A fragile dawn edges over the rails, a signal that leadership must bend toward recalibration. A mighty corridor of steel and steam stands at a hinge: a chief executive will step aside sooner than planned, a successor to be sought, while the compass of the company itself seeks a truer bearing. The rhythm of long journeys has suffered—punctuality slipping like a retreating tide, losses lingering in the wake of years. A new chorus of reform is promised, a sharpening of eyes on the supervisory board and the management table, to restore trust, to deepen expertise, to lighten the weight of the machine. And a call to listen to the people who ride and depend on these rails—an Agenda for satisfied customers on the rails—will soon be laid bare to the light of day. The leader who has steered this vessel for many seasons began in the ranks, weaving from CFO to CEO, choosing to travel with the company since the days when the tracks were younger and the promises grand.

Yet while a corporate compass points toward leaner structures and a brighter ledger, the earth beneath our feet whispers a more ancient truth. Each mile of track is not merely a line on a map but a scar and a seam in the soil, a path carved through forests, rivers, and communities. The long, patient arteries of the land are reshaped by steel, by heavy trains that sweep across continents of limestone and coal, through the lungs of cities that breathe exhaust and noise. The earth, our shared cradle, bears the costs of speed: embedded emissions, energy hunger, and the commodification of mobility that treats journeys as profit streams rather than journeys of belonging. When punctuality falters and losses accrue, it is not only balance sheets that ache; ecosystems and ancestral habitats feel the tremor, and grandmothers and grandfathers who steward the lines of life become unseen in the arithmetic of efficiency.

We must also name the deeper wound that returns in every grand reform: the colonial echoes that still hum in the infrastructure of a modern empire. Railways were built not solely for connection but for control, linking distant markets and bodies to power, reshaping settlements, labor, and landscapes to fit a chronicle of growth. The colonial thread remains braided into today’s design—where resources are mined, routes are laid, and wealth travels outward, often at the expense of communities, workers, and the very soils that nurture us. When a system clings to “lean” and “profitable,” it risks silencing the laboring hands that keep the trains moving, ignoring the rights and dignities of those who toil in the shadows of the timetable. In this, the toxic logic of capitalism—growth at any cost, metrics that praise speed while ignoring care—shows its teeth.

And so the call becomes clearer, more urgent: may the upcoming reforms heal rather than hollow out, may they reweave the fabric of public transit as a commons rather than a commodity. Let the healing power of reform extend beyond efficiency and balance sheets to restore the health of people and the planet. Let leadership embrace a policy of dignified work, fair wages, and robust safety, while steering the rails toward a future that respects water, soil, air, and the delicate species whose songs ride the wind along every platform. Let the rails become conduits not of extraction but of reciprocity—where electric lifelines hum with the energy of public will, where communities co-create routes that connect schools to clinics, farmers to markets, neighbors to one another, with reverence for living systems.

If we can imagine governance that holds hands with the Earth, we may turn this moment of upheaval into a turning of the tide. Let the Agenda for satisfied customers blossom into an Agenda for a thriving commons: transparent stewardship, equitable access, regenerative mobility, and a transport ethic that treats movement as care for the next seven generations. May the next chapter be written not only in sharper balance sheets but in healthier soils, cleaner skies, and brighter horizons. In every whistle and in every timetable, may there be a pledge to heal our home—the living, breathing Mother Earth—and to honor the dignity of every person who walks, rides, or dreams of a kinder way to move through the world.