The U.S. Department of Transportation has urged the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to side with Amtrak in a case involving new intercity rail passenger service between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.
In a brief filed in December but not made public until last week, DOT said the STB should order the restoration of Gulf Coast Service and accused host railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern of seeking to weaken the interpretation of a federal law that grants Amtrak access to host railroads for new and expanded rail passenger train service.
DOT said the intent of Congress in adopting the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, which created Amtrak and relieved railroads of the obligation of providing intercity rail passenger service, was that a host railroad must prove affirmatively that new service would harm their freight operations.
The legal standard, DOT argued in its amicus brief, is that host railroads must show the new service would create an “unreasonable impairment.”
DOT argued that Congress always intended for new or additional Amtrak service to enjoy a presumption of favor barring that showing of “unreasonable impairment.”
Amtrak has proposed double daily service between New Orleans and Mobile, a route that last hosted passenger trains in August 2005.
That service, the tri-weekly Sunset Limited, operated between New Orleans and Orlando, Florida, but was suspended in the aftermath of damage to the rail infrastructure caused by Hurricane Katrina.
The Sunset Limited continues to operate tri-weekly west of New Orleans to Los Angeles.
CSX and NS have argued that the addition of Amtrak service would harm their freight service and have demanded millions of dollars in track improvements in return for agreeing to host the service.
For the past five years the various parties, including the Southern Rail Commission, have been arguing about the scope and cost of those improvements. They have also argued about a traffic study of how Amtrak service would affect freight operations.
The DOT brief said there is more at stake in the case than just new corridor service to Mobile.
“In the Department’s view, it is important to set a precedent in this case that vindicates the governing statute and the purposes underlying it,” DOT argued. “Rail carriers have obligations in hosting Amtrak service, and these obligations were part and parcel of Congress’s decision five decades ago to create Amtrak and to relieve rail carriers of their obligations to carry passengers. The Board should not countenance an interpretation of the statute that makes passenger rail service illusory.”
DOT described the operational analysis submitted to regulators by CSX and NS to support their assertions of harm as “insufficient” to prove Amtrak service would “impair unreasonably” their freight transportation.
“Congress created Amtrak to provide and promote intercity passenger rail services that were always expected to operate primarily over host railroad infrastructure.,” DOT said “This was part and parcel of an effort to strengthen struggling rail carriers, many of whom were in a precarious financial position, by relieving them of their longstanding common carrier obligations to transport passengers.
“Since then, Congress has taken numerous steps to reaffirm the importance of Amtrak’s ability to operate over host railroad infrastructure, including through the recent provision of historic levels of funding for Amtrak intercity passenger rail development and related investments in host railroad infrastructure.”
The latter was a reference to funding intended to bolster intercity rail passenger service contained in the infrastructure bill approved by Congress last year.
“Nothing in the governing statute, 49 U.S.C.24308(e), indicates that Congress anticipated a protracted period of time or the expenditure of extraordinary sums as a condition precedent to the addition of passenger trains along an existing rail line,” DOT said.
Amtrak in the Heartland 