About OnTrackNorthAmerica

About OnTrackNorthAmerica (OTNA)

OnTrackNorthAmerica (OTNA) produces Industry Action Plans such as VitalRail and companion IntelliConference Series. The Continental Action Plans for Sustainable Industry (CAPSI) is the strategic thinking community, a part of OTNA, that designs Industrial Systems Initiatives and IntelliConference Series.

Michael Sussman

OTNA was founded by Michael Sussman in 2007 as a nonprofit 501c3 industrial policy institute co-leading society in redesigning industrial systems to support sustainable life. Michael Sussman began his career in transportation in 1994 by launching Strategic Rail Finance, a trusted advisory firm, and has since advised on infrastructure-related projects, companies, and systems for private and public sector clients in forty-three U.S. states and four Canadian provinces.

At OTNA, we value objectivity, non-partisanship, and autonomy from any financial, political, or personal interests. We are committed to industrial systems that are financially profitable and sustainable.

OTNA has developed state and regional plans, tools, analyses, and paradigms supporting these values.

• In 2023, OTNA led a four-county stakeholder process in New Mexico in the aftermath of a 350,000-acre forest fire resulting in the New Mexico Forestry Business Plan.
• In 2021, OTNA convened hundreds of transportation stakeholders to create Nevada’s 2021 State Rail Plan, a new whole-systems paradigm for statewide rail-enabled economic development.
• On December 11, 2008, OTNA gathered industry and government leaders in the U.S. Capitol Building to set a new collaborative framework for freight rail transportation efficiency.
• On December 8, 1998, OTNA convened a rail transportation educational event in the U.S. Capitol Building for 55 congressional staff.

OnTrackNorthAmerica Frequently Collaborates with Partners in Academia

• Dr. Barbara Gray, founder of Penn State University’s Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation, has contributed significantly to OTNA’s work.
• The University of Tennessee’s Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment provided research assistance for OTNA’s Land Freight Lifecycle Impact Calculator.
• Philadelphia’s Temple University hosted Michael’s talk, “How Collaboration, Trust, and Railroads Will Save the World,” on December 5th, 2023.
• The Transportation Research Forum honored Michael with its 2024 annual President’s Award.
• Michael serves on the Industry Advisory Board of the six-university consortium, Center for Freight Transportation and Efficient & Resilient Supply Chains  

He has contributed to improving public policy by meeting with staff or leaders of 69 U.S. Senate and 195 U.S. House offices.

• In March of 2011, Michael was the only private sector invitee to a U.S. House Railroad Subcommittee Staff Workshop to explore ways to improve the FRA RRIF loan program.
• On February 17, 2011, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Railroad Subcommittee on reforms to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program.
• On October 19, 2005, he spoke before the Surface Transportation Board on the 25th anniversary of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980.

Representative acknowledgments of these efforts:

• Thank you letters from Republican House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf and Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller’s Chief of Staff.
• In 2003, he contributed to Washington State produce shippers by designing and writing important elements of the Washington State Produce Railcar Pool Act as passed by the 2003 state legislature.
• In 1999, he worked with the Federal Railroad Administration to eliminate audited financial statement requirements for Class II and III railroads from the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing Act (RRIF loan program).
• In November of 1997 he was responsible for making freight rail projects eligible in H.R.115 – the National Infrastructure Development Act.

Michael‘s writing has been published in many transportation industry journals:

• Railway Age, December 2014, “Revitalizing Direct Rail Service”
• Railway Age, April 2011, “A RRIF-Centered Capitalization Growth Strategy”
• Railway Age, September 2008, “Leveraging Capital for the Entire Industry”
• Transportation Quarterly, Fall 2002, “Regional and Short Line Railroads in the United States”
• Association of Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy, Fall 2000, “Assessing the Process of Creating the RRIF Program”
• Progressive Railroading, June 1998, “Getting a Lender’s Attention”
• It’s Not Just Amazon, It’s All of Us, May 7

Board of Trustees

Michael Sussman

Chairman, OnTrackNorthAmerica and Chairman & CEO, Strategic Rail Finance

Eugene N. (“Gene”) Cipriani

Attorney; former advisor to the United States Railway Association (U.S.R.A.); former in-house corporate counsel for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)

Daniel R. Elliott

Transportation Attorney, Former Chairman of U.S. Surface Transportation Board

R. Powell Felix

Founder, Indiana Boxcar Corporation

Jim Hoecker

Founder, Hoecker Energy Law & Policy PLLC, former Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Arthur Menko

Founder and President of Telcodata and Business Planning, Inc

J. Vann Cunningham

Assistant Vice President, Economic Development, at BNSF Railway – Retired; Fellow Member, International Economic Development Council; Former TVA Chief of Regional Planning; Former Practice Principal in economic development and site selection, Lockwood Green Consulting

Advisory Board

Daniel Burgess

Local Chairman, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Division 456

Dr. Beverly A. Cigler

Professor of Public Policy & Administration, Penn State Harrisburg

Steve Gothreau

Norfolk Southern Rail Train & Engine Service (Retired)

Philip Mortimer
Director, TruckTrain Industries

Mingzhou Jin, Ph.D.
Associate Head Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Tennessee

Brian Rademacher

CEcD Economic Development Director, City of Ormond Beach

Karen Risa Robbins

Principal, Washington Progress Group

Peter Schwartzman

Associate Professor & Chair, Knox College Environmental Studies Program

Dr. Joseph Schwieterman

Director, DePaul University, Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development