Amtrak’s latest filing with a federal regulatory agency promises a relatively modest, short-term obligation for taxpayers in Mobile – a little more than $3 million spread out over three years.

It is the same commitment the Mobile City Council made in 2020 to restore passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

While technically true, the filing last month to the Surface Transportation Board masks questions about operating the route over the long term. A federal grant would pay 90 percent of the operating subsidy for the first year but then taper off over the next five years, eventually going away.