The United States filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that the Norfolk Southern Corporation and Norfolk Southern Railway Company delayed passenger trains on Amtrak’s Crescent Route in violation of federal law.
The Crescent Route, operated by Amtrak, is a 1,377-mile passenger line that stops at 33 towns and cities between New York City and New Orleans. Norfolk Southern controls 1,140 miles of rail line on the Crescent Route and handles dispatching for all trains along that segment, including freight trains it operates.
Approximately 266,000 passengers traveled on the Crescent Route during 2023. That year, only 24% of southbound Crescent Route passenger trains traveling on Norfolk Southern-controlled track arrived at their destination on time.
According to the complaint filed on July 30, federal law requires Norfolk Southern to give Amtrak passenger trains preference over freight trains. The complaint alleges that Norfolk Southern regularly fails to do so, leading to widespread delays that harm and inconvenience train passengers, negatively affect Amtrak’s financial performance, and impede passenger rail transportation. The complaint includes several examples of how Norfolk Southern’s failure to give passenger trains the required preference causes many of these delays.
For example, on Jan. 1, an Amtrak train 10 miles outside of New Orleans was delayed for nearly an hour when Norfolk Southern dispatchers required it to travel behind a slow-moving freight train. On another occasion, Norfolk Southern dispatchers forced an Amtrak train to wait over an hour while allowing three separate freight trains to pass.
