Early Bird Registration Extended - Network with Industry Leaders at Passenger and Freight Railroads Unite 2019

  
 
EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION HAS BEEN EXTENDED UNTIL MARCH 8!  Take advantage of the reduced registration and sign up today.  This event offers the opportunity to network with key industry officials, including Matthew Rose, Executive Chairman of BNSF, and Dan Richard, Former Chair, California High Speed Rail Authority.
The inaugural Passenger and Freight Railroads Unite Conference scheduled to be held March 14 & 15 at the Westin Washington, D.C. City Center. Other speakers include John Porcari, former US DOT Deputy Secretary; Stephen Gardner, SEVP Amtrak; Doug Allen, VRE CEO; David Kutrosky, Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority Managing Director; Myles Tobin, Brightline General Counsel; and Matthew Tucker, North County Transit District Executive Director.
 

About the Meeting

Our business meeting is scheduled for a full day on March 14 and the morning on March 15.  It will begin at 8:00 on March 14 with a networking breakfast and then lunch and will adjourn at 4:30 p.m. followed by a networking reception.  On March 15, the action begins at 8 with a networking breakfast and ends at noon.  Cost is $650 before February 15 and $900 afterwards. 
The meeting is being organized by Dan Elliott who served as Chairman of the Surface Transportation Board from 2009 to 2017 and then went into private legal practice at Conner & Winters.  Based on his experience at the Board, he came to believe that freight and passenger railroads need to talk more about how the national rail system should operate to be most efficient and effective.
The title of the meeting is Passenger and Freight Railroads Unite.  This title expresses the theme of the meeting, that is to bring together freight and passenger railroads and other experts to look at the relationship between them to solve ongoing issues between these parties through informal discussions. 
The goal is to bring everyone together to talk about the best way for the rail system to operate.  In many circumstances, the freight railroads own and control the track that the passenger railroads operate on and in others, the passenger railroads have control.  These shared track scenarios lead to disagreements about who should be able to go first when they both simultaneously need to run over the same route.  It seems as if there is insufficient discussion in this town between the relevant parties.  If these parties talked to each other directly rather than past each other through the press and trade shows, maybe we could fix some of the issues that have been fought over by these railroads.

A robust discussion about shared track and changing the network hopefully will lead to some solutions about how this fantastic system should operate.