Bill Hutchison and Ed D’Amato are co-founders and co-chairs of the Lakeshore Rail Alliance, a coalition of seven passenger rail advocacy organizations across six states in the Great Lakes Region, working to revitalize service between New York City and Chicago. They are also board members of All Aboard Eerie.
Earlier this year, Bill and Ed published a white paper titled “Creating a Robust American Passenger Rail System.” It argues for a complete revamp of how we do passenger rail in the United States. Drawing from passenger rail systems around the world, and from the keys to the success of the U.S. highway and aviation systems, the paper proposes establishing permanent formula funding for a new, national passenger rail authority to construct a network of dedicated passenger tracks that will be open to competition from private operators.
We got the chance to speak with Bill and Ed this past March to learn more about their proposal. Here is our conversation.
You can find the Lakeshore Rail Alliance on BlueSky, Threads, LinkedIn, and Mastodon. You can also contact Bill and Ed by email at lakeshorerail@gmail.com.
Reconnect America is hosted by Bill Moyer, co-author of the book Solutionary Rail: A People-powered Campaign to Electrify America’s Railroads and Open Corridors to a Clean Energy Future. Check out the essays and supplemental posts that complement this podcast HERE.
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