Amtrak’s Mardi Gras To Start This Summer

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

It’s really happening – this summer Amtrak will begin to run trains again in the U.S. Gulf Coast, at least between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., nearly two decades after Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of the track and led to “suspension” of the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans.

The railroad officially announced the train’s name, the Mardi Gras, in a release yesterday introducing the new twice-daily service, even though that name leaked out more than a year ago.

Each end will get an early morning departure and a late afternoon departure, although exact schedules aren’t yet finalized and passengers can’t yet book travel – Amtrak is still working hard to make sure they have the equipment they need to start running trains before they open up the reservation system, and there’s also the issue of being sure that the new platform in Mobile is fully finished and ready for passengers.

“Amtrak Mardi Gras Service is a natural choice for the name of the new trains that will reflect the region’s distinctive culture,” Amtrak President Roger Harris said in a prepared statement yesterday. “Travel should be about more than just getting somewhere. Our goal is to have some of that festive Mardi Gras feeling on every trip, sharing the culture of the Gulf Coast region while connecting with the rest of the Amtrak network.”

New Orleans, Bay Saint Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Mobile will get same-day connections in both directions every day to the City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago via Memphis. Passengers will also be able to make next-day connections in New Orleans to the Crescent to and from New York via Atlanta, and of course the Sunset Limited to Los Angeles via Houston, San Antonio, and Tucson.

A year ago, I applauded the deal worked out between Amtrak, the City of Mobile, and the Port of Mobile to bring back passenger train service to the Gulf Coast because that really broke the logjam to make this route a reality – a reality our coalition had been working for almost two decades to make happen.

This whole process has taken a very long time...too long, to be frank. But that makes us all the more grateful to Amtrak, the Port of Mobile, and the City of Mobile — particularly Mayor Sandy Stimpson — for being willing to return to the negotiating table last year, as many times as it took, to get this project across the finish line.

And of course, we all owe enormous thanks and congratulations to the Southern Rail Commission, now under the leadership of Mississippi’s Knox Ross, and to former Amtrak Chair and Merdian, Miss., mayor John Robert Smith, for keeping at least a flicker going for this restoration even when it looked nearly hopeless.

It’s also important to point out that the long-feuding parties in this nearly two-decades saga – Norfolk Southern, CSX, Amtrak, and the Port of Mobile – finally found a way to negotiate an agreement that worked out for everyone, and that cooperation could, and should, be a model for introducing new service everywhere else in the U.S. where we desperately need it.

While it’s true that it may have taken a formal Surface Transportation Board enforcement proceeding, with all of its attendant public hearings and extensive interrogatories and public docket, to move things along, the real breakthrough came when personalities at the top changed and became more willing to engage in good-faith business negotiations. We wound up not with a regulatory order but instead with a business deal. And thanks to that deal, soon Gulf Coast residents and visitors will get the chance to take train and enjoy everything the Gulf has to offer. It’s the power of good-faith negotiations, and I’ll take that every single time.