In 2016, Donald Trump secured a whopping 62% of the Alabama vote during the presidential election.
In 2018, Kay Ivey won the Alabama gubernatorial race with 60% of the vote. The electorate sent a message that was “loud and clear,” she said.
But both outcomes pale in comparison to the public support Amtrak generally seems to generate in poll after poll on the Gulf Coast and beyond.
Could that polling become a factor when the Mobile City Council meets Tuesday to determine whether it wants to move forward on a resolution committing future resources for Amtrak’s return to the Port City? The council vote is expected to take place during its 10:30 a.m. meeting at Government Plaza.
“This project, from everything we’ve seen, has tremendous momentum and public support,” said Vince Creel, spokesman with the city of Biloxi, Miss., which is one of the train’s stops along the Gulf Coast passenger rail route.
“The reaction has been by and large, emphatically in support,” said Mobile City Council President Levon Manzie.
Among the public polls and surveys:
- In September 2018, a poll conducted in Alabama by advocates for the return of Amtrak to the Gulf Coast showed that out of 640 respondents, 96% supported having daily train service between Mobile and New Orleans. Over 90% of the respondents provided ZIP codes within the Mobile area.
-Of the 142 people participating in a long-term transportation priorities survey by the Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization, 73% said they favored Amtrak coming back to Mobile.
-Of the 365 votes cast on an AL.com Twitter poll, 86% said “Yes” to the return of Amtrak along the Gulf Coast.
Polling for Amtrak service is also overwhelmingly strong in Louisiana, as well as in far-away states like Kentucky and Colorado. In Colorado, 61% of voters said they would support a sales tax increase to pay for the service.
Not all polling shows widespread Amtrak support. An unscientific AL.com poll of 1,513 respondents revealed that 48.8% were supportive of the passenger train’s return to Mobile while 51.2% opposed.
“I have not had anyone come up to me and say that this is a bad idea other than Councilman (Joel) Daves,” said Wiley Blankenship, president & CEO with the Coastal Alabama Partnership and a representative on the 21-member Southern Rail Commission.
Indeed, Daves has long held a skeptical view about Amtrak’s return to the Gulf Coast and the amount of money he believes it will cost taxpayers.
Daves said he doesn’t believe the pro-Amtrak polling is complete. He also said that people he personally polls have a more negative view, particularly when they learn the costs involved.
“There is this emotional nostalgic wish to have passenger rail service back, which I understand,” said Daves. “But the people I spoke to and who have written to me and talked about it, when I give them the number by Amtrak’s own estimates …they tell me it’s not a good deal.”
Daves said his concern is based on Amtrak’s own ridership estimates, which the SRC has labeled as “extremely conservative.” Those include 35,000 riders annually spending $18.33 per round trip from Mobile to New Orleans. The route also includes four stops in coastal Mississippi: Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St. Louis.
Under the “extremely conservative” estimate, according to Daves’ calculations, the riders will pay $1 for every $10 spent by taxpayers.
“The only way to make this work is if you have this gigantic subsidy,” said Daves. “When I go through the numbers with people, they say it’s not a good idea. They say, ‘I’d like to see the train come back, but not at that price.’”
Blankenship said that Daves’ figures are “unfair.” He said that his estimates, based on the Amtrak figures, do not account “for the ability to generate additional revenues that is included in this train,” such as advertising and the economic benefits from increased tourism.
“People are going to come to Mobile,” said Blankenship. “They are going to ride the train to Mobile. They are going to spend money here.”
Blankenship and other project supporters point out that the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi have dedicated funds for the project, something that hasn’t happened in Alabama.
The mayors of Biloxi and New Orleans have also weighed in on the project, encouraging Mobile to jump aboard.
“The good folks in the great states of Mississippi and Louisiana are coming to the reality that this is a good deal for them,” said Blankenship. “I know our citizens do. I hope we are able to have a good, positive result.”
The vote Tuesday comes ahead of a crucial federal grant deadline on Wednesday for the operation of the Gulf Coast service for three years starting in 2023. Mobile, in essence, will not be obligated toward paying anything for the service for three years.
The resolution is also expected to include contingencies allowing for Mobile to opt-out if the costs to restart the service get too expensive, or if the twice daily trains cause economic damage to CSX-operated freight trains that run through the Port of Mobile. Much of those latter impacts will be determined through a six-month study between CSX and Amtrak.
Blankenship said the council’s vote will “send a message.”
“It sends a clear message that either we’re supportive of this … or if we kill this now, and we don’t get a positive outcome and miss the deadline, it could potentially come back and haunt us,” said Blankenship. “Then we decide later that we should’ve done this and it becomes ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda.’ To me, you live to fight another day.”
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February 04, 2020 at 05:40AM
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Amtrak popular in polling, but is that enough in Mobile? - AL.com
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