Mobile has no Amtrak station

The construction of a train stop, and track leading to it, in downtown Mobile is the final infrastructure issue needing to be addressed before Amtrak can restart passenger trains along the Gulf Coast for the first time in 18 years, officials say. Mobile is the only city along the route to New Orleans without infrastructure already built. Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St. Louis, Miss., have train stops/depots ready to go. Mobile last had a train station downtown in 2005, when it was destroyed by storm surge from Hurricane Katrina. Amtrak has not operated along the Gulf Coast since that storm. Marc Magliari, spokesman with Amtrak, described Mobile as a “key element” toward Amtrak bringing service back after years of planning and negotiations with freight operators and the Alabama State Port Authority. “I don’t have any (notions) that Mobile is holding up the works here,” said Knox Ross, chairman of the Southern Rail Commission. “I think it’s more that the railroads have to come together on an agreement to do improvements necessary," he said. Amtrak officials met with Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s staff last week to discuss what a train station could look like adjacent to Cooper Riverside Park downtown. Candace Cooksey, a spokesperson for the mayor, described the meeting as “preliminary.” City attorneys and real estate officials are working with Amtrak to analyze the site. No decisions have yet to be made, she said. From that meeting, a decision was made to connect legal and real estate departments and get a survey done on the property. Drawings from a 2019 proposal are available on what a future train station will look like - sans a building with ticket booths. (AL.com 04/03/23) Mobile’s train stop ‘key element’ for Amtrak’s return to Gulf Coast - al.com