Ray B. Chambers

Ray Chambers is a prominent American public policy leader best known for his innovative leadership and advocacy in the rail sector. He began his career as a Congressional Chief of Staff (then called Administrative Assistant) and had political appointments in the Nixon and Ford Administrations ending at the Department of Transportation as the head of Congressional Relations. During his career he founded the Regional Railroads of America, later merged with the American Shortline Association; and the Association for Innovative Passenger Rail Operations (AIPRO). For 12 years he was President of the National Association for Railroad Construction and Maintenance (NRC).

Ray is also a long-time Transportation Fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle where he authored a "Discovery Inquiry" on passenger rail reform nearly three decades ago. Funded partly by the Gates Foundation, this inquiry proposed restructuring the intercity passenger rail network introducing competition between Amtrak and private operators under public authority oversight.

Ray is also president of the Association for Innovative Passenger Operations (AIPRO), an organization of independent passenger rail operators and rail labor.

Ray is a graduate of the University of Redlands with a Master’s degree in government from Rutgers. He resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington State.

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Can Privatization Put Passenger Rail Back on Track?

_{Ray B. Chambers
November 1, 1995}

America needs passenger rail service as an economical and ecological alternative to endless road and airport construction. Unfortunately, Amtrak cannot (and probably should not) survive as it is presently structured and funded. Perpetuating the status quo will burden America with a lame, government-run passenger operation, limping along on the nation's freight rail rights-of-way, operating under outdated federal rules from its 1970 authorization, and surviving on Congressional handouts. But, the solution is not to throw Amtrak on the market, accepting whatever happens. What would happen is, Amtrak would die. The proper course is to reorganize the system, privatizing whatever can be privatized, building new public-private alliances and compacts around the set of rail corridors that link cities 100-500 miles apart-which is the functional core of the national system-and then reconnecting this reorganized nation system to other forms of transportation to create a true intermodal passenger network.