I think we’re going to talk about as well, and anytime we can interact with the community.

We host webinars. Building up that programming and the value we can give back to leaders in their communities to help them understand what we do is exciting.

Ted: Sure. Yeah, but it’s a highly regulated industry, so obviously GoRail kind of sits at that intersection of what the industry is, why it matters, what it does, but then how the public policy piece of it interacts with it.

But, you know, I would say to people listening, the blog on the GoRail website is full of interesting rail information, right? And Rail Champions is key to that too, bringing about news of the day, economic development, things that, again, maybe folks aren’t focused on, but you guys do a good job of shining a light on those things.

Betsy: Yeah. I mean, to your point, if you go on our website, and AAR has this as well, we have state pages where you can look at the specific facts in your state. So, like in Texas, I think Texas has the most railroads in the nation, but you can see how many.

I forget off the top of my head how many that is, but things like that. You can see how many trucks the rail volume through your state takes off the road every year. You can see the environmental impact of removing those trucks and really drill down because, like I said, we’re trying to make the case to policymakers for our issues. So, it’s really our job to give people the information they need to advocate on our behalf.

Ted: Yeah. You mentioned policymakers, which is a good segue to grants. We do a lot to make clear to people that we pay for our own infrastructure, particularly our large Class 1 and short line members here at the AAR. But grants are increasingly important, I think, because of that public interaction. Can you talk a little bit about what you guys are doing there, and maybe some of the specifics around the grants, like the rail crossing program?

Betsy: Sure. So, yeah, like you said, the story really is that railroads are privately funded and investing six times higher than the average manufacturer.

And so, the grant money really complements that and helps communities navigate opportunities or challenges in their own communities. Say they want to bring in a new company and they have a rail spur, but they’re not sure how to develop that. There are different federal rail grants that can help them navigate those.

So, there’s the CRISI Grant and the Rail Crossing Elimination Grant, two that we talk about more so than others. But the Rail Crossing Elimination Grant, as it is in the name, is available for communities to either eliminate crossings or just make them safer. That was created from the last transportation bill, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, so that was a new grant program created five years ago. And we love to see it, because that is the most pervasive safety issue in rail: folks at crossings, either pedestrians or cars at crossings or on rights of way.

It’s related to 95% of all rail deaths. And so, this crossing program is really important, and we wanted to see that it was oversubscribed. Since it was a new program, there was some concern that folks wouldn’t know about it or wouldn’t know how to apply. So, we took that and really ran with it, and the field team helped spread the word.

We also created a rail grant hub on our website that you can go to, so it lists not just the Rail Crossing Grant, but CRISI and all the other federal grants that are either rail-specific or where rail is applicable. So, you can go and get all of the details, with links. If the NOFO has been announced, we have dates for all those things to really just make it easy.

And then we got a lot of good feedback on that hub because nothing exists quite like it, we’ve learned. So, we’re starting to build out resources. We’re going to add state grants. Texas, for example, just created a new state grant program, and a lot of other states have rail grant programs.

So, we’re going to add that functionality. The railroads themselves run their own programs. The Class 1s have community grant programs that we added to the hub. And so what we do is go out and educate people, and we ask them to do things. But as part of that, part of relationship building, we really want to make sure that it’s a two-way street, and we’re also helping the communities that we meet with, whether that’s navigating grants or, like I said, opportunities or challenges in their community — what could be a problematic crossing that the grant program could help them out with. So that’s been really exciting and well-received by the people we meet with.

Ted: Well, it’s not simple stuff, right? You’re talking about an arduous process to try, at times, to ascertain large sums of money from the federal government. I think it speaks volumes to the work that you guys have done. You’ve now been asked by folks at the FRA and the USDOT to help serve as that conduit to communities, which maybe we’ll put a pin in. I don’t know what that says about the process itself, but it says a lot about the work that GoRail is doing. So I think it’s obviously something to be really proud of.

Betsy: Yes

Ted: And to your point, if you’re a city manager or town manager of a community of 5,000 or 10,000 people, it’s kind of shocking to think that you’d be expected to know how to navigate that. GoRail, again, is that conduit, that key bridge between the community and these dollars that can make a real difference and, to your point, save lives. We can talk about rail safety, and there’s been a lot of discussion about rail safety, but the reality is the vast majority of incidents in the rail industry happen at crossings, as you said. How do we tackle those? I think that is the most fundamental question at hand. You mentioned CORCA, another issue I had never heard of cargo theft being a big issue until, I would say, honestly, maybe COVID came about.

Betsy: Yeah. And we got the images of-

Ted: Yeah, you know, strewn images of various things. And I was like, “Man, I didn’t know that was a thing.” So, what the heck’s CORCA, and what are you guys doing on it?

Betsy: So CORCA is an acronym for the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act. Did I get it?

Ted: You did. It was off the top too, yeah.

Betsy: I did get it, yeah. And so, it’s what it sounds like. It’s the supply chain at large. Retail crime and cargo theft are issues, and it’s not just railroads. Trucks and ports and everyone involved in the supply chain is feeling the pressure of this crime. What CORCA would do is create a way for the federal government to organize around this issue, which is in many states, crosses many jurisdictions, and is difficult to get our arms around.

So, it’s a pretty bipartisan bill, and we have been educating constituents about it and asking them to support it. I think there is a lot of support. It just passed the House, so we’re waiting for it to move on to the Senate.

Ted: Yeah, I can’t remember the exact number off the top of my head, but- It was-I think it had like, only had, like, 60 no votes out of- Yeah … 435.

Betsy: It was very, very bipartisan.

Ted: Which is hard to find these days.

Betsy: Yes.

Ted: Betsy, I’ll go back to something you said at the beginning, w- just in terms of what people know about rail, but also what they think about rail. You guys did some polling. What did that show?

Betsy: That polling told the story of why we exist in a way. As I said, people don’t tend to know a lot about rail. But once they learn about rail, its environmental and economic benefits, taxpayer relief, and the safety record of railroads, they come around and support our policy positions.

And so, it was interesting to see in the lead-up to the surface transportation, the markup in the House, to see that our arguments really move people, and it also speaks to why we exist in the first place, right? Like, why this, field work organizing, and telling the freight rail story matters. Because people don’t see railroads, and they don’t know these things. So, it’s not self-evident how trains benefit America.

Ted: Yeah. I mean, and in many ways, it shows why GoRail matters, I mean, to do that type of work. And, you know, we live in such a… I mean, we’re recording a podcast, right? It’s such a fragmented information environment now.

It’s hard for the railroads, AAR, and GoRail to reach those people, but you guys are obviously doing a lot to make that happen. To your point, once people realize how critical railroads are, if they didn’t already, the poll showed in part that they’re going to be more supportive of policies that enable the railroads to innovate and invest.

And frankly, without getting into too much of the policy discussion we’ve been living through, in my mind so much of that is backwards looking. So much of that is not designed to help the industry grow. It’s Luddite in a lot of ways.

Betsy: To get back to a question you asked in the beginning, about what surprises me, I think people have no idea how modern the freight rail network is. That is part of what we do every day. We’re not talking about steam engines.

We’re talking about the modern freight rail network that has sensors everywhere, and there’s always a new piece of technology, whether it’s inspection technology, LIDAR, audio, or acoustic detection. All these things are so modern, and people don’t see them. So it’s our job to go out and tell them.

Ted: Yeah. I mean, ultimately nobody has more of an incentive to be safe than the railroads themselves. Right. And, you know, that is evident in the technology that’s been installed throughout the network. You know, steel-on-steel technology hasn’t necessarily changed, right?

We’re getting ready to celebrate our 200th anniversary next year as an industry, which is exciting. But the things that surround it have certainly changed, and I think it’s exciting to see. I know we like to help tell that story as best as we can. So I mentioned 200. What are you guys thinking about for next year, looking forward to 2027, and how do we help bring that message to the American public?

Betsy: Sure. Something fun that we’re doing, to bridge those concepts, is for our Rail Champions program. We’re actually launching a new campaign today. We’re trying to petition the Unicode Consortium, which is the body that governs emoji usage and sets software standards.

Ted: How do I get a job there?

Betsy: I have no idea. I don’t even know where they’re based. But it’s a worldwide organization, and annually they accept proposals for new emojis. That deadline is coming up at the end of July. So, we’re going to submit a proposal for a modern freight train emoji, because currently only the steam locomotive exists.

Part of that proposal is that we are a legacy industry. We’ve been around for 200 years and have been foundational to the United States. We’re going to remain foundational, so we need to change the narrative around how people view railroads.

It’s a modern locomotive with all the bells and whistles I mentioned before. It’s a fun campaign, and it’s obviously low stakes. It’s not like the other stuff that we do. But I also think the way people interact with language matters, and if they are constantly seeing this flagging of this old industry, that’s going to stick in their brains and become a barrier. So, we’re doing something fun and seeing if it’ll stick. I think we have a real case to be made for the new emoji, and we’ll see what happens. So, sign the petition.

Ted: Sign the petition. One thing I can tell you that a steam locomotive couldn’t do is move a ton of freight 500 miles on one gallon of diesel, which is what our current locomotives can do, including with tools such as Trip Optimizer. And anti-idling technologies, which are important and critical to what we do. Before I get you out of here, I did want to give you a gift on behalf of the show. This is our Coffee Break mug.

Betsy: Thank you.

Ted: I’m curious about your current mug. What have you got in the cup?

Betsy: Oh, just some black coffee.

Ted: Yeah, no cream, no sugar?

Betsy: No cream, no sugar.

Ted: I like

Betsy: Gotta stay awake.

Ted: Well, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. We’re really grateful for all the work that GoRail does. It’s important, so thank you. We hope folks listening will check out the website. Go to gorail.org. And obviously, we’ll come back to Coffee Break for our next episode, where we’ll be talking with other experts and leaders in the industry. So thank you, Betsy.

Betsy: Thanks, Ted.