WASHINGTON — Switching details and conflicting traffic modeling assumptions dominated discussions at the Surface Transportation Board’s hearing into Amtrak plans to launch passenger service between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.
The seventh and eighth days of testimony and cross-examination, spread over three weeks, on the dispute over plans for two daily Amtrak round trips precedes a three-week hiatus while the STB attends to other matters.
On Monday, Alabama Port Rail Division General Manager Rob Golden explained how the port’s short line, Terminal Railway Alabama State Docks, must occupy portions of the CSX main line in Mobile for switching moves between its Interchange Yard and both its Riverfront Yard and a coal terminal. Port attorney Jim Helenhouse stressed Golden’s extensive background as a dispatcher, trainmaster, and manager of network operations before he joined the port.
Golden said TASD trains must often wait 45 minutes to get clearance from a CSX dispatcher to leave Interchange Yard. Once cleared, the current crossover configuration will only allow them to access Track 1, the track adjacent to the former Mobile passenger platform. This means the trains can’t get a clear signal indication out of the TASD yard if any train is stopped there. However, his testimony revealed that the possibility of moving the crossover to Track 2 to avoid this conflict was never modeled.
Amtrak’s first witness Tuesday, Thomas Crowley, testified he was unable to verify that Rail Traffic Controller modeling utilized by CSX and Norfolk Southern presents an accurate picture. He said this is because train movements were represented by randomized data, further processed by a proprietary program of consultant R.L. Banks & Associates. He insisted actual railroad dispatching data should have been used instead of field interviews, but STB board members questioned whether such information even exists.
In his cross-examination, CSX attorney Matt Warren attempted to show Crowley employed some of the same modeling techniques in work he was doing for Chicago’s commuter operator Metra in opposing the proposed Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger. Warren said that although Amtrak hired Crowley in October 2021 as an expert witness, essentially to audit and critique modeling by consultants Banks and HNTB, he never was shown modeling data that CSX eventually supplied in September 2021 from the never-completed 2020 study by HDR.
Amtrak’s second witness, Jim Blair, the company’s senior director of host railroads, explained Amtrak was not allowed to see the HDR data as it was being modeled in April and August 2020. But he said he worked with HDR to slightly adjust the schedules of the passenger round trips using a “heat map” representing freight activity. None of that collaboration was part of the 2021 HNTB CSX-NS study that is the basis of the current hearing.
As in previous sessions, STB board members took an active role in quizzing the witnesses. Chairman Martin Oberman usually overruled attorneys’ objections in an attempt to understand the facts being presented. He had additional questions for Blair when Tuesday’s session concluded.
The evidentiary hearing will resume with Blair’s cross-examination on Monday, May 9; an additional day is scheduled for May 11. Video of all eight sessions to date can be viewed on the STB’s YouTube channel.
— Updated April 26 to correct dates for May resumption of hearing.
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