High Performance Railroads: Interstate II for the 21st Century
800 Jaguar Lane * Dallas * Texas * 75226
www.TexasRailAdvocates.org
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High Performance Railroads: Interstate II for the 21st Century
800 Jaguar Lane * Dallas * Texas * 75226
www.TexasRailAdvocates.org
Our mission is to accelerate Texas's economic growth and enhance the quality of life enjoyed by its people by advancing the development of rail service to its full potential as a carrier of freight and passengers. |
Contacts
For general information, contact Paul Mangesldorf, the Executive Director, at 972-601-7853 or
PaulM
TexasRailAdvocates.org. For media relations, please contact Peter LeCody, Executive Administrator, at 214-803-7285, or PeterTexasRailAdvocates.org.
Biographical Information
Board Members
Advisors
George Blount - George George is a new Board Member as of October 2007. His biogrpahy is forthcoming. |
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John Radovich - JohnR John is the TRA 2007 Preident and he is also the owner of John's Cars, a Jaguar specialty business. He is a former member of the Board of the Age of Steam Railroad Museum. He is on the Board of the Texas Short Line and Regional Railroad Assoication, and President of Dallas Terminal Railway (DALT). He is a member of the Railroad Passenger Car Association (RPCA), and their Committee Chair for the 2009 RPCA National Convention in Dallas. John is on the City of Dallas, South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund Board and active on the Amtrak TEMPO Board. John is also a member of NARP and TxARP. |
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Taylor Sharpe - Taylor Taylor is an environmental engineer for a large federal government agency. He also owns a small web service and Internet Service Provider company, Taylor Made Services. He is on the Board of Directors of Apple Corps of Dallas and DFWXchange Corporation. He obtained a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas with an emphasis on environmental classes. Previously, he was employed by a European owned oil company and was a project engineer at one of their polyproplyene loop reactor plants. He serves the community through his church and and community activities. His web service company has provided assistance to several non-profit agencies in hosting web pages. |
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Advisors Biographical Information
Gil Carmichael - missouthdaol.com
The following is a self description of transportation experience from Gil's InterState II article where he presents a case for a Second InterState system in the U.S., the rail InterState.:
People identify me with railroad issues and advocacy. They forget that I came out of the highway lobby. As late as 1987 I was active in promoting a $1.6 billion, 1077-mile, four-lane highway development program for my home state of Mississippi. During my business career I have owned five auto dealerships and an air charter service. My first involvement at the federal level was in highway safety. President Nixon named me to the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee. In 1975 President Ford appointed me to the National Transportation Policy Study Commission, which was chaired by Bud Shuster. I led the subcommittee on advanced technology.
I went into this process a strong believer in highway transportation. After three years, I was transformed into a believer in intermodal transportation. Those sentiments were confirmed by my later work as Federal Railroad Administrator under President Bush--which also brought me into contact with leaders in aviation and transit....
The Intermodal Transportation Institute also has an introduction to Mr. Carmichael that can be found at www.du.edu/transportation/welcome.html.
Born in England, Ron Davies started a civil service career in 1938, spent the Second World War in the British Army, and then joined the new Ministry of Civil Aviation. He moved on to British European Airways, then to the Bristol, de Havilland, and Hawker-Siddeley aircraft manufacturing companies.
He developed several procedures for airline traffic forecasting, and (at Bristol) probably established the world's first air transport market research department. His work supported the sales of British commercial aircraft such as the Viscount, Britannia, Comet, and Trident.
In 1968, he joined the Douglas Aircraft Company, where he helped to sell DC-8s, DC-9s, and DC-10s, and participated in many areas of market and economic research, specializing in eastern Europe and China. He advocated twin-engined and stretched versions of the DC-10, and opposed, on the basis of careful traffic analysis, a supersonic airliner project.
He left the industry in 1981 when he was offered the LIndbergh Chair of Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution; he later became the Curator of Air Transport at that museum.
In 1964, his first book, A History of the World's Airlines, was published, and he has since written seventeen other books about airlines, airline personalities, and aspects of air transport. Some of these have become standard references, while some others raise controversial issues.
Ron is a Fellow of three Royal Societies: Aeronautical, Arts, and Geographical; and is an Associate of the Academie Nationale de l'Air et de l'Espace. He is a Fellow National of the Explorers Club, and a member of New York's Wings Club and Washington's Cosmos Club. From Brazil, he has received the Santos Dumont Medal and the Aeronautics Order of Merit.
Ron continued to draw from past experience to maintain a close interest in the progress of commercial aviation, and look to a future that will see the launching of the giant 600/700 seat jet airliner. But he also predicts a substantial challenge to short-haul air transport from High Speed Rail, at least in almost every part of the world except the United States.
Robert R. Kamm - BobKTexasRailAdvocates.org
Robert is an attorney and mediator with more than 20 years of experience in Texas legislative, political and legal matters. His office is in Austin, where he represents clients before the Legislature and state agencies. He received his B.A. in political science from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York and his law degree from the University at Buffalo School of Law.
Until October 1998, Kamm served as General Counsel and Sr. Vice-President-Government Affairs to the Texas Association of Business & Chambers of Commerce, a statewide organization representing more than 120,000 employers across the state of Texas. In addition to handling legal matters for the Association, Kamm served as chief lobbyist and managed the Government Affairs Department. In that capacity, he had primary responsibility for overseeing development of the Association's legislative agenda, a process that included coordination between the Association's many committees, its Board of Directors, outside interest groups, and state legislators and officials. Kamm handled a variety of issues as diverse as education and workforce, economic development, employment relations, health care, international trade, tax, tort reform, and workers' compensation.
Prior to the 1995 legislative session, Kamm advised the Texas General Services Commission on legislative and legal matters. His assignments included an agency wide review of Commission operations that became the basis of the Agency's recommendations to the Legislature in 1995.
Kamm served six years on staff in the Texas Senate, most notably as General Counsel to the Texas Senate Economic Development Committee, which has legislative jurisdiction over matters relating to regulatory issues, insurance, financial institutions, tort reform, and general business issues. As General Counsel, he served as chief advisor to the Committee Chairman and directed all aspects of the Chairman's legislative program involving the above issues.
Prior to his position in the Texas Senate, Kamm spent eight years in private law practice doing commercial and business litigation. In 1990, Kamm was a candidate for the District 48 Texas House of Representatives seat in Travis County.
Jim Repass is the founder and principal executive of the National Corridors Initiative, of Providence, RI, founded in 1989 as a bi-partisan business and environmental transportation advocacy group.
The National Corridors Initiative and its forerunner the Northeast Corridor Initiative Inc. advocate for increased Federal and private investment in ground transportation --- both freight and passenger, and transit, regional and intercity rail--- as an economic development and environmental tool. Mr. RePass founded the NCI in 1989 and serves as its CEO. He has testified before the United States Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and has advised the White House, the U.S. Department of Transportation, state DOT’s and governors on legislation and policy.
A frequent speaker at national transportation conferences, he has met with and addressed business, environmental, academic and political leaders throughout the United States, and keynoted or was a featured speaker at conferences in Washington, DC, and in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, New York State, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Washington State, Oregon, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and elsewhere, and was a principal advisor in the creation of Connecticut’s innovative new Transportation Strategy Board.
Mr. RePass has organized many high-level national conferences on the subject of transportation and rail, including 2002’s upcoming May 13-14 “Uniting America: Building a National Rail System That WORKS!” at the Washington Marriott, 1221 22nd Street NW Washington, DC, with keynoters Michael S. Dukakis and Amtrak Board Chair the Hon. John Robert Smith (see www.nationalcorridorsd.org), 2001’s “Partnerships for Corridor Development: Making Multimodalism Work” with keynoters U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Congressman John Cooksey (R-LA); in 2000 he organized “The National Corridors Movement: Rail Is Real” in Washington with keynoters Amtrak Chair Gov. Tommy Thompson and APTA President Bill Millar, and honoring Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison who also appeared and spoke. Previous conferences have featured Amtrak Reform Council Chair Gil Carmichael, Gov. Tommy Thompson, Senator Claiborne Pell, Amtrak Board member and Meridian, MS Mayor John Robert Smith, and many others.
In 1999 NCI received a grant from the Surdna Foundation which permitted a major outreach effort. This effort, symbolized by NCI’s newly-created “Rail Is Real” program, is intended to spread the word beyond the usual rail community orbit to the broader population, especially via the general news media, that transit, as well as regional and intercity rail, are essential components of a balanced transportation system. These modes can and should be a viable alternative to auto and air transportation, if properly supported with infrastructure investment to reduce travel times, improve comfort levels, and make rail service frequent, attractive, and intermodal. It has nothing to do with nostalgia, and everything to do with economic development.
While engaged primarily in operating the National Corridors Initiative for the past 12 years, Mr. RePass has a private-sector background and broad private-sector experience. In the private sector, the firm RePass & Lyons specialized in the design and execution of business development programs, marketing plans, and sales plans and strategies, particularly with technology-based, energy and transportation companies, for clients such as Raytheon Company, or those seeking to use innovative transportation technologies in development projects. These activities have included management-buyout, licensing, and fund-raising work.
In both the public and private sector Mr. RePass works directly with senior elected and appointed officials, top management, and senior staff. assisting in creating new business and/or policy strategies.
The National Corridors Initiative has become Mr. RePass’ principal activity. Initial work involved the Boston-New York High Speed Rail project, including direct negotiation with the White House Office of Management and Budget regarding funding for the program, which has been successfully completed. NCI’s efforts now involve assisting and advising Corridor-paradigm development projects throughout the United States.
Starting in 1992, the NCI under Mr. RePass' leadership broadened its scope to emphasize intermodalism and the need to develop a fully integrated passenger and freight transportation system in regions of the United States other than the Northeast. In 1995 the NCI launched the National Corridors Initiative to implement this objective, and to bolster national support for the completion of the Northeast Corridor project. In 1996 Mr. RePass was appointed to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Infrastructure Financing for the State of Rhode Island. He has testified before the late Sen. John Chafee’s Committee on Public Works and the Environment regarding the direction of “TEA-21”, the successor to “ISTEA “, and also provided testimony to Rep. Bud Shuster’s (R-PA) Blue Ribbon Panel on the Future of Amtrak, the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure’s Railroad Subcommittee as well as participating in and authoring the report of the National Forum for the Future of Passenger Rail, a body created on the instructions of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott at the suggestion of Meridian, MS Mayor John Robert Smith. In the case of the Shuster panel, Mr. RePass’ testimony, which stressed the Corridor paradigm, paralleled the language ultimately adopted by the majority report of the Panel.
Mr. RePass is frequently interviewed about the national news media regarding transportation issues, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and has appeared on CNN, National Public Radio, and local radio and television stations. He is also a frequently published author and journalist, is publisher of web newsletter Destination:Freedom, and is a Contributing Editor at Railway Age Magazine.
Mr. RePass has also been a member of the Board of Directors of the Boston Rental Housing Association, serving as a committee and subcommittee chairman, and was as a leading proponent for and member of a Board-level Affordable Housing Task Force. The adopted son of a teacher and former college professor who went into business, Mr. RePass believes both in education and in self-help, as well as in helping those who can not help themselves.
Kevin Ruble - KevinR Kevin is president and founder of TranSolutions, Inc. In this role he has provided strategic advisory services to owners and top managers of businesses involved in rail transportation, air freight, passenger air, motor freight and taxi/limo services. He is the leading strategic advisor to the regional and short line railroad market, having participated in the acquisition and development of over 60 regional and short line railroads since 1985. In addition, he is a popular speaker on the topic of developing high performance organizational strategies to address the demands of the new economy, having spoken for Inc. magazine, the ESOP Association, the National Center for Employee Ownership, and numerous other industry and professional groups. Kevin previously served as a vice-president of Southwestern Commercial Capital, Inc. and Southwestern Venture Capital of Texas, Inc.; lenders and venture capitalists to privately held businesses, ads well as a commercial lending executive for Heller Financial Corporation. Kevin started his transportation career with the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company where he was assistant manager-car service after having served in every department of the company as an officer trainee. He earned an MBA in finance and marketing from the University of Dallas Graduate School of Management and a BBA in economics from Sam Houston State University, where he was recipient of the Wall Street Journal Award for Economics. Kevin serves as a board member for Texas Rail Advocates, the National Center for Employee Ownership and the ESOP Association Southwest Chapter. PS: Since Kev authored this bio, he has taken on the leadership of Marquette Rail <www.marquetterail.com>. |
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