U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will be in Mobile Tuesday to participate in the groundbreaking of construction projects needed before Amtrak service can return to the Gulf Coast for the first time in 19 years.
Buttigieg will join Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose, U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl of Mobile, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson and representatives from Amtrak, CSX and the Southern Rail Commission for the ceremony that commences the construction of a layover track and platform to accommodate Amtrak’s return into downtown Mobile.
Once the layover track and platform are completed, Amtrak will resume passenger services from New Orleans to Mobile for the first time since 2005. The project is expected to be completed by early next year, though no time frame has been provided as to when the Mobile-to-New Orleans route will restart.
The ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. at the Amtrak legacy platform at 101 S. Water St. in downtown Mobile.
It will also be occurring 77 days since the Mobile City Council gave the go-ahead on the Amtrak project, approving on Aug. 6 the final bureaucratic step needed in order for the state-supported train route to restart. The twice-daily Amtrak service, once started, will connect Mobile to New Orleans with four stops in coastal Mississippi — Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St. Louis.
There had bene hopes that that Amtrak’s Gulf Coast return would be in time for the Super Bowl following the council’s action in supporting a $3.064 million expenditure for the train’s operations. By Halloween, the public was hoping to know the name of the train. It’s unclear if that announcement will occur on Tuesday.
The Biden Administration has long backed Amtrak’s return to the Gulf Coast. In 2021, John Putnam, acting general counsel with the U.S. Department of Transportation, wrote a letter to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, urging them to “act expeditiously on Amtrak’s application” to restore the service to the Gulf Coast.
The STB had been adjudicating a case, filed by Amtrak in 2021 against the freight operators along the route — CSX and Norfolk Southern — to get the service restarted. The Alabama State Port Authority, once opposed the service, was also part of the case.
But a negotiated settlement was reached by all parties in late 2022, leading to a cooperation among all the parties as well as a major investment into the freight operations along the route in the form of a $178.4 million federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant.
Biden – a longtime proponent and user of Amtrak service — has pushed for expanding passenger rail’s network in the U.S. The bipartisan infrastructure law, passed in 2021, that included $66 billion toward Amtrak expansion across the U.S. Amtrak has since said it would add 30 new routes and trains on 20 existing routes by 2035.
