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September 2015
— by Pat Foran, editor
With the addition of Kansas City Southern Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Brian Hancock, Aurizon VP of Corporate Development Andrew MacDonald and All Aboard Florida President P. Michael Reininger, the RailTrends® 2015 speaker lineup is complete. The event will be held Nov. 19-20 at the W New York in New York City.
As usual, our roster of rail leaders and stakeholders is spot-on eclectic. Joining us at RailTrends XI will be Michael Ward, chairman and CEO of CSX Corp. and Progressive Railroading’s 2015 Railroad Innovator Award honoree; Rogelio Velez, director general of Ferromex; Jean-Jacques Ruest, executive VP and chief marketing officer for CN; John Kaiser, VP and general manager-intermodal for Union Pacific Railroad; John Fenton, president and CEO of Patriot Rail Corp.; Rick Webb, CEO of Watco Cos. LLC.; Kevin Shuba, CEO of OmniTRAX Inc.; James Hertwig, president and CEO of Florida East Coast Railway; TJ Gallagher, CFO at Genesee & Wyoming Inc.; Acting Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg; and Surface Transportation Board Chairman Daniel Elliott.
Other industry analysts — including independent transportation analyst/consultant and RailTrends Program Consultant Tony Hatch — will contribute to the dialogue, be it from the lectern or during networking breaks. For the complete lineup, to register, visit RailTrends.com.
Following last month’s foiled terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train, two U.S. senators called on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to implement passenger-rail security and safety improvements that had been mandated in legislation passed by Congress in 2007.
The legislation required TSA to create regulations addressing threats facing transit agencies by putting security plans in place, ensuring proper security training for employees and requiring a thorough vetting of those working on the systems, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) wrote in a letter to TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger.
Do U.S. passenger-rail systems need to do more to tighten security? About 60 percent of the respondents to an online poll question we asked last month think so. How much of that “doing more” would require additional regulation? What are freight railroads and other transport links doing to tighten security? What’s technology’s role? We’re exploring a range of issues (and asking plenty of questions) as we plan our second annual Secure Rail conference, to be held Feb. 9-10, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. For more information, visit: securerailconference.com.
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