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Cohen Fights for Rail Planning Funding

Credit: JK on Unsplash

Tennessee’s plans for passenger rail — and similar plans around the country — are likely on hold during the Trump Administration but a group of Congressional Democrats are trying to get them back on track. 

The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a $1.2 trillion bipartisan law, provided $1.5 billion in 2021 to encourage intercity passenger rail projects, through planning grants and more. However, the portion of the law funding these projects is set to expire next year. 

Hope seems dim for passenger rail planning as President Donald Trump slashes government funding for agencies across the federal government. For rail projects specifically, Trump pulled a $64 million planning grant in April for a Texas high-speed rail project that would connect Dallas and Houston. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he pulled $4 billion from a California rail project, citing cost overruns.  

However, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-9th District) and a two other transportation leaders in Congress filed a bill Wednesday to extend passenger rail funding to 2031.

The bill would reauthorize rail planning programs with $7.5 billion between Fiscal Years 2027 and 2031. It has the support of Rail Passengers Association, SMART Transportation Division, Southern Rail Commission, and Transportation for America, Cohen said.

“As a longtime advocate of passenger rail service, I urge my colleagues to support the federal-state partnership that is preparing the United States for a surge in rail travel,” Cohen said in a statement. “I am looking forward to one day taking Amtrak along the recently identified Memphis-Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta corridor that is being funded by a Corridor ID grant and, eventually, along a route linking Memphis to Little Rock and beyond. Passenger rail is the future, and this bill ensures its ongoing support.”

Cohen is a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He is joined in filing the legislation by U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (Nevada-1st District), a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials; and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee member U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (Michigan 3rd District).

While it may seem implausible in Tennessee that any issue has support from both sides of the aisle, passenger rail does. In a 2022 bipartisan effort, Tennessee lawmakers asked a group of government experts to study the potential of linking Tennessee’s biggest cities via passenger rail. 

In March 2023, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly submitted an application for federal funds in partnership with the mayors of Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis to begin planning for a new Amtrak route through those cities. 

Credit: State of Tennessee

In 2023, that group of state government experts — the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) — reported that passenger rail lines here would increase connectivity and tourism here. In December 2023, the Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville-Memphis group of mayors announced they’d won a $500,000 planning grant from the feds to study possible routes here.

It was not immediately clear whether those funding efforts were still underway or still funded through the federal grant. We’ll update this story as we hear from state officials and/or other experts on the matter.

The 2023 TACIR report said the top priority for rail service in Tennessee should be a line that connects Nashville and Atlanta through Chattanooga. The line would connect the largest amount of people and create the biggest economic impact. 

Credit: State of Tennessee

The report said the second priority for rail service here would be a route to connect Memphis and Nashville on population size. 

“The route would connect Tennessee’s two largest cities, and connecting areas with large populations is often a key to success for passenger rail projects, although neither of these cities has as many people as Atlanta,” reads the report. 

But the route would give Nashville (and other cities along the route) a connection to Memphis’ Amtrak service, which runs from Chicago to New Orleans, the report said. Freight volumes on existing lines from Memphis to Nashville are lower than other cities. Also, the route lacks “geographic barriers” of other proposed lines, apparently meaning the lack of hills and mountains would make it easier to build.

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Memphis Passenger Rail Talks Surface in Congressional Amtrak Hearing

Photo: Aris on Unsplash

Passenger-rail planning in Tennessee surfaced briefly this week in a Congressional hearing with Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner with a bit of recent news regarding Memphis. 

In a previous story, the Flyer described efforts underway by a state group to deliver a passenger-rail plan to legislators and other state officials next month. The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) has been working on a rail plan since 2022, when the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill requesting one.  

While TACIR works to meet the July deadline, several Tennessee cities filed an application with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for grant money to help them begin to plan for a possible rail route for passengers.

In March, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly announced that his city had teamed up with Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis in the submission that could draw $500,000 in planning funds for a route that would connect those cities. 

“It’s time to bring the Choo Choo back to Chattanooga!” Kelly tweeted at the time. 

That application surfaced in a hearing this week of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) asked Amtrak’s Gardner about passenger rail movement in the state. 

“The state has submitted a corridor identification application to the [FRA] for service from Memphis east to Nashville, onto Chattanooga and to Atlanta,” Gardner said. “That’s a very interesting corridor, one that holds a lot of promise.” 

Gardner said the application is a “first critical step” in the passenger-rail-planning process. If nothing else, it simply gets the state and the cities into the federal system, to stand in line and be ready for funds when they become available. 

Credit: House Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation

Cohen said a rail line between Nashville and Memphis is more important now that Ford Motor Co. is building BlueOval City in Haywood County, just a few miles east of Memphis between the city and Nashville. 

Also, Cohen said the “area’s not served by air transportation, commercial air.” No direct flights exist from Memphis International Airport to Nashville International Airport. Spirit Airlines will get you there with an 11-hour layover in Orlando (for $211), according to a search at Kayak. Delta Airlines will deliver Memphians to Nashville in just over three hours with a stop in Atlanta for $359, also according to Kayak. 

Bus service from Memphis to Nashville has been around awhile, offered by many different companies. A one-way Greyhound ticket costs $42 (on a recent search) and takes about three hours and 45 minutes. FlixBus and Megabus run the route, too. BizBus began offering the route last month in a service that promised comfortable seating, Wi-Fi, and an onboard attendant for about $50.        

“I have heard a great amount of support [for passenger rail] in Memphis and Nashville,” Cohen said during Tuesday’s hearing. “People in Memphis want to go to Nashville, the state capital, for all kinds of reasons. And people in Nashville have even more reasons to leave and come to Memphis. So, there’s this great synergy of energy there.”

One recent commenter on the Memphis subreddit spelled their desire for a Memphis-Nashville connector pretty plainly. 

“As someone who recently had to drive to Nashville with a massive case of diarrhea, I would’ve LOVED a mode of travel that had its own bathroom,” u/newcv wrote in the most upvoted comment about the issue. 

Tennessee takes small step toward bringing passenger rail trains to the state
by u/Tortylla in memphis

While state officials await TACIR’s report, they have signaled their support to the feds of passenger rail in Tennessee. Howard “Butch” Eley, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), has given that support in two letters to the FRA. 

“Addressing growing transportation congestion in Tennessee’s major urban areas and along major commuting and commerce routes throughout our state is of paramount importance to [TDOT] as we work to meet the state’s growth, prosperity, and mobility needs,” Eley wrote to the FRA in March. “We believe Tennessee is an important state in the national discussion of long-distance passenger rail service. 

“Between 2010 and 2020, Tennessee grew by nearly 600,000 people and our state continues to be a leader in job growth and economic development. Tennessee is also a major tourist destination and visitors to our state come to all parts of our state to experience our rich culture of music and entertainment as well as our natural and scenic beauty.”

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State Officials Plan Passenger Rail System to Connect Tennessee’s Big Four Cities

(Credit: Aris on Unsplash)

Imagine catching a train to Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Little Rock. 

Making that a reality is now in the planning stages, and transportation experts say passenger rail is getting its biggest push in decades. In Tennessee, officials have been working in the background to develop a plan to, maybe, connect the state’s largest cities: Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. A federal grant program could help planners here to connect Tennessee to other states via rail. 

In 2022, the Tennessee General Assembly asked the state-housed Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) to begin studying “the potential for passenger rail service linking the major cities in each of the Grand Divisions of the state.”

Lawmakers wanted to know the condition of existing rail tracks here and who owns them. They wanted to see what a network of rail lines between the cities would look like. How many state-sponsored rail projects have been done over the last decade? What are other states doing on passenger rail?

What are the costs? How many people might ride it? Who would operate it? What kind of property would need to be acquired? Where would passenger stations be built? What kind of equipment — engines, train cars, and the rest — would need to be purchased?

Lawmakers gave TACIR more than a year to answer most, if not all, of those questions. Since then, the commission has logged many hours of hearings and studies. Its report on passenger rail in Tennessee is due in July. 

TACIR’s research plan (the plan to plan the plan, if you will) said lawmakers “believe freedom of movement and an interconnected economy are important aspects of the quality of life for Tennesseans” and for economic opportunities.   

“Sponsors assert that when people can move freely between urban areas in Tennessee, it expands access to entertainment, shopping, and business venues …,” reads the report. “Additionally, sponsors feel it is important to explore feasible options to promote public mobility services as an amenity to bridge the gap between the traditional expectation of unfettered mobility and the modern constraints of transportation costs, congestion, negative environmental effects, and public health concerns.”

It seems Tennessee missed out on millions of dollars of federal funds to identify new rail routes, though. While TACIR is still working on a state plan, a key federal deadline passed.

Last May, the Biden Adminstration announced a $1.8 billion funding program to help states plan new passenger rail lines. This fund was approved by Congress in 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

For this, Transportation for America, a transportation advocacy group, called the money a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to boost rail across the country. 

“If Amtrak, states, interstate compacts, regional passenger rail authorities, and localities play their cards right, these historic funding levels coming from the [Federal Railroad Administration — FRA] and the renewed national mandate for Amtrak can result in a much improved and expanded national network of passenger rail,” the group said in a February blog post.

Applications for projects were due in March. A list of projects that get funded is due Saturday. No Tennessee project will be on the list, apparently. 

However, state officials have another potential funding source to plan for rail. On Monday, the FRA opened applications for a $5.8-million program to help states plan rail connections to other states. The deadline for this program is July 10th.   

“Interstate rail compacts will advance passenger rail service such as between cities like Memphis and Little Rock and will provide the mechanism and technical assistance for greater cooperation between states in advancing passenger rail,” Rep. Steven Cohen (D-Memphis) said in a statement Wednesday. “I was proud to have introduced the Interstate Rail Advancement Act and was at the White House when President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that included its provisions. I will continue to work to improve passenger rail service and continue to advocate a passenger rail line between Memphis and Nashville.”