Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Hey All,

I'm looking forward to this discussion tomorrow. In preparation for it, and in an attempt to keep it on track and productive, here's an outline of what I hope for us to discuss and achieve. Hopefully we have enough time.

Overall goal; share knowledge/perspective on how best to go about getting the ball rolling on the proposed new passenger rail service that was highlighted in the FRA’s LDRS between Seattle-Denver (but not restricted to those anchor cities, PDX-SLC or BOI-SLC is what is being talked about most aggressively right now), aka the Pioneer. The big thing here is that whenever we are talking to others, advocating for the Pioneer, that we are messaging the same things.

Brief agenda;

A very quick summary/background of what we're talking about.
The current context that any Pioneer restoration effort sits within.
Discussing advocacy strategy and trying to unify around any messaging that we may be able to do.
Blockers, hurdles or challenges for the Pioneer to overcome.
Key events coming up to be aware of as opportunities or deadlines.
Identify key people or entities that are worth trying to connect with or lobby.
Summarize any ideas and/or action items that came up from the discussion.

Since we may have a lot of people attending, I also want to get clear about what we're not talking about.

The history of what the Pioneer was, beyond useful context to current restoration efforts.
War stories of the times when people used to ride the original Pioneer route.
Technical detail of different ways that specific singular stations/route segments might be set up.
Trying to organize any specific actions to undertake as a group right now. We should certainly identify some, but for their actual organization and planning those need to be separate meetings with the participants.

Excited to talk through this with you all and am very interested to hear ideas. I'll be taking notes during the meeting as best I can here; https://docs.google.com/document/d/121IvKRh5BhGcR2hBpAAVeSCZjb3aoax9bvseW9ryJ44/edit?tab=t.0

See you soon,
Matt Krabacher
Eastern Oregon VP, AORTA

On Sun, Nov 2, 2025 at 9:11 PM Dan McFarling <[email protected]> wrote:

NOTE meeting starts at 6:30 PM. Dan plans to open the Zoom link early (6:15P?).

The first topic is restoration of service on the former Pioneer route. Because there may be many attendees, most mics will be silenced during the meeting. Raise hand if you wish to speak. MattK and/or JonN will be leading the discussion.

Schedule/agenda attached. DanM is out-of-state (Seattle) Monday morning through late afternoon.

This message may be forwarded to others interested in the Pioneer.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83099807170?pwd=xo66LjcFZw4o186DUpiONkaXVMvSvB.1

Dan McFarling