NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Extending Illinois-sponsored trains from Carbondale, Ill., to Memphis, Tenn., and establishing a route between Nashville and Atlanta were ideas suggested by an Amtrak representiative to a Tennessee legislative committee this week.
As first reported in the Nashville Tennessean, Amtrak Senior Director of Government Affairs Ray Lang’s appearance Tuesday before the Tennessee House Transportation Committee was meant to kick off conversations with states and communities that currently have little or no Amtrak service as discussions with Congress over the company’s reauthorization begin.
Amtrak President Richard Anderson and Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Gardner have repeatedly said that they want to begin serving shorter-distance corridors with fast, frequent daytime trains, but a major impediment is the lack of federal operating and capital funds under current Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act provisions.
The company has yet to publicly unveil specific changes it seeks in new legislation, but is making outreach efforts to enlist future support from states now underserved by outlining what routes might be viable, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari tells Trains News Wire.
“We are also talking to current state partners regarding how additional frequencies might be implemented,” says Magliari.
He notes that the daytime southbound Chicago-Carbondale, Ill., Saluki and northbound Illini would be relatively easy to extend because trained Amtrak crews already run the overnight City of New Orleans on the same Canadian National tracks. But the states of Kentucky and Tennessee would have to shoulder any additional operating, equipment, and rail infrastructure costs because the route is under 750 miles.
For possible service to Atlanta, Lang told the legislators that new Tennessee stations would have to be constructed in Nashville, Murfreesboro, Tullahoma, and Chattanooga and the state “could be on the hook for several million dollars a year” in operating expense.
Intercity trains stopped at Nashville’s former Union Station, now a hotel, until Amtrak discontinued the Chicago-Miami Floridian in October 1979 budget cuts, but the company never operated regular service over CSX Transportation’s ex-Louisville and Nashville rails to Atlanta. That 285-mile route was last served in 1971 by a coach-only remnant of the line’s overnight Georgian, which was scheduled for a seven-hour trip.
“This is the first we’re seeing of this,” CSX State Government and Community Affairs VP Jane Covington told the committee members. The Tennessean reported that she understood Amtrak was there “to simply gauge the state’s interest,” but Covington warned the lawmakers that “introducing passenger trains to heavily used freight lines will be a complex, costly process,” and, “we want to make sure you do it in a way (that) doesn’t backfire and divert freight off the rails and onto the highway.”
