Rees Shearer of RAIL Solution to address
CAPPE Annual Meeting Feb. 23

Public Welcome

Rees Shearer will be the featured guest speaker at the 2009 Annual Meeting of CAPPE, scheduled for Monday, February 23 from 7-9pm at the Blount County Library.

Shearer is founder and Chair of RAIL Solution, a Virginia-based grassroots advocacy group with over 1200 individual participants and a coalition of allied organizations. RAIL Solution emphasizes balanced transportation planning, with a leading role for railroads.

“We promote railroads as a safe, clean, efficient carrier of freight and people,” says Shearer. “Our long-term vision is to employ faster, upgraded rail service. Rail infrastructure and service improvements to 21st Century standards will enhance the well-being of the citizens and businesses in Tennessee, Virginia, and up the I-81 Corridor into Pennsylvania. Our transportation plan promotes public health and safety while preserving the financial, environmental, and cultural integrity of our homes, farms, businesses, and communities.”

Now RAIL Solution is focused on the I-81 Corridor between Knoxville, Tennessee, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. RAIL Solution is promoting the I-81 Corridor Steel Interstate – a railroad that will demonstrate to America the capabilities of rail to provide faster, cleaner, safer, greener, cheaper time-sensitive freight and passenger service that will be much better for business.

RAIL Solution representatives were in Washington, DC early in February to participate in hearings considering investments in rail as part of the federal economic stimulus package. Virginia's I-81 corridor was repeatedly brought up as an example of how a transformational shift in public spending could affordably divert trucks onto trains. RAIL Solution is seeking to have the I-81 corridor rail initiative designated as a pilot project in the next federal transportation bill reauthorization.

Shearer’s presentation, set for 7:15pm, will cover the story of RAIL Solution, which formed in response to a 2002 proposal to privatize I-81 in Virginia into a truck tollway with four exclusive truck lanes down the center. In 2003-4, RAIL Solution secured 48 local government resolutions favoring rail infrastructure and service improvements over a plan for border-to-border widening of I-81 in Virginia. The tollway project was defeated in 2008.

The public is invited to come hear Mr. Shearer’s presentation. Refreshments will be served. CAPPE’s annual business meeting will follow the speaker.

See also (link...)

For more information contact Mike Cook, CAPPE President, at 984 9003 or Nina Gregg, Communication Chair at 977 7399.