Amtrak is hope to restore passenger rail service between Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. The federally owned company operated the route until its shutdown following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Even so, Amtrak does not own much of the route that will be used. CSX and Norfolk Southern, the freight rail companies that control much of the route, are reluctant to allow passenger services on the tracks despite a legal obligation to do so.
Last week, Amtrak used Twitch, the live-streaming platform, to counter claims by freight services that passenger service on the track would cause “a near-catastrophic drop in freight operations” if left unchecked. infrastructure upgrade. Upgrades will cost Amtrak more than 400 million dollars. Amtrak has set up a camera along the route in Bay St. Louis to monitor whether the route is as busy as CSX and Norfolk Southern claim while streaming the feed.
Amtrak primarily did this to gather evidence in order to win a Surface Transportation Board trial that would force CSX and Norfolk Southern to authorize Amtrak operations. The Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, which effectively created Amtrak, ended the requirement that railroads operate passenger service. The law also stipulates that Amtrak will have the right-of-way on lines still owned by private rail lines.
The Twitch broadcast shows four CSX trains passing the camera over a nine-hour period. For most of the day, the feed shows a blank path. The freight rail assumes that one camera at one point is not representative of the entire route. If Amtrak wins, it will run two round-trip trains a day between Mobile and New Orleans. If not, for Amtrak to revive the service, it will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars provided in a recent infrastructure bill mainly to benefit private companies.
Speaking of Twitch, Jalopnik also streams on the site every week. We’re not trying to embarrass the freight rail lines, but it’s still fun.
