Our mission is to get Amtrak, or another
carrier, to reinstate passenger rail service on a daily basis from New Orleans to Orlando therefore resuming service
on the Gulf Coast.
ABOUT US
We all have important values
and ideas, things we care about and want to share. Ours just happens to be "a national passenger rail system",developing environmentally-friendly, efficient, and economically competitive transportation for the Gulf Coast. Sometimes
we feel our ideas can change the world, and we want to let other people know how they can join in and make all our lives better.
We feel that restoring our international connectivity via passenger rail is the next logical step in our recovery on
the Gulf Coast. We feel that engaging in the tranportation decision making process is the best way for you to have
a real voice in determining the investments that the Gulf Coast will make in the next few years. After all it is
our neighborhood, our communities and our money at stake. Please take the time to review the guidebook below and get to know
your regional MPO's.
We are hoping that Mayor Landrieu will take up the task of supporting (even demanding!)
the reinstatement of passenger rail service east of New Orleans.
After Katrina Amtrak abandoned the New Orleans
to Orlando passenger rail route (and the people of the Gulf Coast) effectively severing a vital link in the national passenger
rail system. And eliminating a vital tool for recovery on the Gulf Coast.
During the tumultuous year of 2008—when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records,
and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California—journalist James McCommons spent a year on America’s
trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail
journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism.
Readers
meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists,
and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world
turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible?
Distrust of railroads
in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left
the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing
to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads.
While riding
the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America—and what role government should
play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation’s stimulus program, he
explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized
in America.
Can TIGER Grants be used to update your local station?
Questions about these grants can be submitted to the Grants Manager via e-mail to TIGERGrants@dot.gov. The U.S. Department of Transportation will regularly post answers to questions and other important
information/clarifications on the Department’s website at www.dot.gov/recovery/ost/.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray
LaHood today announced the availability of $1.5 billion in TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery)
Discretionary Grants for capital investment in surface transportation projects. Grants will be awarded on a competitive basis
to projects that have a significant impact on the nation, a region or metropolitan area and can create jobs and benefit economically
distressed areas.
“TIGER discretionary funding will open up the door to many new innovative and cutting-edge
transportation projects,” said Secretary LaHood. “This is exciting news and I believe that these projects will
promote greater mobility, a cleaner environment and more livable communities.”
The grants can range from $20 million
up to $300 million to support high impact transportation projects. Secretary LaHood can waive the minimum grant requirement
for beneficial projects in smaller cities, regions or states. The U.S. Department of Transportation will require rigorous
economic justifications for projects over $100 million. To ensure responsible spending, the department will require all fund
recipients to report on their activities on a routine basis.
The solicitation published in the Federal Register today
provides clear criteria for the department to make merit-based decisions on the new discretionary program.
Primary
selection criteria include contributing to the medium- to long-term economic competitiveness of the nation, improving the
condition of existing transportation facilities and systems, improving the quality of living and working environments through
livable communities, improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the safety of U.S. transportation
facilities.
The Department will also give priority to projects that are expected to quickly create and preserve jobs
and stimulate rapid increases in economic activity, especially projects that will benefit economically distressed areas.
Applications
for TIGER discretionary grants must be submitted by September 15, 2009, from state and local governments, including U.S. territories,
tribal governments, transit agencies, port authorities and others. Comments on the criteria must be received by June 1, 2009.
The Federal Register notice can be accessed by clicking here.
NEW ORLEANS, BAY SAINT LOUIS, GULFPORT, BILOXI, MOBILE, ATMORE, PENSACOLA, CRESTVIEW, CHIPLEY, TALLAHASSEE,
LAKE CITY, JACKSONVILLE, PALATKA, DELAND, WINTER PARK, SANFORD AND ORLANDO.
The
meetings that AMTRAK are having are going to be with city officials not the general public. Please help us keep
the public informed by posting minutes or reports from your local meeting with AMTRAK here:
gulf-coast-rail@googlegroups.com
The decision to restore passenger rail service, appropriate
and fund are congressional and Amtrak says they are simply waiting for direction. Amtrak says it needs direction,
let's give them some direction.
TAKE ACTION! Make your voice heard in Washington!
Please ask your your Congressmen and Senators to demand the return of passenger rail service to the southeast immediately.
Never the less, be forewarned that any action, even if the decision is made today, restoration
of passenger rail service would be, according to Amtrak, at least 18 months away.
Ask your Senators
and Congressmen to ask Amtrak "why so long ?".
Congress gave Amtrak it's largest budget
ever.
CSX made the tracks available to Amtrak in the spring of '06.
The freight
slowdown has left many qualified conductors and engineers unemployed.
And passenger ridership on
long distance trains continue to break records.
Also write us and tell us what your official
had to say to you about passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast.
Amtrak's Sunset Limited has not served the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida Gulf
Coast since Katrina.
In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the eastern
portion of the Sunset Limited route, from New Orleans to Orlando, was temporarily halted, while restoraton work
on the CSX line was completed. That work was finished in early 2006. Amtrak has yet to restored the Sunset Limited line.
The Sunset Limited route has been severed. The route is now two lines, one of
which operates west of New Orleans three days a week, and one east of New Orleans, serving the Gulf Coast, which does not
operate at all.
The Sunset Team urges you to write
to your state and federal legislators and the Amtrak Board urging them to restore America's only Coast to Coast passenger
rail route, the Sunset Limited.
The S.M.A.R.T. mission is to preserve, restore, and expand
Amtrak passenger service along Amtrak's original transcontinental route. Goals are for daily service, restoration of service
to Phoenix, and restoration of passenger train service between New Orleans and Florida.
Amtrak's Sunset Limited (Amtrak Trains 1 and 2) is one of America's
oldest passenger train routes. Originally developed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 19th Centrury, the Sunset
has spanned the Sun Belt ...
Created to promote, preserve, and expand passenger
rail service throughout the growing and dynamic Gulf South region of the United States.
The National Corridors Initiative
exists to support the development of infrastructure, including an integrated national transportation system
that emphasizes rational transportation decisions, such as a network of intercity passenger and freight corridor rail corridors
augmented by commuter rail, and served by feeder systems.
Gulf Coast Passenger Rail is a non profit organization
of advocates formed to assist in the restoration of daily passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Mission Statement: To enhance
the life of Suffolk County residents by identifying, promoting, and advocating for a truly inclusive, efficient, and effective
public transportation system on the premise that accessible, affordable, efficient, and environmentally sound mass transit
is a human right.
