Southern news suggests passenger trains still enjoy bipartisan support

What I’ve read so far about the incoming administration and Congressional leadership’s plans for transportation does not bode well for a needed major investment in passenger train infrastructure and equipment. But while Republicans on the national level seem to remain penny-pinchers when it comes to passenger trains — the national party platform approved in July calls for ending Amtrak subsidies — recent moves from Southern states under Republican control make me somewhat optimistic that the notion of expanding and improving our intercity passenger rail network retains bipartisan support.

On Monday, the Southern Rail Commission — made up of appointees of the governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, two of whom are Republicans — announced the allocation of over $2 million in grants from the Federal Railroad Administration to station and station area improvement projects. Of the 11 localities receiving grants, only three currently have Amtrak service (Anniston, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Ala.). The rest are split between the Gulf Coast Corridor, which was served by Amtrak’s Sunset Limited before being indefinitely suspended in 2005 (Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula, Miss. and Mobile, Ala.) and the planned New Orleans-Baton Rouge commuter rail corridor (Baton Rouge, Gonzales and St. John the Baptist Parish (La Place), La.). 

Since about 2010, momentum has been building for the restoration of service between New Orleans and Florida. Though owner CSX repaired the tracks to a better condition than they were before the 2005 landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the Class I has put a high price tag on the restoration of passenger service. Though Amtrak’s suspension of the service, rather than cancellation, lowers the cost of bringing it back as it was before Katrina, state and local leaders — including many prominent Republicans — want better than the unreliable, thrice weekly overnight service that existed before. They would rather have a state-supported train that serves intermediate stations at reasonable hours on a daily basis. 

Among those strongly endorsing renewed Gulf Coast train service are Mississippi Republican Senators Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran, along with former Alabama state representative Perry Hooper (R-Montgomery), who co-chaired the Trump campaign in the state.  US Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) says he supports the effort, as long as it’s done in a fiscally responsible way. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), nominee for Attorney General, has also expressed support for the service.

One hopes and assumes that the Gulf Coast Working Group created by last year’s FAST Act — which includes Amtrak, CSX, Southern Rail Commission, state DOT, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, local elected officials, business and tribal leaders — is conducting ongoing negotiations to reach a price tag acceptable to both CSX and the states and localities that will provide the funding for only the infrastructure work that is absolutely needed to make a daily passenger operation not hamper current and anticipated future freight operations. Once the Working Group has reached an agreement and a service restoration plan is in place, one also hopes that the pressure from this group of stakeholders on Congress is strong enough to win the federal funding necessary to finish the job.

The $375,000 awarded to communities along the New Orleans-Baton Rouge commuter rail route — a priority for both the Rail Commission and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) — will combine it with already dedicated local funds to begin designing and planning for the construction of stations. The service, which would make five intermediate stops between downtown Baton Rouge and New Orleans Union Terminal (including serving New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport) and would run several daily round-trips over a line that would remain mostly single-track, enjoys the unanimous support of leaders of the seven parishes along the route. The line, owned by Canadian National’s Illinois Central subsidiary, hasn’t hosted passenger service since 1969. It is unclear whether negotiations with CN-IC have begun and how much the host railroad is demanding for track improvements. Operations would cost $6.7 million per year on top of anticipated fare revenue (based on 210,000 passengers paying $10 each one-way), according to a Rail Commission study conducted last year. The operator will not necessarily be Amtrak.

Finally, the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s passenger rail program — which supports two, soon to be three, daily Raleigh-Charlotte Piedmont Corridor round-trips using state-owned equipment, along with infrastructure and station upgrades — has not suffered any setbacks at the hands of Gov. Pat McCrory (R) or Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature. This in spite of McCrory and legislative leaders’ efforts to undo much of what previous Democratic governors and legislatures had done. 

It was ten years between the founding of the Rail Division in the state DOT and the first operation of the Piedmont service in 1995, along with the resumption of the New York-Charlotte Carolinian five years earlier as a state-supported train (North Carolina pays the entirety of the subsidy needed to run the train south of Washington). All of this took place under the auspices of Gov. James Hunt, Jr. (D), while the Carolinian was suspended for five years due to lack of state support under Republican Gov. James Martin (though it resumed in 1990 during Martin’s tenure).

NCDOT’s Piedmont Improvement Program, which is double-tracking the route between Greensboro and Charlotte and adding more sidings between Charlotte and Raleigh, as well as construction of new stations in the endpoint cities (to add to new or renovated stations at all the intermediate cities), all remain on schedule. The Piedmont Improvement Program must be completed by the end of 2017, as it is funded with 2009 Recovery Act dollars. The equipment necessary to start a third Piedmont frequency next year is also in place, including six rebuilt cab-baggage cars that will allow each trainset to run in push-pull operation without two locomotives (the Piedmont consists used to be wyed in Raleigh and Charlotte, a practice that ended in 2014, though the Carolinian continues to be wyed in Charlotte).

This is a time of deep division and mistrust in our country, and I have many worries about what the next administration and Congress may do. But as long as the voices of citizens at the grassroots level and local leaders of all political stripes continue to push for it in unison, I am less worried about the fate of passenger trains. The wider paradigm shift that would put rail on a more equal footing with highways and aviation — which is ultimately necessary for passenger trains to become an integral part of the transportation network instead of an afterthought — may have to wait a while longer to begin to take place.

P.S. — Many commenters on my previous two blog columns about autonomous vehicle seem to be missing the point. I do not advocate, nor do I believe, that autonomous vehicles will or should supplant trains and transit or become the dominant movers of people — far from it. Instead, I think the coming shift in automobile technology presents a unique opportunity for policymakers to make changes that would allow trains and transit to play a greater role and have cars — autonomous and otherwise — largely serve as first and last mile connectors in urban areas. I only bring up the development of autonomous vehicle technology to suggest that it would be wise for those interested in the survival and growth of railroads and transit to start planning now for a future that includes autonomous vehicles — even if that future is still a ways off or doesn’t play out to the extent its promoters think it will.