WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department is taking Norfolk Southern to court, alleging the railroad’s delays of Amtrak’s Crescent violate federal law.
The civil complaint, filed Tuesday, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges NS regularly fails to give the Crescent preference over freight trains as required by statute, leading to delays that harm and inconvenience passengers, impede passenger rail transportation, and negatively affect Amtrak’s financial performance. The New York-Atlanta Crescent operates on NS-owned or managed track between Alexandria, Va., and New Orleans, including the state-owned North Carolina Railroad segment between Danville and Greensboro, N.C. In all, NS controls 1,140 of the Crescent’s 1,377 route-miles.
In 2023, the Justice Department said, only 24% of southbound Crescent trains traveling on NS-controlled track arrived at their destination on time.
The 16-page complaint includes several examples of significant delays, including a Nov. 25, 2022, instance when the northbound Crescent was held in a siding for 1 hour, 11 minutes to allow three freight trains to pass, and a Feb. 17, 2024 case where the northbound train was delayed for 2 hours when it was sent into sidings on three occasions for meets with four freight trains. It notes that because NS regularly operates freight trains too long for the sidings on the route, the Crescent is frequently delayed when it is forced to follow slower-moving freights.
“Americans should not experience travel delays because rail carriers break the law,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in the press release announcing the suit. “Our action today alleges that Norfolk Southern violates federal law by failing to give the legally required preference to Amtrak passenger trains over freight trains. The Justice Department will continue to protect travelers by ensuring that rail carriers fulfill their legal obligations.”
Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a statement that the company appreciates that the Justice Department “is taking steps to enforce in federal court the long-standing federal law requiring that intercity passenger trains receive preference over freight traffic when we operate over shared rail lines. This critical action by the DOJ will help ensure our customers arrive at their destinations on time.”
Norfolk Southern spokesman Tom Crosson said in a statement to Trains News Wire that the railroad is “committed to complying with the law, working together, and honoring our commitments. Over the past several months with Amtrak, we have focused on the on-time performance of the Crescent passenger train. We hope to resolve these concerns and continue to make progress together.”
The decision by the Justice Department to act is in marked contrast to the other ongoing action regarding on-time performance for an Amtrak long-distance train. In that case, regarding the New Orleans-Los Angeles Sunset Limited, Amtrak requested an investigation by the Surface Transportation Board into the train’s on-time performance in December 2022, a first-of-its-kind complaint under a provision of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 [see “Amtrak asks federal regulators to investigate …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 9, 2022]. But that complaint is moving at an extremely slow pace, at least in part because the STB is essentially inventing its procedures for dealing with such matters. As of July 24, there have been some 119 filings and decisions in that case, and the railroads involved have received a number of deadline extensions in the board’s fact-finding process.
The Justice Department has taken a similar action before, but it has been some time: In December 1979, it sued Southern Pacific for favoring freights over the Sunset Limited in a 362-mile stretch between New Orleans and Houston. While that case went to trial, a consent order issued after the suit was filed led to enough improvement in performance that the case was eventually dismissed without a final ruling by the judge [see “The battle of the Sunset Limited,” Trains Magazine, March 1998].
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