Formatter Testing
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller
Environmental issues, increasing road congestion and costs, and battered public sector budgets present an opportune time for railroads to align their business models with the continent's best interests.
Railroads are vital to North America’s economic growth and environmental stability. Railroads are:
- Environmentally efficient
- Capital efficient
- Space efficient
Railroads in North America are a $100 billion-a-year industry, while trucking is a $1 trillion-a-year industry. The growth opportunity for rail is immense.
Investors, infrastructure funds, and shippers will provide ample capital for this growth strategy, which aligns with the urgent need for sustainable supply chains worldwide.
Projects, companies, communities, and investors will enjoy a higher return on investment as part of a growing rail industry.
Given railroads' inherent contribution to addressing public sector concerns, it has a mismatched approach to government relations.
It has a defensive approach to community relations that misses the opportunity to inspire a groundswell of support for railroads.
It has a weak relationship with capital providers compared to industries with less resilience, importance, and opportunity.
It is slow to adopt new technologies or technologies proven effective outside North America.
It has not been facile at the level of collaboration needed to work effectively with other critical stakeholder groups.
It has suffered from labor-management relations that are hurtful to all sides.
More than 90% of industrial properties are developed as truck-served only.
Landowners, developers, and shippers are challenged to address the complexity of rail logistics and infrastructure.
- Borrowing the required capital for rail infrastructure is more challenging than land and facilities.
- Many economic development agencies are inadequately trained in rail-enabled economic development.
Despite its inherent efficiencies, it is not reaching its potential for leading the continent to freight system sustainability.
Better government relations will drive additional public sector investment in railroads, and supportive policies.
The key is collaboration and letting go of the outdated expectation that competition is an appropriate driver of commerce and governance.
Rail projects will attract more investment when thoughtfully conceived to support entire supply chains and industrial systems.
Adopting new technologies, or those proven effective overseas will bring innovation, safety improvements, and productivity gains to North American railroads.
Building positive relationships with shippers, carriers, governments, and other stakeholders will deliver enormous benefits and open new growth paths.
More collaborative and positive approaches to labor management will attract thousands of new workers, offsetting retirements in a difficult hiring market.
Railroads are an efficient and cost-effective way to move freight. Changing the way railroads do business will help everyone achieve their sustainability goals.
Government
Industry
Advocacy
Labor
Academia
Industry media
Community representatives
Business-service providers, manufacturers, suppliers, Advisors, landowners, developers
Commerce-shippers, local businesses
Regional and corridor infrastructure planning, AutoDesk
Statewide and multi-state freight and rail planning, AECOM
- State Freight Advisory Committees
IntelliSynthesis
North American Freight Forum-what technology company, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, go thru Matt Rose or Gil Lamphere, Act
Unparalleled cataloging of 30,000 relevant stakeholders across the industrial, political, and geographic landscape
Collaborative Industrial Optimization
- GIS-Enabled way of thinking and designing sustainable industry and communities
- Applied economic and demographic data analysis
- How proper investment leads to multiple growth opportunities
- OnTrack Industrial Properties Project
Collateral and Financial Engineering
Strategic Rail Bank, guy in Nevada, Jeff Steilgelman
Strategic Rail Fund, Bon French, Macquarie
Rail Customer Funding
Improve rail
Identity and design network expansion
Design industrial systems
waste
What are the ability factors of various user groups that we want to design our tool and training program to address?
How are we going to do that?
How has data been gathered to date by the relevant stakeholder groups?
What assistance can be provided to early stage data sufferers so that they can bring their data system into optimal alignment with this initiative?
What level of governments are best involved with the aggregation for each geo-level of data?
What are the time factors for each step in this initiative?
What data format would make the process of gathering data from