On May 14 the Transportation Research Board (TRB) released the first National Cooperative Rail Research Program (NCRRP) report: Alternative Funding and Financing Mechanisms for Passenger and Freight Rail Projects.  This Guidebook provides a “toolbox” of ways to pay for rail projects with a funding shortfall. The TRB release includes both a report summary and the full Guidebook. The full NCRRP Report 1 Guidebook serves as a comprehensive resource covering the gamut of guidance from the basics essential to understanding rail funding and financing, to the technical details of alternative funding and financing mechanisms and their application, to the hard policy decisions confronted when needing to allocate scarce public resources to rail projects or otherwise raise additional money from the public to realize these projects. Larry Goldstein, the TRB Staff Officer responsible for coordinating the research notes that “this Guidebook identifies alternative funding and financing methods for realizing passenger and freight rail capital investment, operations, and maintenance, where traditional funding sources, on their own, are insufficient”. The Report Summary previews the key messages in the Guidebook, in particular, how to pay for rail projects when there is a funding gap - and related policy considerations. The research project’s Principal Investigator, Marc-André Roy, emphasizes the importance of understanding the distinction between funding and financing, which he notes is too often confused. “You can’t finance your way out of a funding gap”, notes Roy. “Ultimately, public money, in one form or another, is required to bridge a funding gap…The Guidebook goes some way in bringing clarity to this distinction and provides examples of mechanisms that can be used to help pay for rail projects”. The full NCRRP Report 1 Guidebook is available on the TRB’s website, as is the report summary, which highlights the key messages in the Guidebook and associated policy considerations.  NCRRP Report 1 was developed by CPCS, in association with Harral Winner Thompson Sharp Klein, Inc., Thompson, Galenson and Associates, LLC, First Class Partnerships, and Portscape, Inc.