Editorial: Passenger trains essential to plans for downtown multimodal terminal station | SaportaReport

To those who want to start writing an obituary on plans to bring passenger trains to the heart of downtown Atlanta — not so fast.

The naysayers were quick to declare the inevitable death to the long-planned Multimodal Passenger Terminal that’s to be built in “the Gulch” — an area that encompasses several blocks south of Five Points.

The Norfolk-Southern railroad sent a letter to the Georgia Department of Transportation in early May saying that because of anticipated growth in freight traffic, it does not expect to have sufficient capacity on its rail lines to accommodate passenger rail to serve the MMPT.

First of all, let me express my disappointment in the tone of the letter that Norfolk-Southern sent to the Georgia DOT. The letter makes it sound as though it has closed the door to passenger rail serving downtown Atlanta.

It is quite a departure for Norfolk-Southern, which has been negotiating with the state of Georgia for more than a decade about selling or leasing what it had said was a surplus rail line going from Atlanta to Lovejoy and on to Macon.

Actually that’s been part of the problem. The state has been dragging its feet for so long that it’s no wonder Norfolk-Southern has become frustrated.

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