Volume 4 Number 34
- The Amtrak execs said on the conference call this morning, “We don’t want this to get out to any of the politicians until it’s a done deal.” Oops. It got out.
This appears to be Amtrak’s latest plan for the Crescent and New Orleans. Gone is the plan to extend the Crescent from New Orleans to San Antonio, and extend the Texas Eagle from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Instead, the Sunset Limited will remain as it is (deeply regrettably, without putting the Sunset back to Florida, east of New Orleans).
The Crescent will be rerouted west of Birmingham, dropping all train service to Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Meridian, Laurel, Hattiesburg, and Picayune, Mississippi; and Slidell, Louisiana.
The Crescent’s new route between Birmingham and New Orleans will restore train service between Birmingham, Montgomery, Atmore, and Mobile, Alabama; and send the Crescent west from Mobile to Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and into New Orleans on the former Sunset Limited/Gulf Coast Limited route, with New Orleans remaining as the Crescent’s terminal point.
Amtrak wants this to happen relatively quickly and as quietly as possible to keep interference from local and state politicians from getting in its way.
Amtrak doesn’t seem to care that the City of Hattiesburg has just in the last year poured $10 million of local money into completely restoring its local Amtrak station, or that Meridian built a completely new Amtrak premier facility about 10 years ago, again, also with local money.
From what can be determined, this is also being done without the blessing or knowledge of the three-state Southern Rapid Rail Transit Commission that has been working to restore Amtrak service between New Orleans and Mobile, even trying to find ways to fund the service outside of Amtrak. The Southern Rapid Rail Transit Commission allegedly was supposed to find a way to be a pioneering governmental body for converting existing Amtrak routes into corridor services.
But, Amtrak seems to be back to its old tricks of doing what it wants to do, when it wants to do it, and with no justification (other than the usual whine about everything being financially motivated) to anyone or anything which has supported Amtrak in the past, but is no longer convenient for Amtrak to work with, such as the cities of Meridian and Hattiesburg.
What we have is yet another example of Amtrak trying to accomplish something underhanded before it’s owners and bankers, the United States Congress and United States Department of Transportation, find out and try and stop them.
In this case, asking forgiveness instead of permission for doing a deed is definitely the wrong thing to do.
- So, how can this current mess be fixed, and everyone be happy, and Amtrak be financially whole?
The answer doesn’t take brain surgery to figure out.
Many readers with a sense of passenger railroad history may remember the “City of Everywhere” that was operated by the Union Pacific Railroad prior to Amtrak. UP’s name trains were the City of Los Angeles, City of San Francisco, and City of Portland. The “City of Everywhere,” as dubbed by wags, was a train which left its eastern terminus as one train, and split into several sections as it headed west, serving various endpoints instead of one endpoint. This concept could easily be the answer for the Crescent.
Try this for a plan: The Crescent departs New York City as it does today, but it regains the double name it had before the Downs/Mercer cuts in the late 1990s. A combined Crescent/Gulf Breeze would run, as it did successfully previously, between New York and Birmingham. In Birmingham, the train split, with a section continuing on to New Orleans via the current Crescent route, and a section went due south from Birmingham to Montgomery, Atmore, and Mobile. While the former Gulf Breeze terminated in Mobile, a new Gulf Breeze section of the Crescent could easily continue west from Mobile to New Orleans, covering all of the important tourist destinations of the Gulf Coast.
But, wait, there’s more. Also back in the late 1990s, there was talk of splitting the Crescent in Meridian, and sending half of the train to New Orleans, and half of the train overnight to Dallas on the Kansas City Southern Meridian Speedway to Jackson and Vicksburg, and into Dallas. The missing component was the condition of the track west of Meridian, which has now been upgraded with the deal between Kansas City Southern and Norfolk Southern for the new hotshot joint freight service now being offered by the two railroads. So, the tens of millions of dollars of track upgrades, adding sidings, signaling, and other amenities are now in place, and the route could easily handle one passenger train a day in each direction.
This would definitely give the Crescent a split personality, with one train departing New York City, first splitting in Birmingham, and then further splitting in Meridian. What this would do is preserve service on the existing Crescent route, restore much needed service between Birmingham, Montgomery (yet another city which upgraded its Amtrak station at local cost and them promptly lost Amtrak service), Mobile, the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, and create a dynamic new service which would directly connect Dallas/Fort Worth with the east via Atlanta, and not forcing anyone traveling to and from Dallas to route themselves via Chicago.
Not enough equipment to do this, you say? Not true. Plenty of Viewliner sleepers and Amfleet coaches to make this happen.
- Amtrak has a great opportunity to better use its current assets, create a lot of public and political goodwill, and greatly strengthen its national network with positive changes for the Crescent. If, indeed, it merely wants to pull service from cities it now serves merely to restore service to other cities it should be looking at independently, then Amtrak has learned zero lessons from past mistakes.
Amtrak has a chance to shine here, and instead, could very well be greatly harming itself with the public and some of its best political supporters on Capitol Hill. Pay attention, Amtrak. Don’t blow this one.
- Here are the most recent numbers of passengers using the Amtrak stations in question. Since Amtrak doesn’t publish revenue passenger mile figures generated by passengers at particular stops, we only have available this information. The 2005 figures reflect the time of lost service due to Hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent recovery periods reflect lower passenger counts as Mississippi and Louisiana recovered from the storm.
Boardings and Alightings 2005 2006 Tuscaloosa, Alabama 9,436 7,222 Meridian, Mississippi 12,355 10,732 Laurel, Mississippi 5,108 3,552 Hattiesburg, Mississippi 8,616 7,063 Picayune, Mississippi 1,331 2,001 Slidell, Louisiana 4,550 5,609