This is the third in a weekly series on my DC sabbatical (Sep 1 → Nov 30, 2026). Catch up on the first two posts if you missed them.
Three weeks in, and my sabbatical is now full speed ahead. This week I had multiple incredible new experiences and many of my ideas have solidified further. Between a day on Capitol Hill, a day in the room with the passenger rail decision makers, and more one-on-one conversations than I can easily list, this was the busiest week yet.
Tuesday and Wednesday I was on Capitol Hill for the American Public Transit Association (APTA) Fly-In, working alongside CEOs and senior leaders from transit agencies across the country. I joined leaders from major cities across Ohio, advocating for improved funding and service to agencies who sorely need it. Getting a window into what each of their agencies is up against was an incredibly useful exercise.
APTA represents transit agencies and businesses across the industry, and the ask this year was straightforward. The continuing resolution that averted a government shutdown cut transit funding by 20 percent and passenger rail by 80 percent, largely by stripping out advance appropriations, and we were on the Hill asking to get that funding restored. We were also pushing back on a proposed rule that would let the Office of Management and Budget halt a transportation project at any point for a wide range of reasons, including mid-construction, which makes at risk of being shut down on a whim, and thus riskier and more expensive to finance.
I met with Senator Husted’s office and with Representatives Beatty, Carey, and Sykes, and every staffer we sat down with was engaged, positive and quite passionate about the issues. I also popped into the offices of Senator Moreno and Representatives Landsman, Joyce, and Turner to say hello, ask their staff to follow AAO on Instagram, and grab contacts for the transit staffers so I can follow up once things calm down.
The offices themselves were a zoo. It was one of only two days in the last hundred where both the House and Senate were in session at the same time, so thousands of people were on the Hill for dozens of unrelated fights that day, and the House still adjourned early and went home until after the election. I came away from it with a real appreciation for how fast that environment moves and how many different things it touches, and for how much the Toledo, Akron, Columbus, and Canton delegations looked out for me on my first full advocacy day on the Hill. They made it fun.
Thursday brought a different kind of room, the Surface Transportation Board (STB)‘s Passenger Rail Advisory Committee (PRAC) meeting, which Bill Gray flagged for me on Monday. I am very glad he did. The STB formed PRAC in 2023 to advise the Board on passenger rail issues, everything from easing disputes between passenger carriers and the freight railroads that host them to improving on-time performance and streamlining the regulatory process.
Watching leaders from CSX and Norfolk Southern sit across the table from Amtrak and federal officials and watching STB Chair Patrick Fuchs and Committee Chair Henry Posner III run the meeting, gave me a lot to think about, especially right after finishing Boards That Lead this week and having board facilitation on the brain.
I got to meet with many of the board members during the break, and I want to call out a few conversations specifically:
John Robert Smith from Transportation for America, whose work I have admired for a long time, reconnected with me after we first met at RailNation in San Antonio last year. He is such a thoughtful and experienced man, and his advice and input carries a lot of weight for me, so I am very excited to talk more with him.
Joe Black from WSP, another San Antonio connection, and I picked up our shared thinking on passenger rail development and landed on an idea I want to keep chewing on, a reusable startup kit for states that have not done passenger rail work before. Maux Sullivan from the Colorado Department of Transportation walked me through where the Colorado Connector stands right now and how her team has grown to support it.
Outside of these big events, the frequent 1:1s and connects continued. I had many productive AAO meetings this week, and on Friday, Ryan Pecaut and I recorded the first AAO podcast episode with James Flattum out of Colorado, talking through what is working in advocacy and government there and how closely it mirrors Ohio’s situation. It will be out in both podcast and video form on YouTube, and I am very excited for people to hear it.
On the personal side, I got in a long bike ride up the full length of Rock Creek Park into Maryland over the weekend. Rock Creek is such a gem, which I have now enjoyed biking through along with running (I had a great morning 8 miler on Tuesday, joining my friend India for a trail run in the park!) I worked Monday from a coffee shop in the neighborhood with my friend Alex, then went shopping for a suit and rode my bike between stores the whole way, which might be my new favorite way to run an errand in this city. That suit got its first use at the week’s big events.
Roommate Felix, the rest of the lawyer crew and I hit Old Ebbitt Grill this week, and we are hiking Old Rag in Shenandoah tomorrow. DC keeps delivering on fun, interesting, and affordable things to do!
I also kept up the reading. I finished Boards That Lead, a fascinating look inside Fortune 500 boardrooms. The scale and the incentives are different, profit instead of societal change, but the lessons transfer very closely. A board leader who understands the strategy, a staff empowered to execute it, a clean handoff between the two, and a board made up of the right people, all matter regardless of what the organization is trying to do. I am excited to keep applying that lens to AAO.
I also finished If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Fight by Carter Lavin, and felt validated seeing how closely an industry-standard playbook for transportation advocacy lines up with what we have already been doing at AAO. I got to meet Carter in person this week, and we now have something on the calendar because of it, a book talk and Q&A with him at AAO’s monthly statewide Zoom meeting on November 14th.
On top of all that, I started rereading Catcher in the Rye, the last classic from high school I had never gone back to. I am excited to report that Holden Caulfield is much funnier to me now than he was the first time around. Yet again, I conclude that my English teachers knew what they were talking about.
Against the three goals from the first post, this was the biggest week yet across the board. Personally, DC keeps finding new ways to surprise me, apparently including running errands by bike now.
For All Aboard Ohio, this week put me directly in front of the people who decide funding, and it also gave me two very different boardrooms to learn from in the same week, one on the Hill and one at the STB.
And on the national network, the name All Aboard America turned out to already belong to a charter bus company, so that one is back on the shelf, but the idea underneath is as sturdy as ever. Between the Ohio delegation at the fly-in, the many conversations at the STB, and a long heart to heart with Jim Mathews from RPA, this is starting to feel much less nebulous. All are pushing me toward a first draft of an official plan, which I am aiming to start early next week. I look forward to seeing where that draft takes things.