The Florida Association of Counties voted unanimously last week to make the state joining the Southern Rail Commission one of its legislative priorities. Local officials believe joining the commission could be one of the first steps to bringing passenger rail back to North Florida.
The Panhandle has lacked passenger rail service since September 2005, when track damage from Hurricane Katrina led to the termination of Amtrak’s Sunset Limited route, which ran from New Orleans to Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Orlando.
Okaloosa County Commission Chair Paul Mixon said it’s time to restart that line.
“Coming across North Florida with passenger rail brings enhanced life back to some areas that used to have train stops that people were able to get off and get on in. And I think the vibrancy that we get with the economic impact of that will be incredibly helpful across some of those smaller communities in North Florida that were really originated around these tracks, because people could come and go utilizing that resource,” he said.
Mixon was one of the officials that wanted to prioritize joining the Southern Rail Commission. The SRC, consisting of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, aims to enhance and expand passenger rail service throughout the South, and recently helped secure $178 million in federal grant funding to help restore passenger rail from New Orleans to Mobile Alabama, which has also not run since Katrina. Officials hope to restart that line beginning service again in 2025.
Mixon said the unanimous support across party lines from county commissioners signals how important improving passenger rail access in Florida is.
“So when we find items that we can unite together as 67 counties and say, Hey, this is important to the local people of Florida. This is important to who we are and who we want to become. This item has been picked up that way to be important enough to get the attention and to get the unanimous vote to say, let's as counties, let's move forward now,” he said.
Joining the SRC would cost Florida $70,000 annually and would bring the state to the table in pooling resources with other states in railroad projects.