I’ve been inspired to come up with this blog after I read the Brookings Report on Amtrak, which stresses that a whopping 83% of rail passengers ride intercity routes that run 400 miles or less. That really sucks for Amtrak because Congress requires it to operate a national network of long-distance routes that run more that 700 miles.
I’ve been playing with the idea of reworking the long-distance network into a national network of interconnected, approximately-700-miles-or-less routes that try to get as close to the minimum “long-distance” length as possible. An easy “test” candidate for this route and brand change is The City of New Orleans, a train that operates on 934 miles of track between Chicago and New Orleans, once daily in each direction. The route is among the most interesting corridors in the nation, but it is in desperate need of an overhaul.
First, the easy part: The City of New Orleans’ has to change its awful name. Its legacy dates to 1947, and its lasting popularity (with some) dates to a Steve Goodwin song sung by Arlo Guthrie in 1972. Just listen:
It’s a slow, sad, and nostalgic song about the death of passenger rail. “Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders?” “Freight years full of old black men?” The name is also confusing in a modern world dominated by search engines, where folks would confuse the train with the actual municipality. Don’t get me wrong: naming trains after classic songs is a great idea, and it should be a naming convention for other routes, but this is the wrong song for this route, especially if you consider that it runs through some of the most musically storied cities in the nation.
Here’s what I propose instead.
A proposed map of the Proud Mary. Note: this alignment includes a reroute through Tunica, MS and Clarksdale, MS.
WOO-WEE. Not only does this song actually have a pulse, it is chock full of references to the cities served by the route. St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans were all deeply connected to paddle boats on the Mississippi River. Ike Turner got his start in the Mississippi Delta. Come on, Amtrak, this is an easy fix. In the image above, I’m also proposing a change in the Missisippi Delta. Currently, trains do not stop in between Memphis and Greenwood, missing two of the Delta’s major tourist attractions.
In my proposal, the line would head southwest from a junction north of Robbinsonville, MS, stop at Tunica, continue on through Clarksdale with a southeast turn in that city, and then reconnect to the old route at the Swan Lake Junction north of Greenwood.
The Clarksdale reroute is a “pie-in-the-sky” idea, since Tunica County’s segment of the track right-of-way was abandoned and sold off years ago and Mississippi isn’t known for farsighted transportation investment, but I figure that Tunica’s casinos would be financially invested in restoring passenger rail service (carless folks would have to wait and spend more money until the next train to leave the casino). Coahoma County (Clarksdale’s county) actually owns and (somewhat) maintains its section of the proposed route as a shortline.
Overall, this reroute would require: buying about 20 miles of old right-of-way, though some of these purchases could be negated by running the line along Highway 61; upgrading 80 miles of track to higher speed standards–assuming a cost of 4 – 7.5 million a mile, that’s 320-600 million dollars (numbers based on a Minnesota report, but the lower figure assumes lower labor and construction costs in the south); building two new enclosed stations at an assumed cost of approximately 3.5 million each, based on the total cost of a new station in Huntley, IL; and annual maintenance costs associated with maintaining track, signals, etc. for 110-mph service.
If momentum built among Delta political leaders for making this happen, I think Amtrak might even be interested in owning the Clarksdale segment, which would add eighty miles to its paltry 730 miles of right-of-way. If that happened, riders between Greenwood and Memphis would be able to fly through that segment in about an hour.
Rail Pass 