The long-stalled restart of Gulf Coast passenger rail is “in Amtrak’s court,” according to Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson.

The mayor, on Wednesday, said the city is waiting on a cost estimate from the national passenger rail operator on how much money is expected from City to support the operational costs.

In addition, the mayor said, negotiations continue on a lease for a train stop along the passenger rail route.

“We are working with the Amtrak attorneys now and making sure (there is) ingress and egress right now (into the train stop’s location) but the main questions remains, what is the expectation for the City of Mobile to contribute operating costs going forward?” Stimpson said after his annual State of the City remarks in which he spoke about various projects and quality-of-life attractions for the coming year, but did not mention the return of Amtrak.

“That is in Amtrak’s court to tell us that,” Stimpson said. “Then the city council will look and decide whether that is worth the investment. Until they give us that number, all we can do is talk about the site itself.”

Amtrak, in a statement to AL.com, said, “We are working with the city and are in discussions on both matters, the Mobile station land use agreement and providing additional detail on the shared costs of the Gulf Coast service.”

Finalizing the issues in Mobile are considered the last steps needed before for capital projects can begin to support the restoration of passenger rail service between Mobile and New Orleans, nearly 19 years after it was halted following Hurricane Katrina.

Amtrak and passenger rail advocates, like the Southern Rail Commission, are pitching a twice-daily service between the two cities with four stops in Mississippi — Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula.

The last time Amtrak pitched an operational cost to Mobile was in 2020, coming in at $3 million over three years to support the route’s service from Mobile to New Orleans with four stops in Mississippi. The Mobile City Council voted 6-1 to support the project at that time. That agreement, however, is out-of-date and needs to be reconsidered before a completely different council – of the seven members who voted in 2020, only three remain on the council.

At least two council members — Joel Daves and Ben Reynolds — have expressed doubts about supporting the project. Assuming both vote against a revised agreement, all the other council members would have to vote in favor of it. It takes a five-vote supermajority to pass almost any city expenditure.

The project has been in development for years, and its fate generated national attention two years ago as a lawsuit between Amtrak and the freight rail operators along the route — CSX and Norfolk Southern — went before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. A confidential settlement agreement was reached in November 2022, and passenger rail service was supposed to resume by now.

Also a party to that case is the Alabama State Port Authority. The Port, before the settlement was announced, were vocal opponents to Amtrak resuming operations along the Gulf Coast line alleging that the passenger trains would disrupt freight business.

The project has long had political support in Louisiana and Mississippi, but not in Alabama. As city spokeswoman Candace Cooksey said last month, the ongoing negotiations between Mobile and Amtrak are unique because they include a municipal government and not a state government in talks over a financial contribution. The state of Alabama has not contributed monetary support for the project, and it has not been supported by the current or past governors.

Amtrak officials, in 2021, said support from the state of Alabama was not needed for the Gulf Coast project to operate.

Passenger rail advocates around the country, who testified during the STB hearing, have expressed frustrations in recent months over the stalled project. Following the agreement, rail advocates said they were prepared for the Amtrak service to resume last fall, or before the end of 2023. No new timeline has been provided, other than sometime later in the fall.

Mobile city officials say part of the delay had to do with a wait before the official announcement of a $178.8 million federal grant dedicated toward infrastructure improvements. That grant was not official awarded until late September.

Jim Mathews, president and CEO with Rail Passengers Association – a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that advocates for passenger rail in regions nationwide — told AL.com last month that all parties new the grant was coming and that work in Mobile and elsewhere could have moved forward months ago.

Cooksey said last month that Mobile is dealing with some “very prescribed steps in the design and engineering” of the rail improvements that need to be completed, and not just in Mobile. She said there are environmental regulatory steps that also need to be finalized.

Mathews suggested there is skepticism about whether the project is intentionally being slowed by those who vocalized opposition before the STB. And that included almost every speaker from Alabama, who expressed concerns that the twice-daily Amtrak service – without infrastructure improvements to the rail line – would harm Mobile’s major economic engine.

Passenger rail advocates, at the time, claimed that Mobile and Alabama officials were being misled about the project by the freight operators.