The Railroad Environmental Conference (RREC), held on 11-12 November at the I-Hotel and Illinois Conference Center on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, celebrated its 27th year with a high-quality program. The 2025 conference had 402 registrants who had the opportunity to hear over 50 different spoken and poster presentations given by railroad managers, environmental engineers and researchers from all over North America. Rounding out the event were 48 exhibitors and 31 sponsors. If you missed this year’s conference, please join us on 28-29 October 2026 for the 28th RREC.
The conference keynote address this year was given by Glen Wilson, Environment & Regulatory Vice President, Safety at CPKC. Jo Strang, Senior Vice President Safety, Regulatory and Environmental Policy with the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA), was the AREMA Committee 13 banquet keynote speaker.
Each year at RREC the Association of American Railroads (AAR) honors railroaders for their commitment to sustainability and advancing the industry’s environmental efforts. These are the highest honors for environmental professionals in the railroad industry. The 2025 AAR Environmental Excellence Award went to Mike Makerov with Union Pacific Railroad. Other nominees this year were Terri Allen (Norfolk Southern), Brian Booth (CSX), and Kari Harris (CN).
Two special awards were also given at the conference this year. Leo Thorbecke (TRC Companies) received Emeritus status for AREMA Committee 13 and Kevin Keller (HDR) was acknowledged with an AAR Career Achievement Award.
In conjunction with RREC, a new Sustainability & Resiliency (S&R) Day was held on 13 November 2025. S&R Day, hosted by AREMA and RailTEC, offered twenty presentations focused on how sustainability and resiliency concepts and best practices can be applied to a broad range of engineering design, maintenance, operations, capital projects, construction, sustainable materials, and organizational change activities. One hundred and eleven registrants participated in this inaugural event and conference feedback was very positive. The S&R keynote speaker was Ed Sparks, Chief Engineer – Bridge Design and Construction with CSX. The title of his address was “CSX Engineering for Resiliency”.
