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Republicans embrace Amtrak’s Gulf Coast rebirth - POLITICO

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/amtrak-gulf-coast-republicans-katrina-233080

Republicans embrace Amtrak’s Gulf Coast rebirthIn the Donald Trump era,
even red-state Republicans are cheering Amtrak's efforts to restart the
Gulf Coast passenger train line that Hurricane Katrina wiped out.

By Lauren Gardner <http://www.politico.com/staff/lauren-gardner>
•01/01/17 07:51 AM EST
[image: 161128_amtrak_new_orleans_ap_1160.jpg]

In October 2005, Jimmy Elliott is helped off the first Amtrak train to
arrive in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina hit. | AP Photo

MOBILE, Ala. — A decade after Hurricane Katrina wiped out a long stretch of
Amtrak's transcontinental passenger route in the Deep South, the railroad
is plotting to bring it back. And it’s attracted a seemingly unlikely group
of cheerleaders: red-state Republicans.

For Amtrak, extending the City of New Orleans line from Louisiana to
Orlando, Fla., is a chance to demonstrate that its traditionally
money-losing long-distance routes deserve Congress' investment. It could
also mark a shift in some Republicans’ attitudes toward Amtrak, after
decades of GOP leaders in Washington trying to slash the passenger rail’s
funding and force it to dump unprofitable routes.

Story Continued Below

Now local and state Republican leaders along the Gulf Coast are promoting a
revived Amtrak route as a tool for commerce and jobs. That argument mirrors
the pro-transportation message of President-elect Donald Trump, who is
proposing a nationwide $1 trillion infrastructure upgrade that he says
would make the nation’s roads, bridges, airports and railroads “second to
none.”

Could a new era of an Amtrak-friendly GOP be at hand?

“I think we can make Amtrak work,” said Republican Mississippi Sen. Roger
Wicker. “We can make it more friendly to the taxpayer, and more efficient,
but I think we need Amtrak, and I’ll just say it.”

For Republicans like Wicker, restoring Amtrak’s lost Gulf Coast route would
not just recreate a transportation link but would benefit local economies
by making it easier for tourists and business travelers to move through
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Others argue that the people
most likely to move to the region in the next 30 years — retiring baby
boomers and tech-savvy millennials — are becoming less reliant on cars and
trucks, making it essential for rail to fill the gap.

“You’re going to depopulate rural communities if you can’t connect them to
the larger economy,” said John Robert Smith, a former Republican mayor of
Meridian, Miss., who used to chair Amtrak’s board and now advocates for
transit-oriented development.

Sandy Stimpson, the Republican mayor of Mobile, Ala., said providing money
for rail is “part of the federal government’s obligation to address
transportation.”

Some national Republicans remain deeply skeptical that investing hundreds
of millions of dollars on the Gulf Coast route would be a wise investment,
considering that Amtrak has historically failed to turn a profit anywhere
outside its D.C.-to-Boston Northeast Corridor. But such sentiments may lose
their political sway in Trump’s GOP, even if the president-elect hasn't
specifically mentioned Amtrak in his infrastructure pitch.

One harsh Amtrak critic who won’t be around in January, former House
Transportation Chairman John Mica, is dubious about prospects for a Gulf
Coast revival.

“It’s been a horrible, money-losing route,” said Mica, a Florida Republican
who lost his seat on Election Day. He added: “I don’t think it lends itself
to daily scheduled service, but I think it has the possibility of some
specialty service. It depends on what the market will support, but some of
the losses were huge.”

Almost since its inception in 1971, Amtrak has drawn attacks for the money
it loses on long-distance routes. Mica has mocked the railroad as a
“Soviet-style” operation whose dining cars can’t even sell a hamburger
<http://www.politico.com/story/2012/08/mica-math-amtraks-16-burger-vs-mcdonalds-1-burger-079360>
for $9.50 without bleeding red ink.

In August 2005, when Katrina dealt the death blow to Amtrak’s perpetually
late New Orleans-to-Orlando route, the entire railroad seemed to teeter on
the brink of bankruptcy.

Its fortunes have changed since then — ridership and federal support are
holding steady, and its $227 million operating loss
<https://www.politicopro.com/transportation/whiteboard/2016/11/amtrak-sets-records-for-riders-cost-coverage-for-fiscal-2016-079885>
in fiscal 2016 is the smallest since Amtrak began. Still, lawmakers
skirmish every year over Amtrak's appropriations, causing supporters to
consider it a victory just to avoid cuts to its $1.4 billion annual
appropriation. That makes the idea of wresting more money from politicians
— for a long-distance route, no less — daunting.

So for Amtrak, the Gulf Coast is a crucial test. If it fails here, it would
lose an opportunity to take hold in a region whose population is expected
to boom, as well as a chance to expand its political appeal.

“I think the more that we show that we can run a safe, financially
responsible railroad, the more likely it is that people of both political
parties will be supportive of it,” Amtrak board Chairman Anthony Coscia
said.

The most immediate task: prove that Gulf Coast service can be
cost-effective.

CSX, the private freight carrier that owns most of the track Amtrak would
use, said in August that it needs $2 billion in upgrades to sustain
passenger service, although sources close to the effort have privately
called the figure vastly inflated.

Then, assuming it can get the line running, Amtrak will have to justify its
existence almost immediately: The railroad already anticipates it won't be
able to cover the nearly $10 million it would cost yearly to run that
service plus an accompanying New Orleans-to-Atmore, Ala., route that
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would have to help subsidize.

The Gulf Coast Working Group, which Congress created in 2015 to study
restarting the Amtrak service, is trying to identify funding sources
outside the federal government, such as state and local governments and
tourist attractions that could benefit from the train service. A report
outlining those options is expected by spring 2017.

It's finding support in places like Mobile and Biloxi, Miss., whose leaders
call daily passenger train service the logical next step for their visions
of rail-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly cities.

Stimpson, the Mobile mayor, wants to use a recently awarded $14.5 million
federal grant to pay for bike lanes, crosswalks and other features to help
connect a low-income neighborhood to jobs at the city’s aviation
manufacturing hub, with any leftover money possibly going to efforts to
construct a downtown trail system. The main thoroughfare that flanks the
eastern edge of Mobile’s downtown and hugs its river would shrink from six
traffic lanes to four, making room for bike lanes and walkways to eliminate
what the mayor calls a “psychological barrier” keeping citizens away from
the waterfront.

But federal money is still essential, said Stimpson, who’s wary about how
much money his city might be asked to kick in to ensure Amtrak trains can
stop there.

“I think that it is part of the federal government’s obligation to address
transportation. I mean, the states do not have the ability, nor do the
local communities have the ability — nor do they have kind of the
connectivity or the reach," Stimpson added after giving POLITICO a driving
tour of the streets he wants to reimagine.

Besides helping car-free millennials and baby boomers avoid the slog along
congested Interstate 10, supporters say, relaunching the Amtrak route would
boost tourism by connecting coastal hubs like Bay St. Louis, Miss., and
Pensacola, Fla., to Jacksonville on the Atlantic Coast.

Still, some government officials in the South say they need to be convinced
that the benefits would justify spending the kind of money Amtrak’s
renaissance would require.

One critical question is how many passengers would use the service. Amtrak
projects that the revived route would carry 153,900 passengers a year —
many times more than the 29,668 travelers its former Gulf Coast service
carried in fiscal year 2005 when it was shuttered.

Amtrak’s outlook, on the Gulf Coast and nationally, is tied to the broader
debate over how to pay for the nation’s outdated infrastructure, a cause
Trump says he supports. The federal government confers billions of dollars
in subsidies for highways, bridges and transit — and some Republicans, from
Washington to Mississippi, are pushing for passenger rail to get similar
treatment.

"I’ve always thought that passenger rail — to include Amtrak — should be
part of the mix,” Wicker said. “It’s a major carrier of Americans in not
only getting to work, but getting back and forth to all the places that
airlines take us.”

Though it may seem at odds with the national GOP’s ideologies, some
Republican leaders in the region have long supported Amtrak’s long-distance
routes, especially rural lawmakers such as former Sens. Trent Lott
(R-Miss.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).

“The only thing we need on this Gulf Coast and in Biloxi — we have the
beauty, we have that ocean, we have the most wonderful people on the planet
— we just need more people,” Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said in February
after an Amtrak inspection train pulled into the coastal city for the first
time in nearly a decade. “We just need more people to come and see this
beautiful city.”

Those tourists can “come and stay a week or a month or two,” Bryant said,
and “bring their money with them.”

The 34-year-old Southern Rail Commission — staffed by appointees of the
governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana — has promoted Amtrak’s
potential return on social media with the hashtag “#yallaboard.”

But even with bipartisan support, boosters know that a high price tag could
derail the momentum. Alabama Republicans in particular, from Stimpson to
Rep. Bradley Byrne, aren’t ready to say that restoring Amtrak is crucial
for their region’s survival and growth — nor are they willing to write a
blank check.

“I don’t think it’s essential,” Byrne said over oysters and gumbo at a
Mobile restaurant late last summer. “I think it would be a significant
asset if we could do it. Lots of people — young people and not-so-young
people — really like the idea of being able to use trains to go east and
west, and so I think it would be another good thing for what we’re doing
down here.”

But “if essential implies that we’ve just got to do it,” Byrne said, “I
don’t feel like we’ve just got to do it.”

Byrne still appears more open to spending money on Amtrak now than he was a
year ago, when he voted to cut all its federal operating money. At the
time, he expressed support
<http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2015/06/us_rep_bradley_byrne_talks_up.html>
for the government getting out of the railroad business altogether.

Supporters like Bryant note that the public doesn’t blink when lawmakers
ask the federal government for billions to build a highway. Federal
Railroad Administration chief Sarah Feinberg echoes that point, saying that
for communities like those east of New Orleans, “this passenger service is
their airport. It’s their new airport, or their new runway. It’s their new
freeway.”

Amtrak could ease the federal burden for its long-haul services by seeking
private sponsors, such as tourist attractions, universities or sports teams
interested in reaching the railroad’s customers.

Those communities and the institutions that anchor them — including
casinos, universities and military bases — should collaborate more with
their elected leaders and Amtrak to make the case for improved passenger
service, said Smith, the former Meridian mayor and Amtrak ex-chairman. And
those groups should do more to contribute to the costs of running trains,
he added.

Amtrak has tried that before. As it looked to resurrect service between Los
Angeles and Las Vegas in the late 1990s, Amtrak secured commitments from
casinos to buy blocks of tickets to guarantee sales on a proposed
high-speed rail line. But the service never returned, and private companies
have since come and gone, trying to bring passenger trains back to an area
where travelers either make the four-hour drive along I-15 or take
discounted airfares.

But the Gulf Coast has a more diverse string of constituencies that such a
route would link — and the region lacks quick, affordable travel options.
Indeed, some members of the Gulf Coast Working Group had to change or
scuttle their plans to attend an August meeting in Jacksonville because of
a computer glitch at Delta Air Lines and a massive rainstorm that stretched
along I-10.

At least one Republican senator isn’t shy about calling the railroad’s
return a necessity.

“Can we have a successful economy without it? I suppose so,” Wicker said.
“But there are going to be millions more people in our area of the country,
and restoring passenger rail needs to be part of the mix for moving those
people.”
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Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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