The Biden administration is asking the Surface Transportation Board, the independent, appointed body that regulates U.S. rail, to set a precedent by forcing railways to let Amtrak restart an old Gulf Coast line on their privately maintained networks.
The quasi-public passenger rail service owns very few track miles and needs to secure the right-of-ways to the tracks of commercial freight lines. As a result, the railways have been known to drive a hard and drawn-out bargain whenever Amtrak wants to expand its service.
In the case of the proposed Gulf Coast line, in March 2021, Amtrak submitted a request to the board seeking an order to force railroads Norfolk Southern and CSX to allow Amtrak access to tracks between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. Amtrak used to run a route there but discontinued it in 2005 after the regional devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The Department of Transportation has sided with Amtrak. So, that arm of the Biden administration is pressuring the board to “act expeditiously” and grant the requested order.
This Transportation intervention is calling the board’s independence into question. It also provides a possible window into other areas of the country where Amtrak might use regulatory actions instead of direct negotiations with railroads to expand service.
The railroads and the Alabama Port Authority’s railway docks division offered to take the conflict between them and Amtrak over the Gulf Coast expansion into mediation with the board. Amtrak refused its offer in late March of this year.
With the issue unresolved, the board started at least four days of hearings into the matter on April 4.
“CSX argued that Amtrak, in bringing the case, was demanding immediate access for its two daily round trips without any infrastructure improvements,” reported Trains magazine of the first day of hearings. “But Amtrak’s position is that the railroad’s demand for up to $440 million before any passenger train can access the line is clearly not what Congress had in mind when it passed” a law that gives the board the technical authority to intervene in the event that “a carrier does not … allow Amtrak to provide for the operation of additional trains over a rail line.”
Several observers complained that the hearings moved slowly, like a locomotive making a long, steep, arduous climb. Board chairman Martin Oberman countered that intervention by his agency, in this case, would be “precedent-setting, and we want to do it right.”
According to the entire Alabama delegation to Congress, it probably shouldn’t do it at all. All nine members wrote a letter to the board in February, objecting.
The Alabama congressional delegation letter pointed out that a feasibility study that was supposed to have been a condition of expansion was never completed. It argued that expanding in Mobile could have harmful effects on supply chain issues at a time when that is a serious concern for most of the country.
The letter further suggested that Amtrak is currently flush with cash from the recent infrastructure bill and could afford to pay for some upgrades to the network that the railways are asking for as a condition of giving Amtrak access to their rails.
Robert VanderClute is a proponent of passenger rail and a former employee of Amtrak for more than two decades. He is nevertheless against the proposed board action.
“Unless and until Amtrak returns to the table to work through crucial — and entirely standard — questions about the proposed expansion and its impact on existing freight rail traffic and infrastructure, it is simply not prudent for the proposal to move forward,” he wrote in an Inside Sources op-ed.
Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst for the Reason Foundation, pointedly agreed about the advisability of not moving forward.
“Amtrak’s petition should be rejected as a matter of law,” Scribner told the Washington Examiner. “As a matter of policy, it is bizarre that the Biden administration supports raising transportation sector greenhouse gas emissions by displacing efficient freight trains from freight railroads’ own tracks to grant special privileges to a tiny number of tourists and train hobbyists who want to take a sentimental excursion into the transportation past at taxpayer expense.”
