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December 2024
By Julie Sneider, Senior Editor
On Oct. 22, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose and Amtrak President Roger Harris joined government and business officials in Mobile, Alabama, for a ceremony to mark the start of construction on a boarding platform for Amtrak’s future Gulf Coast service between Mobile and New Orleans.
Exactly when the service will launch remains unclear as of press time. In an interview with Progressive Railroading in late October, Harris said Amtrak is anticipating all aspects of the project will be wrapped up in spring 2025 so that service can begin.
“We held the groundbreaking ceremony for the new passenger platform for the twice daily service from Mobile to New Orleans, and we are working hard to see what we can do in the meantime,” Harris said. “But, as with all these things, there are so many elements that need to be completed in order for service to be launched. The most important thing is that we do it safely.”
While Harris was aware of Mobile residents’ interest in having Amtrak trains travel twice daily between their city and New Orleans — with stops in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula, Mississippi — he said he was surprised about their excitement and enthusiasm for the service to begin.
And it’s no wonder, since the Gulf Coast corridor has been void of Amtrak trains since Hurricane Katrina swept rail infrastructure into the Gulf in 2005. Disputes between Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway — the two Class Is that would host the Amtrak trains on their track — the Alabama Port Authority and some state and local government parochial interests have kept the Gulf Coast service restoration hanging in the balance.
The public’s desire for Amtrak service in the region has been mounting since 2005. At the same time, many local businesses over the years have voiced the economic case for restoring the service.
Although Amtrak submitted a Gulf Coast service plan to Congress in 2009, the push to restore service really began in earnest in 2013. At that time, the Southern Rail Commission (SRC) drafted letters from mayors of cities along the coast, all seeking renewal of the service, to send to federal lawmakers and congressional committees in charge of rail. Among the region’s political leaders who’ve been most vocal about restoring the Gulf Coast route is U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who has used his position as ranking member and chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to advocate for it.
At the same time, CSX and NS continued to oppose Amtrak’s return. But the passenger railroad pushed forward, and in February 2021 notified the two Class Is of its intention to restart the service in 2022. Amtrak then asked the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to force the two Class Is to make room for its trains on the line, arguing before the board that it had the legal right to run its trains on the route.
Among the Class Is’ concerns: Whether Amtrak trains would interfere with freight-rail traffic when heading into and out of the Port of Mobile and who would pay for the infrastructure required to relaunch passenger service. The STB held numerous hearings on the matter over the next year and strongly encouraged the parties to work out a solution acceptable to all.
By November 2022, Amtrak, CSX, NS, the port authority and its Terminal Railway Alabama State Docks announced a settlement to restore passenger service. Nonetheless, the matter dragged on even further, as additional details in the agreement were worked out. Then in February 2024, the STB called another hearing on the issue and took the three railroads to task for taking so long to deliver Gulf Coast passenger service.
Finally, on Oct. 24, Amtrak informed the STB that the agreement details with the Class Is, the Alabama State Port Authority and Terminal Railway have been fulfilled and asked the board to dismiss its original petition in the case. As of press time, the board had yet to do so, but Amtrak officials said they believed there will be no objections to their dismissal request.
From Harris’ perspective, the lessons learned from the Gulf Coast saga are that communication between Amtrak and its host freight railroads is key to improving their relationship going forward, especially as Amtrak seeks to add new or expand existing service in other parts of the country.
“To us, this [Gulf Coast resolution] was a great step forward to be able to work together,” Harris says. “I think this is probably a good model for how we can work together in the future.”
In recent years, Amtrak officials have focused on improving their communication with Class I host railroads to better understand mutual benefits, he adds.
“We’re working on making sure that our communication is as good as it can be at all levels of the company,” says Harris.
A recent example of that is the Muskego Yard freight-rail bypass project in Wisconsin, he believes. In October, the state of Wisconsin qualified for a $72.8 million grant from the FRA to create a Canadian Pacific Kansas City double-track mainline through a rail yard in the Milwaukee suburb of Muskego. The project would allow freight trains on the CPKC corridor to bypass the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, where Amtrak trains arrive and depart, including for the well-traveled Hiawatha route between Milwaukee and Chicago.
Designed to minimize delays for both CPKC and Amtrak trains, the project will improve safety throughout the rail corridor. It’s an example of where Amtrak and a Class I , along with state and federal officials, were able to reach a “win-win” solution that benefits all parties, Harris says.
He credits CPKC officials for being open to working with passenger trains that operate on the Class I’s track. It’s why Amtrak has awarded CPKC with an “A” grade eight times for the Class I’s ability as a host railroad to cooperate with passenger rail.
“We can see that passenger service is at the top of what CPKC thinks about every day,” Harris says.
Rail Passengers Association President and CEO Jim Mathews is hopeful that the Gulf Coast agreement between Amtrak, the Class Is and the other related parties can serve as a blueprint for intercity passenger-rail expansion elsewhere in the country.
Amtrak has an ambitious plan to double its annual ridership to 66 million by 2040 through growth and expansion. Funding to help it get there is finally starting to flow from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021, which called for $22 billion in direct funding to Amtrak for modernizing its network, including 280 Amtrak-served stations, and to replace a fleet of over 1,000 rail cars and locomotives.
What’s more, the FRA over the past two years has been awarding billions of IIJA dollars to Amtrak and state departments of transportation for projects — such as the Muskego Yard initiative — that improve, upgrade, increase or create passenger-rail service.
While he’s thrilled that the Gulf Coast agreement came to fruition, Mathews hopes it will be the last time it takes decades to bring intercity passenger rail to cities that want it.
“I don’t want to appear ungrateful when I say this, but if it takes us 20 years to reintroduce rail service where it already existed, that’s a policy failure,” he explains, adding that the situation is not unique.
The recently launched Amtrak Borealis route, which travels from Chicago to St. Paul, Minnesota, with a stop in Milwaukee, is another example.
“The Borealis is beating down the doors when it comes to ridership — over 100,000 in the first five months of its existence, which is tremendous performance,” says Mathews. “But we’ve been talking about something like the Borealis since the mid-1990s. And here we are, 30 years later, celebrating the start of that train, which runs on track that already existed and where trains have been running for years.”
There isn’t any one party to blame for what he characterizes as a policy failure, he believes.
“It’s [due to] a system of regulatory action and inaction, the way that everyone is able to defend their parochial interests, and the misalignment of financial incentives,” Mathews says.
That leads to turning something that should be easy to do — restore trains to a line where they used to run and where other trains are running today — into something hard and complex. Going forward, the Gulf Coast case represents an opportunity for the rail community and related government agencies to ask themselves whether they are serious about advancing passenger rail.
“The country is demanding it, and passengers demand it in a bipartisan way,” says Mathews. “Seventy-eight percent of Americans that we [the Rail Passengers Association] polled said they want to see strong investment in the growth of passenger rail, and that includes 61% of Republicans.”
The direct lesson from the Gulf Coast story is that Amtrak, CSX, NS and the Alabama Port Authority were able to “bury the hatchet” and create an agreement that can be a template for new passenger-rail service in other communities, he says.
“But the other lessons we can learn is the regulatory and institutional one, which is that the only reason the four parties came together on a mutually acceptable agreement was because Amtrak grew tired after 15 years and dragged the parties before the Surface Transportation Board into an adversarial proceeding,” says Mathews. “We shouldn’t have to have all that drama.”
From the regulatory and funding side, how will Amtrak’s growth plans stand in 2025, after the White House transitions from “Amtrak Joe” Biden to Donald Trump, and Republicans take over both houses of Congress?
It’s no secret that the first Trump administration was “openly hostile” to passenger rail and proposed gutting Amtrak funding for service outside of the Northeast Corridor, notes Mathews, whose association is politically nonpartisan. It wouldn’t surprise Mathews if the second Trump administration takes a similar stance.
That’s not necessarily the Republican position, however. Mathews notes that Amtrak often has bipartisan support among congressional lawmakers who represent districts where constituents rely on Amtrak long-distance or state-supported service.
When Trump 1.0 recommended slashing federal funding for Amtrak’s national network, Republican senators were among those who rallied around maintaining service in their districts, Mathews points out.
He acknowledges the political dynamic now is different than even four years ago.
“But at the same time, the Republican senators who supported long-distance service [during the first Trump administration] remain in the Senate today,” Mathews says. “And one of them, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), just got elected the new majority leader. So, I am cautiously hopeful the Senate will continue to ensure that Amtrak will remain supported operationally during the next administration.”
Email questions or comments to julie.sneider@tradepress.com.
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