We are pleased to report the establishment of a communications committee for the Lackawanna Coalition and the election of this author, previously the Coalition’s webmaster, as the organization’s Director of Communications.

The committee’s broad mandate is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of communications both within the organization and in our various outreach efforts to the public. This involves many facets. We will continue to improve and promote our lackawannacoalition.org website, already among the best in the rail advocacy movement. We will take steps to grow our “Lackawanna Coalition Transit Advocates” page on Facebook, and to use it as a tool to open up dialogue between ourselves and nonmembers who are frustrated with their commute. We will endeavor to more widely distribute the excellent Railgram newsletter you are reading now. And we are working on a number of new initiatives to promote and grow the organization, the fruits of which will be reported in future months.

We are ready to lift the curtain on an important new project: starting with the March meeting, we will have regular presentations at the beginning of our meetings (i.e. 7:00 p.m., Millburn Town Hall) related to topics of interest. They will be organized and promoted by the Communications Committee. Our Technical Director Joe Clift will discuss his proposal for getting a third rail tunnel under the Hudson to Penn Station on March 24. On April 28, in honor of our 35th anniversary, there will be an informal reminiscing with current and past leadership and members of the organization. The presenter at the May Meeting, actually on June 2 due to Memorial Day, will be Gary Johnson with his observations of public transit during the Super Bowl. Jesse Gribin, the organization’s Treasurer and another prominent member of the Technical Committee, will discuss his ideas of how to use the proposed second track on the Northeast Corridor-Hoboken connector (otherwise known as the “Westbound Waterfront Connection” or “Reverse Kearny”) as an alternative to alleviate the capacity issues in New York, should building a third tunnel prove infeasible. These presentations are open to all, and we encourage non-members to attend and learn about what we do and what we are thinking.