WASHINGTON — The Surface Transportation Board has scheduled two more days of hearings next month on Amtrak’s efforts to launch Gulf Coast passenger service after the passenger carrier, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and the Port of Mobile, Ala., failed to reach an agreement through board-sponsored mediation.
The evidentiary hearings will be Nov. 17-18, beginning at 9:30 a.m. EST each day. In its Friday decision, the board says it will “hold a voting conference … and may vote on the outcome of the case” on Dec. 7.
The STB’s directive limits the scope of the November hearings to evidence dealing with traffic modeling included in July and August filings following 11 previous hearings, the last of which concluded May 12. Closing arguments will conclude the final session. Like the hearings, the Dec. 7 conference, at 2 p.m. EST, will be streamed on the STB YouTube channel, although “no participation by the Parties or the public will be permitted.”
Amtrak’s attempt to add two round trips between New Orleans and Mobile began with a petition to the STB in early 2021, signifying its desire to commence service in January 2022 [see “Amtrak asks STB to require CSX, NS to allow Gulf Coast service,” Trains News Wire, March 16, 2021]. Members of the Southern Rail Commission from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had spearheaded the initiative, benefiting from legislative support by U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who helped secure dedicated federal funding after a then-cooperative CSX ran an inspection train on the Sunset Limited’s former route east of New Orleans in 2016.
But Amtrak went to the STB after CSX (and later Norfolk Southern) claimed the four daily trains would “unreasonably impair” their freight operations on the 144-mile route. What followed was more than a dozen hearings kicking off on Feb. 15, 2022, and concluding in mid-May in which both sides, and later the Port of Mobile, made their respective cases. On June 10, the STB issued an order for Board-sponsored mediation. That mediation was extended several times, but the last extension expired Oct. 25 without an agreement.
“Amtrak appreciates the Surface Transportation Board’s continued attention to the Gulf Coast service and will be prepared to participate in the next hearing,” the company said in a statement updated late Friday. “We remain committed to working with our partners to advance this important new service.”
— Updated at 9:51 p.m. CDT with revised Amtrak statement.
A very well stated discussion , not only on the Amtrack issue, but system wide the breakdown of handling manifest freight making switch movements hanging onto 125 cars plus and then attempting to drop AND pickup 60 cars from the main track including blockage of interlockings.
There is plenty of capacity between Mobile and New Orleans if CSX would operate trains that fit in the existing sidings..
L&N and later CSX rain many more shorter trains per day before PSR and mega trains that now clog up the railroad. These long trains won’t fit into the CSX yard in N.O. and spill out onto the NS and Public Belt railway in New Orleans.
Last weekend I witnessed the UP hand off a mixed freight of around 80 cars to the CSX at the eastern end of the Huey P Long bridge in N.O. The CSX crew sat not able to turn a wheel for five hours while multiple trains headed to and from the NS, KCS and CN as well as the westbound Sunset Limited passed it by.
Three hours later as I left N.O. eastbound on I -10 the train still had not made it into into the CSX Gentilly Yard. The reason was there was nowhere to put the train. The yard tracks and mains were packed with cars.
CSX needs to relearn how to move trains. And it may take Amtrak coming back to the Gulf Coast to force them too learn.