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#2 On track to Net Zero: The Amtrak journey with Dennis Newman
116 Plays1 year ago
Amtrak is one of the most recognisable names in North American transport having been providing rail passengers with outstanding service across the US and Canada since the 1970s.
More important than Amtrak’s prestigious past however is its future role in achieving Net Zero in the transport sector. Rail is a far more sustainable mode than air travel and its potential to reduce emissions on intercity journeys at a time of urban growth is huge.
As well as an overall reduction through mode shift Amtrak itself is on a journey to a greener future as it aims to achieve net zero by 2045. Join cohosts Mike Goggin and Serbjeet Kohli as they talk to Amtrak’s Dennis Newman about the iconic company’s pathway to Net Zero including engaging their workforce, creating more resilient rail infrastructure, reducing fleet emissions and more.
Guests
- Dennis Newman, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Planning at Amtrak. Dennis leads in a number of areas including infrastructure, fleet and sustainability planning.
Host
- Mike Goggin, Managing Director, Steer.
- Serbjeet Kohli, Director and sustainability lead, Steer.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Series
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Voices of the Industry, a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge thinking across transportation, infrastructure and cities.
00:00:28
Speaker
Well, welcome to listeners to another Voices of Industry Steer post. Very grateful for you joining in today. I'm Mike Goggin. I'm a Managing Director with Steer here in London. Our Voices of Industry conversations take insight from leaders from across the globe alongside the Steer footprint and give views on infrastructure, cities, transport and financing.
Amtrak's Future and Infrastructure Investment
00:00:47
Speaker
And on our website, you'll see over 30 plus speakers who have been able to talk to us over the years and give us their views. Today is a very exciting conversation, a unique conversation, I think.
00:00:58
Speaker
If you think about intercity passenger travel in the United States, there's one name that comes to mind, and that's Amtrak. It is the heart of Americans' mobility system. It's also got a very exciting future. President Biden has passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, providing an additional funding for expansion of the network. The largest investment in passenger rail since Amtrak's creation in 1970, so it's definitely an exciting time.
00:01:23
Speaker
With this positive context, the corporation has set out some bold ambitions for its sustainability credentials and what it achieves to do with net zero. And there is still more to come. I plan to double its ridership by 2040 through further fruit route expansion. So without further ado, let me introduce my companions on the conversation today. Dennis Newman, executive vice president for strategy and planning. Dennis has been in Amtrak since 2017 and prior to that,
00:01:51
Speaker
had a good successful career in aviation working at senior levels. So it'd be interesting to hear the contrast between those two sectors.
Amtrak's Unique Position and Expansion Plans
00:01:58
Speaker
Good morning, Dennis. How are you today? Good morning, Mike. I'm very well today. How about you? I'm very good. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. I'm going to just bring in Serb Coley. Serb Jeet, welcome. Steer's Head of Sustainability. Serb, I hope you don't mind if I refer to you as a seasoned consultant, having worked with Steer on four continents and across multiple modes.
00:02:19
Speaker
Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Great. A pleasure to be here. Pleasure to have Dennis with us to talk about something so interesting that goes really close to what we as a business and we as individuals want to achieve.
00:02:33
Speaker
out of the future that lies ahead of us. I think my very recent 4th of July experience was to travel on Amtrak's capital corridor between San Jose and Sacramento. I was fascinated by how comfortable that journey was, how beautiful the landscape was. California has had a gorgeous amount of rainfall after about 10 years.
00:02:53
Speaker
I was shocked how few people were on it. That's something else which I think the mode train by itself is a sustainable mode of travel. Now, taking that further, which is what I understand Dennis and his team are trying to achieve, should be a fascinating journey to go and walk through and understand what's happening in that journey. Thank you for having me. Thanks, sir.
00:03:13
Speaker
Dennis, you heard my pen portray of Amtrak. It's very hard to sum up a 50-year-old organization and the scams back. What have I missed? What would you like to say? How would you describe Amtrak and what your mission is at the moment?
00:03:25
Speaker
Mike, you did actually a pretty good job of summarizing Amtrak and what we do. We are definitely unique. We're actually a private company. We just happen to be owned by the United States government. That's one of the unique things. You talked about where we are in terms of our future, and this really is an exciting and critical time for us. You mentioned
00:03:50
Speaker
have us having nineteen thousand employees in fact we have twenty one thousand employees now we have been you know as a result of the position we're in with the bipartisan infrastructure law having passed we are now building up both our capital delivery.
00:04:07
Speaker
part of our organization so that we at last can actually be making some of the improvements to some of our aging infrastructure that really does need to be brought into the 21st century. So some elements that just need to be replaced. And so we've been building up and able to do that. But also as coming out of the pandemic, bringing back our service. And as you mentioned, we've got ambitions to grow.
00:04:34
Speaker
the network quite a bit and be able to deliver more mobility benefits to more of America. So it's really an exciting time for us at Amtrak. It sounds it. And before we talk forward, can I just ask, I was really intrigued. I mean, you've been with Amtrak, what, six, seven years now and coming, as I say, your 17 plus years with aviation before that and another career before that. Is there any big reflection that you take from moving from aviation to the railroad corporation?
00:05:02
Speaker
Did you see a big contrast in the way that they think about things?
00:05:06
Speaker
You know, I think there's a lot that's really similar, right? Where in both cases, we're about moving people at base. It's giving people the opportunity to be mobile and get from one location to another. A lot of the considerations, you know, I spent a lot of my airline career in network planning. A lot of the considerations of trying to figure out, okay, well, where can you be successful, really? Where can you deliver a relevant product?
00:05:35
Speaker
Similar kinds of analytical techniques to try to figure that out, but I will say that while there are some and we'll talk about
Sustainability as a Competitive Edge
00:05:45
Speaker
these, you know, just sustainability is is one of the benefits key benefits of of rail relative to air travel.
00:05:54
Speaker
But also there are some more constraints and challenges. So I always say to folks, you don't have to build air, but you do have to build rail in order to get where you want to go. And so that adds a few more challenges. But in big picture, a lot of similarities. And both obviously customer service issues that are key, high fixed asset component to the business. So there's a lot that's transferable. Well, a lot that's different.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah. And you're still enjoying it after seven years. Still much to do, as you say. Absolutely. And as I said, it's such an exciting time to be here that what's not to enjoy. Absolutely. Absolutely. So look, we take this up as a conversation about sustainability. So let's get into that. And I wanted to start with where the imperative for Amtrak has come from. Because when I read around a bit about the topic, it's very clear the organization has ambition to really drive forward its sustainability contributions and minimize its environmental impact. So
00:06:51
Speaker
I'm wondering, where did that providence come from? What's driving the organization? I think there's a few things that I would say to that question. One is, we start from being a mode that is more sustainable. Part of our competitive advantage is that we are more sustainable mode of travel.
00:07:12
Speaker
And so trying to leverage that advantage is a key to us because it is attractive, particularly to a growing segment of the population. So that's one. And then second is, and we'll maybe talk a little bit more about this, is just the impacts that we see.
00:07:32
Speaker
of climate change on our operations, on our customers and our employees. And so the need to address those events is driving us as well. And then we, yeah, I may touch on this again later, but we have a very simple set of values at Amtrak and it's do the right thing, put customers first and excel together. And those things
00:07:57
Speaker
together kind of impel us to want to address the issues of climate change and sustainability. And so that drives us forward. And just taking our mission as being able to deliver more mobility, intercity passenger rail transportation to the country, we need to do that in a sustainable way if we're going to be successful. Gotcha. Thank you. Sir, can I just bring you in here? Because I know you were recently doing some work
00:08:26
Speaker
for an investor in road who was very much interested in how their asset performance was impacting across sustainability. Absolutely and I think what was quite intriguing in some of the things you said just there Dennis and linking it back to the sustainability work we were looking at for road asset was how naturally what you rightly said rail is a sustainable mode and then therefore what your
00:08:51
Speaker
trying to achieve is is to then take that agenda further so i actually wanted to get your perspective on what does sustainability mean at amtrak what's your key objectives. Are key objectives relate to reducing our our emissions right now i think we'll talk about our.
00:09:12
Speaker
our climate commitment, but it's a rather ambitious agenda that we've got. We can talk maybe about more specifics, but we've got a pledge to achieve net zero by 2045.
00:09:28
Speaker
And there are a lot of elements that go into reaching that achievement. Big picture. Reducing our impact on the environment and particularly contributions to warming and climate change. Making our railroad more resilient and being able to withstand some of the impacts that we experience because of climate change.
00:09:51
Speaker
and really having our whole organization be attuned to those issues and working to make us better and find solutions. Understood. And then when you are looking at achieving those objectives, I noted that you talk about a data-driven approach in assessing all these objectives. Could you talk a little bit more about what does this data-driven approach involve?
00:10:15
Speaker
Well, it involves in a few different ways. One, in looking at where are really the topics that we should be addressing, we did take an approach, kind of an AI-driven approach to see what are really the relevant topics that across our industry and public kind of at large, what are the topics related to sustainability that are really important.
00:10:45
Speaker
We were glad to see that the key topics that we are already addressing are the ones that really resonate. So that's one place where data comes in. The other one is just in really the nuts and bolts, is looking at where are the key sources of emissions.
00:11:03
Speaker
Our fuel use is, of course, the biggest one. Diesel fuel that operates most of our trains is our biggest source. And so the data about our fuel use, the data about our electricity use and how that electricity is generated, and then looking at things that we can do to improve
00:11:25
Speaker
Like how often our locomotives are sitting idling and creating emissions that they really don't need to so that we could that that's something that we can address to try to reduce emissions and also as we have looked at.
00:11:41
Speaker
assessing where our biggest risks are, particularly when it gets to resiliency, using climate models to predict where changes in UNC level or temperature or other climate events are going to occur so that we can assess risk, identify where we really have to take action to improve our resiliency.
00:12:06
Speaker
Interesting. And then picking up one of the points you made earlier about using AI and actually understanding the real risk that sits across the network, across the assets that you own and operate.
00:12:18
Speaker
One of the quite peculiar pushback against AI that we are starting to hear is about how some of these technological changes shifts towards net zero, pushes towards sustainability, is leaving people behind, people who don't have those skills and don't have those capabilities. Is that something that comes in your consideration when you are making those choices of how does Amtrak become more sustainable?
00:12:44
Speaker
I'm not sure that I necessarily see that, from my standpoint, as a threat of our sustainability efforts. In fact, we find that as we're trying to engage our workforce on solutions that we're not
00:13:05
Speaker
don't need, I don't think, to employ AI in that regard. It's really that practical knowledge of people who are running the railroad who help us identify potential solutions or changes to our process that can make us better. So while in general there are areas where AI may have impacts, could have some negative impacts, I don't think that this is one of them for us.
00:13:35
Speaker
No, that's helpful. I'll bring Mike in at this point because I know Mike and me have been discussing on some of these points quite extensively because it's so asset and context specific. But I want to go back to the people bit Dennis, 22,000 people as you said now, so it's still growing as you say. And I was taking most of when I was reading some of your plans and initiatives, just how much you're seeking to drive change through your employees and but also by influencing
00:14:05
Speaker
customer behavior as well. And I wondered, how are you finding that journey? Is everybody on that journey with you? Because that's a big task, but it is the way that success is going to come about in terms of both net zero, but just generally the volunteering and community groups and participating in communities. Yeah, I think I would say that short answer, yes. But nevertheless, we are embarking on an increase in our focus on sustainability.
00:14:31
Speaker
It's new to a lot of people, right? So we need to be bringing people along. So some of the things that we've been doing are, I mean, first of all, integrating sustainability goals into our overall strategic planning. And so in our annual plans, we have got specific goals for improving sustainability. We've got a group of folks who form a committee that's focused on sustainability.
00:15:00
Speaker
But then we're also, one thing we actually just did this year is we instituted sustainability training, this kind of awareness and what sustainability means for us, for all of our management employees to make sure that folks understand what we're about.
00:15:16
Speaker
when we did have our board approve a climate commitment, including our net zero pledge, communicating that out across the company to get people involved. And we're very fortunate in having a workforce, many people come to Amtrak,
00:15:33
Speaker
because it is kind of mission-driven. They are mission-driven folks who come here, and so they want to do the right thing and help put customers first. So I think it's not a big lift to get people to be interested in helping us try to find solutions. That integration into management thinking into strategic planning, does that relate to your double materiality framework?
00:16:01
Speaker
that I was reading in your sustainability report, that the idea that you were going to think about those criteria as you operate and as you plan for the future.
00:16:10
Speaker
Well, I think it does, in some sense, relate. We did, as we were doing that assessment, materiality assessment, it was double. So we looked at both the impacts financially, strategically for the organization, but also the social and external impacts as well. And since we are very much a mission-driven organization, that does lead us to want to integrate sustainability more into what we're doing.
00:16:39
Speaker
And then just following up on that Dennis, are you starting to see this as not so much of a top down board and management driven thinking or given the breadth of employees you've got, are you starting to see that shift from a bottom up driven thinking?
00:16:54
Speaker
I think we're probably still seeing both, candidly, right? We're definitely, there's a lot of the top down because our management is very cognizant of what we need to accomplish. But as I said, we have a lot of our workforce is very interested in helping us find these solutions.
Innovation and Operational Challenges
00:17:14
Speaker
So we in particular, we just recently in the last couple of years had set up
00:17:21
Speaker
an innovation group specifically as it's now our, what we used to call IT is now digital technology and innovation. And it's not just computer related things, it's focused on innovation that can help us get better, not just in sustainability, but also in customer service and in efficiency so that we can have more efficient operations. But sustainability is a key part of it.
00:17:48
Speaker
And one of the things that the Innovation Group is helping us do is reach across the company to get ideas, you know, really kind of have a portal for employees to give us their ideas about things we can do. And sustainability is one of the areas where we use that platform to try to get ideas.
00:18:09
Speaker
Crowdsourcing, very interesting. Now just kind of, you know, looking over to your customers, the 6500,000 customers that you're aiming to serve or are serving and almost looking outwards. Have you started considering how some of the behavior change that is starting to awareness about climate change, awareness about sustainability growing, that starting to impact your customers behavior? Is that starting to, are you starting to see any of that change in your
00:18:39
Speaker
business? Well, absolutely. As there's more awareness just in the general public about sustainability, that makes people more open and interested in our mode. As we look at
00:18:58
Speaker
looking at tracking trends in the in the transportation business you know we do see that the data says that more travelers are more interested in sustainable modes of travel that's great for us because that's that is us and particularly as
00:19:20
Speaker
you know younger adults are even more attuned and interested so as we grow and as we go forward we expect that the the consumers of tomorrow are going to be even more interested in our sustainable mode of transportation.
00:19:39
Speaker
And again, I can only speak from my own personal experience of having to choose between renting a car or borrowing a car from one of my relatives in San Jose to go up to Sacramento, how convenient and how comfortable it was, including, you know, absolutely perfectly working Wi-Fi where I could get on calls and have conversation with my colleagues and take pictures of the beautiful mountain with the riverbeds around it.
00:20:02
Speaker
It was fantastic and I couldn't believe that none of the relatives who I have been living in San Jose for about 30 years had considered that choice. So I can see that in action on my own because on this side of the pond in Europe, it's natural for us to jump on a train to travel between cities. Whereas it's not the case in that part of the world which you are serving. So that shift must be really encouraging for you as a business, you as a sustainable employer.
00:20:30
Speaker
It is, and after what you just said, we need to enlist you for marketing. Speaking of our marketing, we put a lot of sustainability-themed posts up on social media, and they tend to be our most viewed posts, among our most viewed posts.
00:20:52
Speaker
We do see that the people who are engaging with us on modern platforms are very much interested in sustainability. Fantastic. Fantastic. I'll loop in Mike again because I know Mike wants to cover more topics. We've listened to your vacation stories, which is great, but one of the other stories that we've all been seeing, I think, both sides of the Atlantic
00:21:16
Speaker
is the extreme weather that we've seen. So on the continent here in Europe, we've seen excessive heat. But clearly, in the United States, we've seen exceptional rainfall, wind. And I was just, Dennis, I don't know if you want to amplify some of the operational consequences that you've had to face in recent years. Because I read quite a bit in your sustainability report about just the practical costs and the damage to future revenue that you've suffered as a result of climate change.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, Mike, I would be happy to expand on that. So you're right, there are some significant impacts. And, you know, I would probably make a distinction between the severe weather that impacts our business on a regular basis. You know, there's there's always been some of that. But the trend of more intense, more frequent events,
00:22:05
Speaker
like the big heavy precipitation events and the longer lasting heat waves. That's a newer and increasing phenomenon. So, you know, if we looked back, just to put a few numbers on it, over the stretch from 2006 to 2019, we lost $127 million in ridership revenue.
00:22:28
Speaker
from over 450 different climate disruption events that had the greatest service impacts. So it's pretty big. This year, we had to truncate service in Southern California, one of those beautiful routes that one could travel.
00:22:46
Speaker
But along the corridor near the Delmar Bluffs and San Clemente, because of coastal erosion and landslides that have been caused by really historic rainfall. So that's a severe impact. We had many riders who we could not transport.
00:23:03
Speaker
We've got, again in California, in Palm Springs, because of windblown sand, we've had to cancel service since June of this year because we're not able to keep the sand off the tracks there. Now, hurricanes are something we prepare for every year, so our emergency preparedness team looks at the NOAA, National Atmospheric Administration,
00:23:31
Speaker
forecast for the hurricane season and then that way we can we can plan with our staff and places like New Orleans or Miami or Orlando that are Likely to be most impacted and we'll change how we operate you know, we will we'll look at kind of a radius around the where the storm tracks going to be and and we'll you know cancel service preemptively or proactively so that we can
00:23:58
Speaker
prioritize employee and customer safety, but then limit the disruptions that might happen in transit and mitigate any damage to our equipment. So that also, of course, then is causing revenue and ridership loss. And then sometimes those storms, when they do come, even when we prepare for them, they could be much more than we expect. So Hurricane Ida in September of 2021, for instance,
00:24:27
Speaker
We ended up having to cancel 25,000 tickets. We ended up at our 30th Street, William H. Gray, the third station in Philadelphia was flooded. We had $4 million worth of damage at the station there. And we lost about $1.6 million in revenue from that event. So that's a big one.
00:24:48
Speaker
And then the other one that we're encountering more and more is the days of really high heat. And when we've got really high heat, of course that causes expansion of the rail, high ambient temperatures will cause either us on our own railroad or
00:25:05
Speaker
our host railroads, who we travel most of our train miles over, to institute speed restrictions or slow orders. And when that happens, of course, we're slowing down the trains. They're going to take longer to get where they're going to get. That can lead to unhappy customers because we're late, but also just drives more cost, ends up where we burn more fuel because we're out on the railroad longer.
00:25:32
Speaker
could happen to where our crews reached the end of their regulation time and time out. And so we've got to have a relief crew come. And so that drives additional costs. So lots of impacts there. And we're seeing more of those high heat days as we go along. I get you. And so tackling it, you've got the bold ambition 2045 net zero.
00:25:57
Speaker
And there's the three prongs that you're relating to, I believe, on vehicles, infrastructure, and supply chain.
Strategies for Achieving Net Zero
00:26:04
Speaker
I just wondered, do you want to sort of say what the key missions or initiatives are under those three? Sure. We actually, we kind of grouped them into four. We include one that's strategy. So really, that's kind of setting our overarching
00:26:21
Speaker
kind of the back plate, right, of what we need to achieve. We've got to identify, you know, what are the metrics and reporting that we're going to be doing and what are the partnerships that we have to develop? What are the overall goals? So that's the strategy piece. But then the other pieces, as you mentioned, are vehicles, infrastructure, and then our supply chain and business operations.
00:26:49
Speaker
So really that helps us get things organized, get the right champions and leaders in those different categories to help propel us forward. So as I said, strategies, that gives us the policies, the governance, the communication so that we can organize the overall program.
00:27:10
Speaker
The vehicles is both our equipment that we carry our customers on and the equipment that we use to maintain operations. And as I mentioned before, diesel fuel use is by far our biggest source of emissions. I mean, it's about 68% of our GHG emissions. So vehicles are key.
00:27:34
Speaker
Infrastructure, again, we focus on the electricity that we're buying and how that's generated, looking at onsite generation, renewable energy generation, transitioning our mechanical systems in our stations and our buildings to zero emissions. So between the vehicles and the infrastructure that addresses the majority of scopes one and two,
00:28:02
Speaker
And then our value chain is actually complex and it's carbon intensive. And so we're really starting to tackle that a bit more now. We're starting to tackle the other pieces too, because they're going to take some doing to address particularly the diesel fuel use. But supply chain, we're really building up our capabilities to understand
00:28:31
Speaker
the upstream parts of the value chain and how we can influence the reductions in emissions there as well. I'm intrigued by the supply chain. I don't know if you would call the host railroads part of your supply chain or their partners as such, but are they on the journey with you? Are they ahead behind? What's the cooperation and is there a shared goal that you're all driving to?
00:28:58
Speaker
I don't know that we have a formal shared goal, I wouldn't say, but they are on the journey as well. In fact, we think that we have a lot in common in what we're trying to pursue with the freight railroads, the host railroads, I guess all railroads in general. Many of them
00:29:20
Speaker
The freight railroads, frankly, are ahead of us in trying to pilot some new technology, some of them. It is actually an area where we can have some good cooperation and, I think, be able to learn from each other and really find the win-win situations, which is great to find with our host railroads.
00:29:48
Speaker
Dennis, I would quite like to go back to that mind boggling numbers that you were just telling us about how much these climate events are impacting and how acutely you are starting to see their monetary impact. That's fascinating. I think that's really important to actually value these impacts. But then in terms of what typically has been the approach to respond to such events has been either adaptation or mitigation is what we've seen elsewhere.
00:30:15
Speaker
How are you going about in your assessment on what is your strategy and how is the cost benefit assessment of these measures being taken to assess what is most impactful in specifically these climate event scenario?
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, well, I guess a few things. One, as I said, for some of the events that we can anticipate trying to make adjustments to our operations so we can avoid some of the impacts. Now, if we're canceling service because of a major storm, that's obviously not helping us with the revenue impact and ridership impact.
00:30:54
Speaker
Nevertheless, it's having the advantage of keeping people and equipment safe, so that's key. But otherwise, it is a lot of mitigation, and it's looking at with our risk assessments and vulnerability assessments, identifying where the biggest risk areas are
00:31:16
Speaker
try to identify what sort of reinforcement of the railroad, the infrastructure we can undertake to try to improve our ability to withstand these impacts. And obviously, in our view, as we get more people to ride rail, we're gonna help with reducing emissions. So that's gonna help too. But really trying to identify where are the,
00:31:44
Speaker
the most impactful mitigations that we can undertake and trying to adjust our operations to avoid the biggest impacts. Understood. And then picking up one other statistic, you can tell I love numbers that 68% of your emissions are through your diesel emissions. What's your strategy to mitigate that aspect?
00:32:08
Speaker
Well, it starts from the small to the big. So we talked about idling. So just being mindful and prudent about times when we don't need to be running the locomotive and therefore not creating those emissions. So that can have an impact.
00:32:31
Speaker
we have already this year converted to renewable diesel in a number of locations in California. So started on that journey, that gives us 63% reduction in emissions versus regular diesel. So that's part of the journey. And then we do have also in some of the fleet decisions we've made recently where we've brought on
00:32:57
Speaker
are bringing in, replacing our older locomotives, our old P42 locomotives are being replaced with more efficient and lower emission, more modern technology. So already on that part of the journey.
00:33:13
Speaker
This isn't so much replacing, but more of our growth being on the Northeast Corridor, where we're electrified, moves a little bit more traffic onto non-diesel alternatives. But then as we go forward, we are figuring out what it's going to take to change the propulsion. And so looking at battery or hydrogen
00:33:38
Speaker
or whatever other technology may come along, that's going to be able to help us. But we are actively working on plotting the path for, okay, if we're going to get to net zero by 2045, what's it going to take to change the propulsion? And how are we going to get there? Have we covers
00:33:56
Speaker
the topics that you would like to get across. Is there anything you'd like to go back to or anything that we have not addressed but you think you haven't given me an opportunity to talk about it yet? The thing that maybe I'd add is that while we've taken the net zero pledge by 2045,
00:34:13
Speaker
Our climate commitment also included some things we've already talked about, but kind of the guideposts or mileposts along the way. So trying to get to carbon-free electricity in a shorter time frame.
00:34:31
Speaker
making reductions in diesel fuel use in the near term while we are still working on the big step change impacts that we'll have later. Really trying to incorporate sustainability resiliency into all our business operations. That's part of our overall climate commitment as well. We see this
00:34:55
Speaker
ambitious goal of doubling riders as one of her impressions. We also see our ambitious goal to go net zero by 2045. And the way I translate that is effectively disconnecting what I would call your business's growth from your emissions growth. So that's how I see these two goals to be achieved together. You talk about your expansion plans in the Connect Us vision. How central is sustainability to that vision?
00:35:26
Speaker
Well, it's very central because as we've talked about, our mode is by its nature more sustainable. So the more we get people out of their cars and onto the trains, that's going to help us in driving sustainability. So it is a little bit sort of two pronged. It's one.
00:35:50
Speaker
make our operations more sustainable, reduce emissions in the operations that we already have and the future operations, as well as get more people to be traveling by train so that we're having kind of that double impact of not only making the travel by train more sustainable
00:36:13
Speaker
but having more people travel by train and we really are in that growth vision. We're focused on the places where and the corridors where we think that intercity passenger rail really can be competitive.
00:36:28
Speaker
with with other modes of travel, you know, so largely, you know, more of those shorter, you know, shorter halls, 300 miles or less. And there the the benefits of rail travel versus air are even higher because the short haul flight is is really even more carbon intensive than than a longer haul in some ways.
00:36:51
Speaker
on a per-mile basis. There's more value there. We're able to be more trip time competitive in those kinds of routes. Those are the places, particularly in the US, where we've seen some significant population growth
00:37:08
Speaker
in major metropolitan areas and particularly in some places that don't have a lot of intercity passenger rail. Today, they're bigger metro areas. There are more people who could and would benefit from having a rail option. That's going to give people an opportunity to take this more sustainable form of transportation.
00:37:31
Speaker
Thank you. From my own personal experience, I can completely concur. The time I spent between San Jose and Sacramento, I was able to make so much value out of that. So even actually having a slower ride time was a benefit for me because I could finish my meetings and finish my conversations and not have the tense of driving and finding a parking and worrying about people hitting me on the road or whatever. So I completely concur with you. But thank you. Dennis, let me ask you. They're meant to be easy questions, but you might find them challenging.
00:38:01
Speaker
One thing is, if there was one thing that you could ask for that would help the journey of Amtrak achieve its net zero goal, what would that be? And if there's one thing you'd like to share with our listeners, what would that be?
00:38:15
Speaker
Let's see, one thing we could ask for, well, one thing, maybe I'll say two things. One is the, you know, we really do need the advancement of the technological innovation. So I don't know who, yeah, I'm kind of asking the world for this one, I guess.
00:38:33
Speaker
But really, as we talked about, the diesel fuel use is the biggest portion of our emissions. And so being able to find the practical, efficient solutions that are going to let us change that propulsion is key. And I guess that's where it gets to the second one, is that doesn't come for free. And so we need continued investment in our mode of transportation to be able to get there.
00:39:03
Speaker
So that's maybe the combined one thing, sort of two things for one that I'd ask. And then in terms of a message, what I would want to convey is that we are interested and we are committed to being responsible stewards. And part of what we do in our role as America's railroad is responsible stewards of the taxpayers' money.
00:39:28
Speaker
So we look to be efficient and effective and responsible stewards of the resources that we use. And so, you know, we want to make our more sustainable mode of transportation available to more people, be able to give those options. And we're looking forward to welcoming more people aboard. That sounds great. Look, we're out of time. Thank you so much for participating.
00:39:57
Speaker
I have to say one of my reflections going away. I don't know if you're going to have a reflection or two, but first of all, it's an exciting time. I just love the ambition you've put out there. I love that you've got at the moment that the additional funding that's coming towards America's railroad, as you said, to expand and meet your ridership goals, you're making good progress. It just seems like a really exciting time. And I particularly like the tactics of that idea of integrating the thinking into
00:40:24
Speaker
ways of being, the strategic planning, put the objectives in there to think more holistically around sustainability as you operate and plan for the future. Serb, any last reflections? I think my main takeaway from this conversation is that from almost thinking about double materiality, this is about double impact. The point that you made then is about first getting people out of their cars into a sustainable mode. And then when they are on that mode, there is all the best
00:40:50
Speaker
that is possible to make that more itself sustainable. That's the double impact messaging that I'm taking away from this. That's the real reflection for me from this conversation. Thank you, Dennis. Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to you about an exciting topic and to talk about the exciting times we're having here at Amtrak. It's a vitally important thing. Thank you very much for sparing the time with us, Dennis. Thank you, sir, for contributing as well. Thank you for listening in, folks. I hope you enjoyed it.
00:41:20
Speaker
Go to steergroup.com if you want to see some more of these or listen to more of these and read some of our other conversations we've had with other leaders. Until next time, thank you very much.