LET’S GET AMTRAK SERVICE IN CHATTANOOGA
Chattanooga, the Choo-Choo City, stands a good chance to get Amtrak passenger train service. Everyone we’ve talked to over the past few months — and we’ve talked to a lot of people — wants passenger train service here. So does Amtrak.
Now is the time for Chattanoogans to unite in letting Amtrak and state and local officials know how much we want train service. We need city leadership — elected officials, business leaders, civic leaders, tourism advocates, and even common folks like us who are just sick and tired of getting stuck in traffic every time we drive to Atlanta or Nashville — to speak up loudly for the city to get in the front of the line in Amtrak’s Southeast expansion.
In a nutshell, here is what we’ve learned: Last year the Tennessee General Assembly approved, with support from both sides of the aisle, a bill, signed by the governor, to study the possibility of a statewide network of Amtrak trains. The task was given to the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) to work with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and perform the study with the finished results due in mid-summer 2023. In the meantime, Amtrak last fall announced its plans to expand its national network, and said one of its first targets will be the Southeast. Amtrak, through the Federal Railroad Commission (FRC), asked states to indicate by the end of December an interest in receiving a first round of grants for new train service. Transportation departments from Georgia, Mississippi, the Carolinians, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Virginia, all quickly responded. TDOT didn’t.
Fortunately, with a lot of prodding from us, other train advocates like us, and a number of state legislators (our thanks go out especially to Rep. Yusuf Hakeem of Chattanooga), TDOT, in late December, came through and sent the Federal Railroad Administration a letter expressing interest in working with Amtrak in identifying new routes for train service in the state. To our surprise the mayors of Chattanooga, Nashville, Atlanta, and Savannah, Ga., also signed and submitted a similar Expression of Interest letter to railroad administration in December.
Now comes the next step, which shouldn’t be hard at all. To get in the first round of funding — which might be the only round — the state now needs, before the deadline on March 20, to submit a short (no more than 16 pages) application for a
Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta route. If an application is not submitted by March 20, Tennessee will have to wait to join other second-round groups. Our fear is that there will be no roundtwo funds available for the NashvilleChattanooga-Atlanta route if Tennessee delays.
TDOT, TACIR and the state legislature shouldn’t wait and miss out on this opportunity. They should move quickly and effectively to get the Nashville-ChattanoogaAtlanta route, and then continue to study and pursue other possible routes, such as Nashville-Memphis, Knoxville-Chattanooga-Atlanta.
This should be a no-brainer. Passenger train service is something that can unite us, literally and metaphorically, as Chattanoogans and as Tennesseans. As one city official told us, train service is in our communal DNA.
Not only will a NashvilleChattanooga-Atlanta route bring us together and help reduce the load on our interstate highways, it also will be economically beneficial and will set the stage for other routes.
Amtrak officials plan to meet in the next few weeks with TDOT and TACIR officials.
Let’s all come together as a community and as a state. Let’s get aboard this train. Let’s get rolling.