from Paul Dyson, RailPAC President

Dear RailPAC members and supporters:

After the enthusiastic response to our March 17 meeting in Los Angeles, the Board of Directors met in April to discuss the next steps for RailPAC. We have come a long way. We now publish a monthly Newsletter, the Review, with articles and news of interest relating to all aspects of passenger rail transportation. Our website has been greatly enhanced and is updated almost daily with news, events and opinions. We continue to send out e-mails and we are currently preparing to launch a weekly electronic newsletter with an improved format to keep all of you informed, and I hope to encourage more of you to be involved in our campaigns.

In addition I’d like RailPAC to join APTA, the American Public Transportation Association, and to continue to attend the “Passenger Trains on Freight Railroads” conference in Washington each year. Last year’s meeting led indirectly to Amtrak’s Mr. Kummant keynoting our March meeting. I’d like to be able to go to Sacramento more often to make our case to our elected representatives, as well as to attend more rail board meetings around the state.

All of this takes money. Postage rates just went up. We haven’t raised our subscription rates for many years, even though we have increased the size and frequency of the Review. We need you to consider increasing the size of your contribution to RailPAC. We really need at least $10 more per member than last year.

Rather than simply raising rates across the board, we are experimenting with an honor system. Minimum rates will remain the same. I understand that some of you are giving as much as you can, and we don’t want to exclude anyone. But we do need to increase our income, if only to keep up with inflation. We are therefore offering a range of contribution amounts in each membership category, and we hope that as many of you as are able will choose to contribute at the upper end of that band.

Thank you again for your continued support for RailPAC. There has never been a better time to advocate passenger rail as a major contributor to our mobility needs. Let’s keep up the momentum and score some major victories this year for steel wheel on steel rail!

Paul Dyson
President
05/15/07