In Brief:
Passenger trains could soon be running again on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama, nearly two decades after service was knocked out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The City Council in Mobile voted Tuesday to approve more than $3 million in funding for the service for the next three years, matching identical commitments from Mississippi and Louisiana. (The city was on the hook due to Alabama laws that prevent the state from contributing.) Amtrak is expected to run two trains each day between Mobile and New Orleans, with stops in the coastal Mississippi towns of Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Pascagoula and Biloxi, starting next year.
The restoration of the yet-to-be-named service would be a major win for local leaders and advocates who’ve been trying to bring it back for 20 years. It would also signal momentum for the expansion of intercity rail in the U.S., which is undergoing a minor renaissance with funding from federal infrastructure bills after many years of gradual decline.
In recent weeks, it wasn’t certain that Mobile leaders would approve the funding, even after a series of federal grants came in to make necessary infrastructure upgrades. But the vote on Tuesday was unanimous.
“The return of Amtrak and the millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements that will support freight and passenger rail are vital to our continued growth,” says Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson.
Slow Train Coming
Passenger trains used to stop in Mobile and along the Mississippi Gulf as part of Amtrak’s Sunset Limited service, which ran from Los Angeles to Orlando. Flooding during Hurricane Katrina damaged much of the infrastructure, however. Freight trains resumed using the corridor again not long after the storm, but restoration of passenger service was delayed due to a lack of funding, uncertainties about ridership and disputes between freight operators and Amtrak.
Freight operators own most of the rail infrastructure in the U.S., but are required by law to give Amtrak priority use of the tracks. The reality is much less simple, though. Many rail corridors are single-tracked, meaning only one train can run at a time. Freight operators often want to give their own trains priority, leading to delays for passenger trains. The Department of Justice recently sued Norfolk Southern, one of the biggest freight operators in the country, for violating the law and causing delays for Amtrak.
Norfolk Southern and CSX, another Class I freight operator, were in negotiations with Amtrak for years over the use of rail infrastructure on the Gulf Coast. The freight companies initially demanded much more money for infrastructure upgrades — which would improve their own service as well as passenger service — than Amtrak was willing to provide. The dispute was mediated before the Surface Transportation Board, a federal body. A $178 million grant from the federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program helped resolve the dispute.
Aside from some relatively minor permitting and utilities issues, Mobile’s funding approval clears the way for the service to restart. “This is the last significant hurdle,” says Knox Ross, chair of the Southern Rail Commission, which has been pushing to restore passenger service on the Gulf.
Bipartisan Support
The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act boosted funding for freight and passenger rail infrastructure, which made it possible for Amtrak and the freight operators to come to terms. New federal funding has also been a boon for other efforts to start new passenger rail service, including in places like Colorado’s Front Range.
One of the toughest parts of getting the Gulf Coast service back on track was securing matching grants from state and local governments in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, Ross says. “You’ve got a service that’s dependent on the [vagaries] of government,” he says.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, has been a major proponent of expanding passenger rail service in the South. His efforts to restore Gulf Coast service have created opportunities for rail expansion across the country, advocates have said. “This is a nice project, from a governing standpoint, because we get good support from both sides of the aisle,” Ross says.
State and Local Funding
One complication that’s unique to Alabama is an amendment to the state constitution that says gas-tax revenue can only be spent on roads. It’s the only state in the country that doesn’t directly fund public transit. Alabama created a Public Transportation Trust Fund in 2018, but so far hasn’t put any money into it.
“We have a mechanism for state funding of transit,” says Dev Wakeley, a policy analyst with the group Alabama Arise, an anti-poverty nonprofit. “What we don’t have is a dedicated funding pathway or a history of appropriations to that funding source.”
That has put the city of Mobile, rather than the state of Alabama, on the hook for the same funding contribution for Amtrak service made by Mississippi and Louisiana. That has rankled some local leaders. Before the vote on Tuesday, Mobile City Councilmember Joel Daves expressed concerns about the deal, but said recent agreements with the Port of Mobile to pitch in $1 million toward the city’s subsidy of the service put some of his fears to rest.
“I still have grave concerns about the financial viability of this line and its putative impact on Mobile’s economy,” Daves says. “I have, however, also been a longtime supporter of the Port of Mobile. I’ve often said that the port is the linchpin of our economy, and what is good for the port is good for Mobile, and what’s bad for the port is bad for Mobile.”
The Mobile City Council vote included a provision stating its intent to stop subsidizing the service after three years. That essentially gives the line a runway to prove it’s beneficial to the region and the localities within it, Ross says.
Advocates hope visitors to the region, including thousands of annual foreign visitors to New Orleans, will take the chance to explore the Gulf region by train. “You’ve got some very desirable places to visit, which most people don’t know anything about,” Ross says. “I’m hoping that what this does is to open up those areas to a totally new tourist market and a totally new business market and increase the livability of those cities.”
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