Vashon’s own Bill Moyer, executive director of the Backbone Campaign, has co-authored a book calling for the electrification of the nation’s railroads. He presented the book to islanders at an event Sunday.

The book on the subject was released this month after three years of research and discussion with track engineers, economists, climate specialists, railway workers and electrical experts. “Solutionary Rail – A people-powered campaign to electrify America’s railroads and open corridors to a clean energy future” went on sale at Amazon earlier this month and explores the possibility of, and necessity for, cutting ties between railroads and fossil fuels.

“The goal is to use the book as a public education tool to gather folks onboard and form a non-ideological group that would unify around railroads,” Moyer said. “I’m not doing this because I’m a rail buff, I’m doing it because I’m a change agent.”

The book centers on the way railroads have changed through the years, from being the nation’s most important mode of transportation in the 1920s, to their current role as a secondary mode of transportation mostly for freight, due to the creation of freeways and interstates in the 1950s. The business model also changed with the times. During the 1960s and 70s, many railroad companies were either purchased by stronger ones or simply went bankrupt. Today, railroads are privately owned — Warren Buffett owns BNSF, for example, along with shares of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.

“Railroads used to play such an important role,” Moyer said. “When we built freeways, the business model dissolved and railroads became dependent on shipping coal and, most recently, oil transportation. The faster, more efficient electrified railroad would pull high-value freight off of trucks on the highway and back to the tracks — displacing coal/fossil fuel commodities as a customer — breaking the railroads dependence on that customer.”

Moyer is calling for a shift away from fossil fuels and toward electrification and more public ownership. He believes government loans and grants for renewable energy projects can begin the process of bringing railroads back into the modern age.

“After 35 years of privatizing, this is a plan for making a fresh investment that enhances public infrastructure. I feel like we’ve fallen in love with our (cars); They encourage isolation. Trains are better for communities, and if we could run them on renewable energy … we can revitalize the rural economy,” he said.

The book is the most recent project of the Backbone Campaign — a Vashon-based activist organization. The Campaign’s Amy Morrison said the organization has been “very involved with saying, ‘no’ to turning the Pacific Northwest into a fuel transport corridor,” and this book was born out of that activism and a conversation with a rail laborer.

“A few years ago, a rail laborer … challenged us to green up BNSF,” Morrison said.

Morrison said the “non-ideological” group the book aims to help form can put pressure on the nation’s new president in his first 100 days.

“We wanted something we could stand behind, instead of just saying, ‘no,’” Morrison said.