Delays on Amtrak Crescent line illegal, Justice Department lawsuit says

A private rail company is illegally holding up Amtrak trains on a line that runs from New York to New Orleans, according to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday in federal court in D.C., the first of its kind in 55 years.

Norfolk Southern controls all but about 240 miles of the 1,377-mile line, called the Crescent Route, and is in charge of dispatching both freight and passenger trains. Federal law requires the company to give Amtrak trains preference. But according to the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern has instead held up passengers, sometimes for hours, to allow its longer and slower-moving freight trains to pass. Only about 24 percent of Amtrak trains on the route arrive on time, according to the lawsuit and Amtrak’s own audits.

Delays cost Amtrak millions of dollars; along with reducing ridership, they cause problems with crew and train car allocation. A 2019 audit found that only about 46 percent of long-distance Amtrak trains arrive on time and that freight railroads were responsible for about 60 percent of the delays. Most of the track owned by Amtrak is on the Northeast Corridor, where performance is much better.

Advertisement

In a statement, Norfolk Southern spokesman Tom Crosson said the company is “committed to complying with the law, working together, and honoring our commitments,” adding that delays have been reduced in recent months.

The Crescent runs twice daily, once north toward New York and once south toward New Orleans. The train passes through Maryland, D.C. and Virginia; it’s south of Alexandria that Norfolk Southern takes over the rails. About 272,000 passengers traveled on the Crescent Route in 2023, according to Amtrak, about average for a long-distance train.

When Amtrak was created in 1970, railroad companies were no longer required to provide passenger service around the United States. But in exchange, they had to contract with Amtrak and give its passenger trains priority on their rail lines. Amtrak has repeatedly accused the rail companies of flouting that law, saying violations lead to roughly 15,000 hours of delays per year.

Advertisement

Most of the delays occur south of Atlanta, the Justice Department said, where trains are running on a single track and Northern Southern chooses freight maintenance over passenger speed. The company, a Virginia corporation headquartered in Atlanta, runs freight trains that are too long to pull over and let Amtrak trains pass.

In January, an Amtrak train was forced to follow behind a slow-moving Norfolk Southern freight train for several miles just outside New Orleans, causing a nearly hour-long delay, the lawsuit said. In February, a Crescent train was delayed for 80 minutes outside Atlanta because a freight train was blocking access to the station platform, according to the suit. One delay last year was nearly two hours, with passengers waiting for a freight train to be refueled in Mississippi.

Amtrak customers have been “subjected to unacceptable, unnecessary, and unlawful delays,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement, calling compliance with the 1973 law giving passenger trains priority “uneven at best.”

Advertisement

Only once before has the Justice Department used a suit to enforce the law — in 1979, over the Sunset Limited route from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

“This critical action by the DOJ will help ensure our customers arrive at their destinations on time,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a statement.

Amtrak has gotten a major infusion of money under President Biden, who used to commute to Washington by train. But its ability to expand is limited because the vast majority of the country’s rail tracks are owned by private freight companies.

Norfolk Southern was also sued by the Justice Department last year over the massive environmental damage caused by a derailment of one of its freight trains in East Palestine, Ohio. That suit was settled for roughly $310 million.

Perry Stein contributed to this report.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLGkecydZK%2BZX2d9c4COaW5oa2Bkrq7A0ZqiZpyVoa66ecuarqytmal8