The Southern Rail Commission is Fighting for More Passenger Service in the South

Passenger rail in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama doesn’t get the spotlight often, but the story behind Amtrak’s new Mardi Gras service proves how much demand has been waiting on the sidelines. We sit down with Knox Ross, chairman of the Southern Rail Commission, to unpack how a three-state compact built the coalition, the funding path, and the political momentum needed to bring New Orleans to Mobile passenger trains back to the Gulf Coast after years of false starts.

We get into what the Southern Rail Commission actually does day to day: stitching together state DOTs, local leaders, congressional champions, Amtrak, and freight rail operators who own the tracks. Knox explains why launching a new passenger route can feel like “almost a miracle,” from changing governors to local supermajority votes, and why persistence matters as much as any technical plan. We also talk candidly about the freight railroad reality: dispatching conflicts, liability concerns, capacity constraints, and why infrastructure upgrades like longer sidings can be the key to making passenger rail coexist with freight.

If you enjoy smart, realistic conversations about passenger rail in the United States, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review with the corridor you want to see connected next.

Transcript

Why The Gulf Coast Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi are not states that are top of mind when it comes to passenger rail transportation in the U.S., but the Southern Rail Commission is trying to change that.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Anytime anybody pulls something like this together, it's it's it's almost a miracle. You're pulling together a bunch of people that really don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

This week we are lucky to be joined by Knox Ross, the chairman of the SRC, to discuss their recent success with Amtrak's new Mardi Grass service, future rail projects in the Southeast, as well as what it's like working with freight rail operators to get new passenger lines open.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Knox, thank you so much for being here today and uh taking the time to talk to us. Glad to be here. So, for folks who watch our show, listen to the podcast, who may not be familiar, can you take a second and explain what the Southern Rail Commission is? Uh, what role does it play in uh bringing passenger service to the Gulf Coast and the Southern States region?

What The Southern Rail Commission Does

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So the Southern Rail Commission was formed uh in 1982, uh, and it's a three-state compact between Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. And we are all appointed by our commit by our governors. There's six commissioners from each state. We we've not compensated for our time, but we uh but we serve at to represent our states in that compact. We work with our with our departments of transportation in Mississippi and Louisiana. We work with their development organization in Alabama, and uh those guys give us some funding. So we've been in b existence since 1982. It was really formed to institute service to support the New Orleans World's Fair of 1984. And so there was service then on the coast, one train a day. Uh the the commission then uh just worked really on safety projects through uh our congressional delegations, was able to put together a second demonstration project in the mid-90s that ran between like morning mobile over to New Orleans, New Orleans in the evening back to Mobile. Uh that lasted uh several months, and and as these things normally do, one of the states decided they wouldn't pay for it anymore. Uh and it was it was successful at that time. And so so we've worked since then, and since then we supported the extension of the sunset from New Orleans to uh initially to Miami, and then it it ended in Jacksonville. Uh you know, that service came through in the middle of the night for most of the places on the on that on that route, and and it was horribly late because it was so long. So it just never came back after Katrina. But there was a great deal of push to have something come back. And so, you know, out of that, we we were working toward that. Uh, we kind of found our footing and found champions like Roger Wicker and then former Senator Thad Cochran, who preceded uh Cindy Hyde Smith, who's been a champion, and and we found people like that to push this along and to help us with that. So that's kind of the work we do. It's it's more than just advocacy. We're working with our legislative partners to build a framework for these services to be able to be instituted. And then, you know, we work directly with uh the the uh class one

Why Passenger Rail Is So Hard

SPEAKER_01 3:34

railroads that we have to deal with. Uh we work directly.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

So you're correct me if I'm wrong here, but you're you're really trying to connect the dots between the the different state governments to make sure that they all play nice together, you know, the rail operators, the freight operators, you know, all the different pieces of the puzzle because you know, uh both fortunately and unfortunately, it takes a lot of different people to be able to cooperate together to be able to get these projects off the ground.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

It's much more complicated than it ought to be. And it really is. It's very hard to do. And I never appreciated this before I got on this commission. And I've been on this commission probably 15 years, and and I never really understood how hard it is to do this. And so anytime anybody pulls something like this together, it's it's it's almost a miracle. Uh, because you you're you're pulling together a bunch of people that really don't want to do it. I mean, they they they don't. And and so uh it it the the the states don't really want to do it. Uh, you know, Mississippi has been really good. They've been the best of the three states by far uh in supporting this. But uh you have you have states that just really don't want to do it. We go through different gubernatorial uh administrations. Some are what happens is is some people have really good things to say about it, others may say nothing about it, but they do the same thing, which is nothing.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And uh, you know, nothing substantive. And so you it it takes a lot of work and just and and and just persistence to get it done. And then it's persistence to keep it going. I mean, we have to convince the states that this is a good investment, they should continue to pay for it.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yeah. I I think that's actually a good, a good uh story to tell, especially today. You talk about how it is complicated, it's way more complicated than it should be. And uh believe me, we talk about that on the show all the time is you know, why can't we just get some stuff done?

Building The Mardi Gras Service

SPEAKER_02 5:29

But we did get something done, and the Southern Rail Commission was a a driving force behind this, and that is the establishment of the Mardi Gras service between uh New Orleans and Mobile. And uh for those who watch the show, I talk about this service a lot because I'm from Mobile originally, and so it's it's near and dear to my heart. And I got to be there on the inaugural ride. We got a great video about it, uh, if you haven't seen it, going from Mobile to New Orleans. But can you talk a little bit about getting that service off the ground and what it really took to make it a reality?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

You we we had people at the right place at the right time. So you had Roger Wicker, who at that time was chairman of the Commerce Committee. He was either chairman or ranking member, depending on who's in charge of the Senate. And we had spent a lot of time making friends. Uh Maria Cantwell, who is the uh senator from Washington State, who would be either the ranking member or chair of commerce that oversees Amtrak, she became a fan of what we were trying to do. Uh, you know, what we found was is we could run sort of a bipartisan deal. Uh Representative Larson, and he was very helpful to us and and the you know, the committee staffs there, we would get great relationships with. And it just took years of meeting with people and talking to people and convincing them. And then also convincing the locals. I mean, we would have all sorts of things. You know, you you're familiar with the Mobile deal, and and I will tell you that that uh Mayor Spiro, who's the new mayor in Mobile, is terrific. I mean, they are moving forward with a lot of work, not just with our projects, but others. Uh, you know, Mayor Stimson was terrific, but he was hamstrung by a lot of local relationships that Mayor Spiro seems to have been able to work through. And um and and he's just doing a terrific job and is very excited about it, big supporter of it. And then Visit Mobile has been the other big part of that. But you just continue to work through it and you make friends, and somebody comes along that's been watching what you're doing, so I think I'm gonna help you. Uh Mississippi was always sort of the stalwart, we're gonna do it. Um it, you know, it was hard to get the capital dollars out of the legislature to do it, but we did. You know, it's all always a last minute, down to the wire, I don't know, deal. Uh you know, Louisiana was always one that they said they were gonna do all these great and wonderful things. You still we're still meeting with them to try to get all that done. And uh and then once Mobile agreed to it, they agreed to it. And we it's been great. And uh I mean, getting them to agree to it, I went to Mobile more than I care to admit. You know, I was going down there once every week or two to meet with the with the uh city council, and and most people don't know me. What you run into is you run into all these strange ways of local government, and every state is different in how transportation is funded, transportation is governed, and then the city of Mobile, to do anything, they have to do have a supermajority of the city council to vote on it. So it creates really hard governance. I mean, it's hard to get things through because you have to convince all but about two of them that that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

And then each city has got slightly different rules and slightly different thresholds and slightly different political situations. They're not all in the same election cycle, so you've got changing parties throughout the entire process. Right. Sounds like a nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

The port authorities are are also pretty strong in these communities, and you know, they have freight operations that they are going to be concerned about. And there's a lot, a lot of moving parts. There is absolutely yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

I'm curious. So uh, you know, the Mardi Grass service has been running for quite

Ridership Surprises And On-Time Challenges

SPEAKER_03 9:19

a while now. Uh we've got two daily round trips, and so far it has been exceeding all of the ridership expectations. Uh I'm curious if if you're surprised to see like the the level of exceeding those numbers and if anything else in the project uh you know, since it has opened has surprised you so far.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yes. I mean, so the the ridership, we worked hard. I mean, the initial ridership estimate on this train was 40 some odd thousand people a year. And I sat there and I listened to that, and I'm like, is this really true? I mean, we should just buy everybody an Uber. I mean, this can't be right. And uh, and so we just didn't believe that was correct. And so we went back and and you know, Amtrak has a formula that they go by, and it's basically we're connecting these two cities. It's kind of what they have to do. You know, a lot of Amtrak is is I mean, I I don't want to hate on them because a lot of them is promulgated by the government what they have to do. You gotta do it this way. And so it's basically two cities, and there's these little cities in between. This is what we think it's gonna be. It doesn't matter this the tourist capital of the world, and you got a place like New Orleans, place like Mobile, and you got places that none of that's really taken into consideration. So they came back and re-ran it, and it came back to 71,000. Uh some MBA students at Tulane also took a stab at it, and they came back with a little bit higher than that, but not a lot. So you're like, okay, this seems to be what it's gonna start. So um, you know, when it took off out of the gate, people that know what they're talking about saying, well, you know, everybody's riding it that wants to ride it, it'll settle down. Well, it really never has. I mean, the the biggest challenge that we're dealing with right now is our on-time performance has deteriorated some, and we're working on that. But but that's not unexpected. Uh you know, we put a lot of fat in the schedule before we put in these improvements that we're working on over the next two or three years. And everybody said, Yeah, we can run it. Now they come back and say, No, no, we told y'all we couldn't run it. Yeah, you did. You said that's why we're doing the improvements. And uh, so we're working on trying to fix that. But it's been very popular. The uh, I mean, it it is, I think, the uh has the highest customer service scores of any train Amtrak runs. And it sells uh it I mean it's top sellers in the in the cafe car or Prosecco, Tito's vodka, you know, and and and coffee. I mean, yeah, that's it. And so it's a party train of the money crawl service. That's right. We call it the happy party train. And but what the interesting thing that when you talk to the people on board, the onboard service crews, they're seeing people that are using this as necessary transportation. So you're seeing people that are using this because of the times. And I think the critical part of this is it is twice a day, so that you can take day trips into New Orleans, come back to Bay St. Louis, where or you can go out to Bay St. Louis for the day or go to Mobile for the day. And we're getting all of these uh just sort of organic reports on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and everywhere else. People put up their I had this great day on the train. It's a success story. I mean, you know, the the biggest challenge that we'll have going forward is you know convincing the states that this is a good investment for them.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

I I love that you brought up the fact that this is two trains a day per direction because that's a big complaint that I always have whenever we're talking about all these different Amtrak routes across the country, is I'm like, how useful can it really be if it is once a day in each direction? It's hard for folks to, you know, even two, like it's hard for folks to be able to continue to utilize a service that's offered at at one time per day. So I I give I don't know exactly who deserves the credit here, but somebody deserves the credit for for making sure that this service launched with two trains a day right out of the gate because there very easily is a world where it

Why Two Daily Round Trips Matter

SPEAKER_03 13:24

was only one. And yeah, I mean, I can tell you exactly how that started.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

So so when we did the Gulf Coast Working Group, that the initial work to look at how do we re-establish service after Katrina, and it that was looking at New Orleans to Jacksonville. Todd Stennis, who's Game Track Governmental Affairs, he lives in Gulfport. He and I were talking about this, and he said, look, what we need to make sure to do is when we're negotiating all this out, we need to put a second round, a state-supported round trip. Because the first train was going to be a long-distance train, and that's how we felt like we were gonna be able to sell it to the states. Hey, you're not gonna have to pay for the operation, you're gonna have to put some capital in. You know, let's let's see if we can reserve a slot for a second round trip from New Orleans to Mobile to create two round trips a day. So I met with a gentleman who ran pasture operational CSX at the time, and he said, look, he said, we think we can run this train if y'all will stop it at Mobile. The problems are past Mobile, which is not it that there's some truth to that. You know, everybody's gonna overblow, you know, trying to run it. But yes, that's where you have dark territory, that's where you have jointed rail, that's where 60 mile an hour running. It kind of goes all over the place. Fine. So we came back and said, okay, so we'll run two round trips from New Orleans to Mobile, that'll make it work. But that's where all that came from. And and then there were a couple times they said, Well, what if we just started this with one train? So that's not gonna work. That's not what sells this. I mean, look at the Heartland Flyer. If that train had two round trips a day between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, I think that would be a totally different discussion there than they have today. Is that you can you you then you take all these cities in between and they're all of a sudden connected, you know, for day trips and business. And that's what we see on this train. We see people doing business trips. They can go into New Orleans, do their business, and come home. They can go to Mobile, they can go wherever. Uh, I talked to a guy when I was down there one time, works for one of the big banks, lives in Gulfport, he goes to New Orleans a couple of days a week. He just goes on the train.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Uh, you know, we talk about a lot too on the channel. Uh connecting Austin to San Antonio would be an obvious connection where there should be, you know, two, three, four trips a day, uh, and and adding that connectivity would be such a huge boost to the region. So that's that's a Texas thing. But um, I am curious with Southern Rail Commission,

Next Priorities Baton Rouge And I-20

SPEAKER_02 15:53

you have other projects that you are working on, and you know, you're kind of building from this success of the Mardi Gras service. What are some of the priority projects that the Southern Rail Commission is really pushing for for increased connectivity in this uh this area?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Well, there are two. Um, we're working with Louisiana DOTD on you know Baton Rouge to New Orleans service. How that has kind of morphed since the success of Mardi Gras is that that kind of morphs into an extension of the Mardi Gras to Baton Rouge. It's hard to build highways in swamps, and that's what's between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on I-10. And I-10's terrible, you don't want to ride it. Now, Louisiana DOTD is in charge of that CIDP at quarter ID program on that service, so we're supporting that. I don't know. I mean, the the thing is is we sometimes we have to have to kind of muddle through when there's not the level of excitement we would like to see, but we are moving forward on it. Uh, you know, you got support of it would stop at the uh New Orleans airport, which they're very interested in that. Um and then, you know, you have multiple stops along that sort of chemical corridor at between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and we think it would be very successful. The second project that we are operating the CIDP would be to split the crescent at Meridian, Mississippi and take it over to Fort Worth. And that's been studied extensively since the early 80s. Um the last study that Amtrak did on that was in 2015 and it came back that that train would cover its above the rail cost, which is very unusual for a long distance train. And uh the thing that has changed the calculus on all these is is in the CPKCS merger, we were able to get agreements with CPKC that they would do this, that they would host a train.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

And for for folks who are who are bad with the uh for folks who are bad with the abbreviations, that's the the freight operator now in the region.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, right. Yeah, the Canadian Pacific, Kansas City. And so it's a combination of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern. So so we're working on CIDP on the I-20, so we have cooperation of Kansas City Southern. Well, guess what? Norfolk Southern owns 40% of that railroad between Meridian and Shreeport. They own and then Union Pacific is the main tenant on that railroad, plus they own the railroad from Shreeport to Dallas. And so all of a sudden, with the mergers going on, this has created a real interesting time for us in trying to move forward with this. And so, you know, we're hopeful that we can get some of the same agreements that we got with CPKC on the rest of it, which would make this much easier because the railroad between Meridian and Fort Worth is in great shape. It's very busy. Uh uh Union Pacific has done a tremendous amount of infrastructure work from Marshall, Texas to Dallas to put that in double track on most of it. Uh they're not really excited about doing it, nor anybody is. I mean, C CPKC has been a very good partner on this, and they kind of see it a little bit differently. But um, and so you try to try to find a way to make it work.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

I'm curious, you've uh you've spent time more than most people probably directly talking with some of these freight operators, and I'm just curious, even outside of you know, uh the South, but like I I always feel like there's this sense of pessimism in terms of passenger rail being able to operate on freight

Freight Rail Reality And Political Will

SPEAKER_03 19:33

corridors, but at the same time, it is so difficult for a new rail line to just be built from scratch. Like it feels like if we are going to have a major increase in passenger rail service in the United States anytime soon, the way to do it is to find a way to work with these freight rail companies to make it happen. Uh I'm curious, like what I mean, you're you're there and you do it. Like what level of optimism do you see in working with the freight operators, you know, both in in your area in the southeast, but also more broadly? Because I just feel like so there's a lot of doom and gloom. And I I feel doom and gloom about it sometimes being like, oh, it's a bummer. We don't, you know, like how are we ever going to do this? No, like it's impossible to build a new right-away from scratch without spending billions and billions of dollars that in a lot of cases you don't have the political will to get that kind of money spent. Um I'm just kind of curious to your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Well, I mean, you come into the fact that they you know they'd rather not do it. Right. And and there's a lot of reasons why, and a lot of them are legitimate. I mean, you know, pass the pass if you had a derailment or whatever. So what's happening is when you put a passenger train on there, it's running at 79 miles an hour. Everything else is running at 40 or 50 miles an hour. And so you've got this very fast train that's eating up the track time. And and and so it is an operational headache. Yeah. I mean, there's no question. And so uh it's trying to figure out now how do you do that? It makes it harder to dispatch the railroad, it's all these things, and they're like, well, I don't want to fool with it. Yeah, I yeah, and I'm not being compensated enough. I mean, they're they're they're I'm I'm not saying this is true or not true. This is what they're telling you. I'm not being compensated enough for this. You know, we're putting in about $300 million improvements into a railroad that quite frankly doesn't have a ton of traffic on it, you know, on the coast. And I mean what's happened is in that case is the railroad, now they've maintained it, they've actually maintained that railroad to 79 miles an hour because Amtrak they still had a contract with Amtrak to run the sunset, even though Amtrak wasn't running it, they maintained the railroad to be able to run it. But what they haven't done is they they said, okay, since that train's not there, we can we don't have to extend the sightings to to uh take care of modern railroading where you're running these 14,000. So, what they would do is they would operate it like a like a assembly line in that they would run all the trains one way one day, they would run all the trains the other way. Like there, that's railroad north and south. They run north one day and south one day. Works fine for them. Not so much if you're running a faster train out there. And so now the money that's going into it, most of it is going to lengthen the sidings so that the railroad can be run bidirectionally all the time, which actually is really good for the freight railroad, quite frankly, because it gives you district capacity. You can run trains both ways. Um but then in the end, if you look at it from their standpoint, why do we want to do that? I mean, that's not money that we uh uh you know if that makes sense. And so you look at it from their perspective, but then but then you come back to it's look you signed a contract in 1970 not to have to run pasture trains and you said you would do this. And and and so the last 60 years, 50 years have been a whole work trying to get out of it. And that that's so you come back to it, it's like okay, I got it. But one thing that we've talked about from a nationwide standpoint is saying, okay, there are certain places like the Texas Triangle that to somebody that's never worked on this is obvious. You need to do this. But the problem you have there is is the freight traffic is tremendous. The state of Texas has no interest in it. Yeah, they just don't. And so uh and so you just say, okay, where is it that there is interest? Because there are freight operators that have lines that let's just say aren't as busy, could use some some inf infrastructure improvements, and so you say, okay, let's concentrate on those. And I thought that's kind of where we really got away from that in this long distance study, which I've freight did more harm than good, put together a bunch of city pairs, it's never gonna happen. And uh and but if you say, okay, and there are places that it would not be hard to add additional frequency or additional service because the freight traffic is not so heavy as to warrant a lot of infrastructure. I mean, it's there, and you kind of the way we look at it is why not flip it over and say, okay, where can where can we get this done? It may not necessarily be from the outside, that's exactly where we need to train, but this is where we can put one.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

You know, and you you hit on the big one in in Texas is just uh political will. And we again we talk about this a lot on the show is where where is political will viable? And uh beyond that, how do we talk to uh states that don't have the political will to convince them that these are are good things? And it sounds like um Southern Rail Commission is doing a lot of that really hard groundwork uh to get us

Listener Support And Closing

SPEAKER_02 25:06

there. But I do want to say um thank you so much for the time. This conversation's been incredibly interesting, and I think it provides a lot of information that um Lewis and I maybe haven't uh had before about how you know there are people who are working every day to connect all of these cities and governments and and politicians. So thank you so much for your work with the Southern Rail Commission and uh for taking the time with us today. I appreciate it. Thank y'all. You've enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

I really appreciate it. I appreciate the realism too. I feel like uh it's it's like also refreshing, like you're in there doing the work and you're you're having success, but also being real in the sense of like, yeah, like the freight railroads don't want to do it. Sometimes these politicians don't want to do it, but you you gotta prove you gotta prove it to to you know make it happen.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

If you found this episode interesting, uh all about the Southern Rail Commission and what is happening in these deep South states and communities, please let us know in the comments what you thought about the conversation. Also, please share this with any friends you may have in the region. Also, any likes to the page, subscribes. Uh, all of those are big helps to us.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

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