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<h1>VitalRail, Driving a Sustainable Economy</h1>
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==== Introduction ====
North America enjoys perhaps the world's most productive freight rail system and yet the industry’s $115 billion annual revenue starkly contrasts with the freight trucking industry’s $1 trillion yearly revenue.
 
Railways offer irreplaceable space, energy, and capital efficiencies. Growing freight rail service will contribute cascading benefits to all stakeholders:
 
* a one-mile-long train moves the same goods as a 27-mile convoy of trucks,
* it's energy efficiency allows it to move that freight on 1/2 to 1/4 the fuel and emissions.
 
VitalRail serves at the heart of CAPSI as a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the productivity of our industrial systems by expanding freight rail service.
 
The need and opportunity for railroad development to address transportation efficiency and environmental challenges has never been greater. Rather than the emotional critiques and general calls for a so-called rail renaissance, VitalRail is informed by the real challenges and benefits of growing an industry as integral as railroads.


==== Introduction ====
At the same time 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 efficiencies– delivers a high return-on-investment when the involved stakeholder groups work together.
VitalRail 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. North America enjoys perhaps the world's most productive freight rail system, but the industry’s $115 billion annual revenue starkly contrasts with the freight trucking industry’s $1 trillion yearly revenue.
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==== VitalRail Stakeholders ====
Collaboration among stakeholders is fundamental to achieving the tremendous growth opportunity for:


Yet rail offers superior space, energy, and capital efficiencies, and growing freight railroads will contribute cascading benefits to all stakeholders. Consider the impact of space efficiency on highway capacity: a one-mile-long train moves the same goods as a 27-mile convoy of trucks on the road. And rail's energy efficiency allows it to move freight on 1/4 to 1/2 the fuel and emissions of trucks.
* railroads;
* rail-related companies; and
* the industries and communities they serve.


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 efficiencies, will deliver a high return on investment when the involved stakeholder groups work together to expand the rail transportation system.
VitalRail engages fourteen interdependent stakeholder groups:


==== Stakeholders ====
* Class I, II, and III railroad leaders;
[[Collaboration Will Take Us Where Competition Can’t|Collaboration]] among stakeholders is fundamental to achieving this tremendous growth opportunity for railroads, rail-related service providers, and the industries and communities they serve. VitalRail engages fourteen “Interdependent Stakeholder Groups”: Class I Railroad Executives, Class II and III Railroad Leaders, Investors and Banks, Rail Employees, Citizens, Customers, Suppliers, Economic Developers, Transportation Planners, Land Developers, Realtors and Site Selectors, Researchers, Other Transportation Services and Modes, and Elected Leaders.
* Investors, Banks, and Economic Developers;
* Rail Employees, Customers, Suppliers, and Citizens;
* Transportation Planners, Land Developers, Realtors, and Site Selectors; and
* Researchers, other transportation services and modes, and government leaders.


Learn more about [[VitalRail Stakeholders]].
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==== IntelliConferences ====
==== IntelliConferences ====
VitalRail convenes stakeholder IntelliConferences to plan at the level needed to advance this deeply interconnected, invaluable industry. OnTrackNorthAmerica has identified an initial set of essential dialogues for expanding North America’s freight rail service.
VitalRail Stakeholder IntelliConferences are advancing this deeply interconnected, invaluable industry using well-proven, best-in-class methodology, combined with supporting tools. VitalRail begins with the most important dialogues for expanding North America’s freight rail service:


* [[Rail Growth Capitalization]]
* [[Rail Growth Capitalization]]
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*[[Rail Trucking Coordination]]
*[[Rail Trucking Coordination]]
*[[Rail Regulatory Excellence]]
*[[Rail Regulatory Excellence]]
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==== VitalRail Value Proposition ====
Expanding freight rail service is crucial for sustainable industrial growth across North America.


<h2>Executives</h2>
As the continent pursues reshoring and reindustrialization, railroads need to serve as the backbone of supply chain transportation. Like high-speed internet, robust rail service is fundamental to community prosperity; its absence creates economic barriers and environmental costs. Neither marketplace dynamics nor vested interest lobbying lead to smart supply chains. For North America’s future prosperity, they must be reconceived with a long-term vision.
<h3>[[Rail Business Culture Transformation|Rail Business Culture Transformation IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
What reorientation would transform the rail business culture to balance investors' interests with key stakeholders' professional and personal interests?</br>
 
<h2>Investors </h2>
<h3>[[Rail Growth Capitalization|Rail Growth Capitalization IntelliConference]]</h3>
 
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.</br></br>
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
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?
 
<h2>Employees</h2>
<h3>[[Rail Management – Rail Labor|Rail Management – Rail Labor IntelliConference]]</h3></br>
 
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.</br>
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
 
What aspects of the relationship between rail management and rail labor can be improved to boost productivity, safety, quality of working life, and service?
 
<h2>Citizens</h2>
<h2>Customers</h2>
<h3>[[Containerized International Freight|Containerized International Freight IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
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?</br>
 
<h3>[[Revitalizing the Rail Carload System|Revitalizing the Rail Carload System IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
How can stakeholders work together to build a rail carload system that best supports the nation’s sustainable prosperity?</br>
 
<h2>Suppliers</h2>
<h3>[[Rail Energy Efficiency|Rail Energy Efficiency IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.</br>
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
 
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?</br>
 
<h2>Economic Developers</h2>
<h2>Transportation Planners</h2>
<h2>Land Developers</h2>
<h3>[[Freight Transportation Land Use|Freight Transportation Land Use IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
How can we institutionalize integrated planning of land use, freight transportation, and industrial systems among public and private-sector stakeholders?
 
<h2>Researchers</h2>
<h3>[[Rail Technology Adoption|Rail Technology Adoption IntelliConference]]</h3>
 
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
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?
 
<h2>Other Transportation Modes</h2>
<h3>[[Rail Trucking Coordination|Rail Trucking Coordination IntelliConference]]</h3>
 
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.
 
<h3>Core Question:</h3>
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?
 
<h2>Elected Leaders</h2>
<h3>[[Rail Regulatory Excellence|Rail Regulatory Excellence IntelliConference]]</h3>
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.


<h3>Core question:</h3>
The challenge is not a lack of intelligence; there are many smart and committed people in industry, government, and the community. What we are lacking are the effective forums and methods for gathering this intelligence into smart policy, programs, and marketplace improvements.


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?
Learn more about the [[Why Do This?|VitalRail Value Proposition]].
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==== VitalRail FAQs ====
Go to the [[VitalRail FAQs]] page to get your early questions answered.

Latest revision as of 18:55, 9 January 2025

Introduction

North America enjoys perhaps the world's most productive freight rail system and yet the industry’s $115 billion annual revenue starkly contrasts with the freight trucking industry’s $1 trillion yearly revenue.

Railways offer irreplaceable space, energy, and capital efficiencies. Growing freight rail service will contribute cascading benefits to all stakeholders:

  • a one-mile-long train moves the same goods as a 27-mile convoy of trucks,
  • it's energy efficiency allows it to move that freight on 1/2 to 1/4 the fuel and emissions.

VitalRail serves at the heart of CAPSI as a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the productivity of our industrial systems by expanding freight rail service.

The need and opportunity for railroad development to address transportation efficiency and environmental challenges has never been greater. Rather than the emotional critiques and general calls for a so-called rail renaissance, VitalRail is informed by the real challenges and benefits of growing an industry as integral as railroads.

At the same time 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 efficiencies– delivers a high return-on-investment when the involved stakeholder groups work together.

VitalRail Stakeholders

Collaboration among stakeholders is fundamental to achieving the tremendous growth opportunity for:

  • railroads;
  • rail-related companies; and
  • the industries and communities they serve.

VitalRail engages fourteen interdependent stakeholder groups:

  • Class I, II, and III railroad leaders;
  • Investors, Banks, and Economic Developers;
  • Rail Employees, Customers, Suppliers, and Citizens;
  • Transportation Planners, Land Developers, Realtors, and Site Selectors; and
  • Researchers, other transportation services and modes, and government leaders.

Learn more about VitalRail Stakeholders.

IntelliConferences

VitalRail Stakeholder IntelliConferences are advancing this deeply interconnected, invaluable industry using well-proven, best-in-class methodology, combined with supporting tools. VitalRail begins with the most important dialogues for expanding North America’s freight rail service:

VitalRail Value Proposition

Expanding freight rail service is crucial for sustainable industrial growth across North America.

As the continent pursues reshoring and reindustrialization, railroads need to serve as the backbone of supply chain transportation. Like high-speed internet, robust rail service is fundamental to community prosperity; its absence creates economic barriers and environmental costs. Neither marketplace dynamics nor vested interest lobbying lead to smart supply chains. For North America’s future prosperity, they must be reconceived with a long-term vision.

The challenge is not a lack of intelligence; there are many smart and committed people in industry, government, and the community. What we are lacking are the effective forums and methods for gathering this intelligence into smart policy, programs, and marketplace improvements.

Learn more about the VitalRail Value Proposition.

VitalRail FAQs

Go to the VitalRail FAQs page to get your early questions answered.

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