INVESTING IN AMERICA: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Celebrates Groundbreaking to Restore Passenger Rail to the Gulf Coast

With major funding from the Biden-Harris infrastructure package, Amtrak passenger rail service between Mobile and New Orleans will return for the first time since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region in 2005

Mobile, AL – Yesterday, Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose and representatives from Amtrak, the Southern Rail Commission, and other local leaders for a groundbreaking ceremony for the Gulf Coast Corridor Improvement project, which will restore passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast.  

Once the layover track and platform are completed, Amtrak will resume passenger service between Mobile and New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region in 2005. The Biden-Harris Administration awarded the project $178 million through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

Below is the full transcript of Secretary Buttigieg’s remarks:   

Good afternoon, thank you. I’m going to have to come out here more often. You really know how to make somebody feel welcome.   

Thank you so much, Mobile, for this warm welcome. Thank you, John [Morgan], to you and all of the thousands of Amtrak employees who do such extraordinary work on America’s rails. Whether it's those who engage with passengers every day like you, or those who are behind the scenes making sure that these trains are safe and reliable. We're so appreciative, and so excited about what this means for you and your colleagues. And thanks for the introduction too.  

I want to acknowledge my colleague Amit Bose and the entire FRA team, who worked so hard on this.  

The local and state leadership; the leadership of Governor Kay Ivey, Commission Chair [Knox] Ross, thank you and to your fellow commissioners for joining us, [President] Roger Harris to you and the Amtrak leadership team and board.  

And likewise, I want to acknowledge that the role of the workers who are such an important part of this, and glad to be joined by SMART Local 622 President Jackson here, and all of those who are going to be part of the good work of making this a reality. We're excited about the good-paying jobs, and the many good-paying union jobs that we’re creating with this effort.  

I want to acknowledge the partnership with CSX represented by Jane Covington, and everybody who has been part of making sure that that private-public partnership has worked. And I want to join in thanking and acknowledging the Mobile City Council for the work that you did to make this possible, along with all the local officials that had a hand in this.

And, Mayor [Stimpson], thank you for the warm welcome, thank you for your commitment to making this a reality. As the Mayor said, we knew each other as fellow mayors, and I always reflect when I'm with a mayor who I served with back in my mayor days that the job has only become more difficult and demanding since I proudly wore the title. But I also often reflect that it sure would have been nice back when I was mayor of my hometown if we had a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill going on, so hopefully you feel that that is a wind at your back coming from Washington, DC. Thank you, Mayor.

And last but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge the leadership of our President Joe Biden and our Vice President Kamala Harris. When President Biden called to invite me to take this job, that has been my great honor to do now for the last four years or so, I told him I'm pretty sure I could only ever hope to be the second biggest passenger rail enthusiast in this administration. But I've aimed for it not to be too distant of a second. Because really throughout this administration, I think throughout the country, we believe in the potential of passenger rail to drive opportunity, and to better connect this country as it did ever since before the days when Abraham Lincoln presided over linking the East and West Coast through that transcontinental railroad that truly made the United States a singular and not a plural noun.

It’s also great to be back in Alabama! I was just here in April to celebrate work that’s going to modernize and revitalize a stretch of Fourth Avenue up in Birmingham. A project that we believe in deeply.

That was a project that was a long time coming—about 20 years in the making. Local leaders, led by U.S. Congresswoman Terri Sewell, and Mayor Randall Woodfin, and so many others. And they were advocating for those improvements to Birmingham’s historic Black Main Street so that community members and small businesses there can thrive again.  

Across the country, over the last four years, I have seen project after project, vision after vision, that was desired or needed for years or even decades but faced too many obstacles to get done and seen those finally get done. And folks who care about the vision of restoring Gulf Coast rail know a little something about that.  

2005 was the last time a passenger train traveled through Mobile, when service was suspended because of Hurricane Katrina. But the public support—I would say the public demand—to restore this train line has mounted ever since. And now, at last, it’s happening.  

It has taken a lot of lifting, and pushing, and funding, and partnership—across state lines, across party lines, across the public-private line—in order to make this happen. But now we are here celebrating the work that is going to reconnect Mobile to a larger passenger rail network, supporting these communities with those high-impact investments and long-term upgrades that they deserve.

So, it is my great pleasure, on behalf of the Biden-Harris Administration and the entire U.S. Department of Transportation, to join you and to congratulate you to officially mark the groundbreaking of the restoration of the Gulf Coast Rail Line. 

We’ve got so much to celebrate today. And look, this is a vision that has been desired across multiple administrations in Washington. Now that it’s finally happening, under the leadership of Vice President Harris and President Biden, and of course possible because of the historic funding that came by way of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And I want to give a nod to Senator [Roger] Wicker from next door in Mississippi, who played such an important role in getting that bill done—who started talking about Gulf Coast rail from the moment I had my very first telephone call with him, and as Amit mentioned, in our congressional hearings as well. And with that infrastructure package came the means to award over $178 million to get this project over the finish line.  

And thanks to that collaboration and coordination with Congress, with Amtrak, with the Southern Rail Commission, with CSX, the Mobile City Council, and Mayor Stimpson, we are ready to get Gulf Coast Rail rolling once again.

What does that to look like? We’re going to upgrade tracks and signals to help minimize delays. Station improvements will provide a comfortable place for passengers to wait while shielding them from the elements. New grade crossings will make it safer for vehicles to cross where roads intersect with those train tracks.

And of course, most exciting for all, there will soon be two new roundtrips a day running between Mobile and New Orleans.

Once this project is complete, once that Gulf Coast Rail Line is back up and running, those twice daily roundtrips will mean a reliable, efficient, affordable way to travel for people here in Alabama, in Mississippi, and in Louisiana.

And we know the potential for economic development that this will bring—something we have seen demonstrated time and again along passenger rail lines around the U.S. and around the world. Developers see the value in creating new housing and commercial options in places served by the rail line, which drives a virtuous cycle of economic growth and opportunity.  

You’ve already got a lot of economic growth and opportunity to be proud of here in Mobile. I saw estimates that about 6,000 jobs are expected to be created here over the next five years. This is great news for the workers and families here in Mobile.

Once that train is connecting cities along the Gulf Coast, workers in those cities, too, will have an opportunity to commute to work by rail and be part of this job growth and even more jobs will develop right here because of that increase in the ability of people to access this region.

So today, nearly 20 years after Hurricane Katrina brought such a devastating impact to this region, a new era of passenger rail is at hand. It shows the resilience and strength of communities along the Gulf Coast—ensuring that no matter how long it takes, you never gave up, working piece by piece to rebuild and ensure that what you build is even better than what was here before.

It’s something we’re all thinking about, of course, in the wake of the most recent storms to impact American communities, something that’s fresh on my mind after visiting western North Carolina and Tennessee last week to see the impacts of Hurricane Helene.

And this project is part of a bigger wave of improvements and investments benefiting this region. This project comes not so long after the announcement of the Mobile River Bridge and the Bayway Project—$550 million to help make I-10 safer and more reliable and more resilient. We believe that might be the biggest federal transportation grant ever to come to the state of Alabama and we’re proud that it happened on our watch.

And that’s one of many. As I mentioned, we’ve got that project up in Birmingham that we’re so pleased with. Up in Decatur, helping to reconnect Old Town to the stores and shops along the riverfront. In Pelham, building a bridge so that drivers and pedestrians and, very importantly, emergency vehicles can safely and efficiently get across a rail line. And in West Montgomery, connecting residents to the Selma to Montgomery Trail.  

These projects are among the 63,000 and counting that are moving forward thanks to that infrastructure package. And each one of those projects has two things in common. First of all, none of them were invented at the U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters in Washington, DC. All of them came from a community, a state, a railroad, an airport trying to be better and we’re there to make sure the funding comes. And secondly, all of these projects, every single one of them, is an investment in our way of life, in our economy, in our future. And you have my commitment that there is more good work where this came from.

So, again, congratulations on everything you have done to bring the community to this important milestone. Thank you for welcoming me here today. And please make sure to save me a seat when that first train starts to roll. 

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