Solutionary Rail – a people-powered campaign to electrify US railroads and open corridors for a clean energy future was launched in 2017. For two years the Solutionary Rail team has been growing a grassroots alliance of unconventional allies – rail worker, community-based environmental justice organizers, rural electric co-op organizers, Indigenous activists and more.

The Solutionary Rail Team will join Basav Sen of the Institute for Policy Studies to brief movement and policy makers on the essential role of HIGHER speed freight and passenger rail and the corridors they utilize must play in any climate, just transition, or Green New Deal.

Recent enthusiasm for the Green New Deal opens opportunities and necessitates a deeper dive into the role of rail in a sustainable, just society with healthy, vibrant, local economies. A timely and sufficient electrification of the transportation sector that includes trucking requires a shift in the business model of rail and the return of service to the communities trains travel through. It is time to revisit the public benefit mandates railroad monopolies – our first common carriers – are required to deliver.

The ticking climate clock mandates immediate action informed by an understanding of rail understanding of the role of rail that transcends the usual talking points about bullet trains.

Learn more and get your questions addressed at this public briefing. Together, we can creates common cause in divisive times.