Amtrak President and CEO, Stephen Gardner, testified today before the Surface Transportation Board in response to comments regarding the company's petition to operate passenger rail on the Gulf Coast. A summary of his testimony is below:
Regarding the RTC modeling by freight railroads that produced the $440 million demand by CSX and NS: Imagine for a moment if one football team got to make up new, special rules for the Super Bowl – and not tell the other team, or even the referees, what they were. Of course, that team would win the game.
That’s exactly what happened here. The rules CSX and NS made up gave only their team eight downs on each possession, allowing them to run up the score in their favor.
Even with all of those flawed and hyperbolic assumptions, the RTC model only showed that our service, if started without any capital investments, would cause average freight train speeds to decrease by just seven tenths of a mile per hour. That is what CSX and NS claim is “unreasonable impairment” of their freight operations.
Based on that, CSX and NS are now demanding 440 million dollars in publicly funded infrastructure investments before we can run a single train. That is exactly the sort of host railroad “intransigence” and “inordinate capital demands” that Congress intended the STB to “expeditiously” curtail when it enacted 24308(e).
Amtrak and its state partners stand ready to fund reasonable infrastructure improvements along the Gulf Coast Corridor to improve Amtrak service and address legitimate areas of concern. There is already more than 60 million dollars in federal and state funds committed or secured for that purpose. However, the 440 million dollars CSX and NS are seeking today is orders of magnitude different from any measure of reasonableness.
On shipper concerns:
Shippers along the Gulf Coast, or elsewhere in the United States, have no reason for concern with this restoration of this service. As we addressed in our filing, our short station stop in Mobile will not block traffic to and from the Port. In fact, the New Orleans-to-Mobile line was able to accommodate three Amtrak trains a day 25 years ago when it had nearly twice as many freight trains as today.
On using the new federal funding to meet the freight railroad ransom demands:
Some have suggested that, given the IIJA funding, Amtrak should simply acquiesce in CSX’s and NS’s unreasonable demands. But Congress did not enact the IIJA to fund the gold-platting of freight railroad lines in order for them to live up to their legal obligations to Amtrak.
The STB also heard from Wick Moorman, who was Amtrak President and CEO, after retiring as President and CEO of Norfolk Southern Railway:
In his testimony, Moorman said the original demands of CSX of more than $2 billion for service from New Orleans to Florida were "laughable" and the process to start or expand Amtrak service work when all sides agree on what goes into a rail traffic study and all sides see the results.
The latest "study" was completed by NS and CSX, and after Amtrak, Federal Railroad Administration and SRC were locked out by those railroads.
Moorman also said, while at NS, the Port of Virginia at Norfolk was concerned about new Amtrak service coming to that city. But instead of blocking service, while he ran NS, a plan was developed, improvements were made, and the service has exceeded ridership projections with an upgraded railroad for shippers.
As Amtrak's Gardner stated, “It is not for CSX and NS to determine that Norfolk may have Amtrak service but Mobile and Mississippi should be left behind.”
The full testimony and other highlights from the hearing are in the Amtrak Media Center: Gulf Coast Service.
For more information about President and CEO Stephen Gardner, click here.