Connect the airports by train

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist

The dream of a passenger rail line connecting Baton Rouge and New Orleans came one step closer last month when the state Department of Transportation and Development received $500,000 from the feds (for project planning purposes) on top of the $20 million won last year. Moreover, pending a plan which includes all of the passenger stops on the potential trade route, Louisiana stands well positioned to receive a $200 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration in 2024.

But that’s the rub. No consensus exists whether the train route should culminate in predominantly African-American northern East Baton Rouge Parish, extending as far as the Capitol City’s Airport. Such a link would substantially increase the overall initial cost of the train’s operation, but defenders of the idea worry that if the initial plan excludes such a northern terminus, their predominantly minority constituents will never have the opportunity for easy inter-regional transit.

In late November, the Baton Rouge Metro Council punted on signing an agreement with the state transportation department for maintenance of the rail’s Baton Rouge stops. One of the justifications for the delay came when Council Member Cleve Dunn Jr. advocated for a station near the Baton Rouge Metro Airport, for which he serves as a commissioner. Dunn noted that 60 percent of the BR’s airport’s customer base already tends to fly out of New Orleans’ Armstrong Airport, a figure which could skyrocket if the existing rail proposal materializes without a stop at the Baton Rouge airport. That and the cost of maintaining the various train stations could prove too onerous for the city-parish.

“So we’re going to pay to upkeep and maintain this facility while it kills our airport. I cannot support that,” Dunn said. State officials countered that a northern East Baton Rouge stop could be included in future expansions of the rail line, leading Dunn to retort, “If you don’t start this train in north Baton Rouge to the underserved community, it’ll never get there…We don’t want to wait until the next phase. We want to be a part of the first phase.”

Fellow Council Member Chauna Banks made the point more specifically, “What you’re dealing with is a segregation of people in the south that will have a playground of transportation, however further leaving out persons that live in the northern part of the parish.”

Forget for a moment that connecting Armstrong international Airport and Baton Rouge Metro Airport by rail creates an intermodal transportation resource which can only benefit Louisiana’s tourism and passenger services. Airports linked by rail can synergize their flight potential for travelers. More importantly, a rail line which boasts of airports to either end becomes a marketing tool for business in-migration.

Likewise, placing the terminus of a public transport rail line within a predominantly Caucasian and affluent community in the southern part of East Baton Rouge Parish, the people most likely to get in the car and drive to New Orleans makes little sense from both a social justice and a ridership perspective.

The more impoverished, predominantly minority residents of northern East Baton Rouge Parish are the ones more likely to take the train to its final destination in New Orleans’ Central Business District, near the University Medical Center or the state’s highest court. These passengers are most likely to board the train to travel to Armstrong Airport, lacking easy automotive transport. Some might argue to exclude north EBR from the initial design borders on instilling failure before the line is even constructed.

As some EBR Metro Council members have noted, with stops currently planned at 14th and Government streets and Baton Rouge Health District (in the Bluebonnet Boulevard, Essen Lane and Perkins Road area), the distance northern East Baton Rouge Parish residents would have to travel to reach those stations (miles) makes them impractical embarkation points for most poorer citizens of the Capitol City. With social as well as economic developmental justifications for a stop at Baton Rouge Airport, the EBR Metro Council and La. state officials have an easy justification to extend the route – on tracks that, after all, already exist.

This article originally published in the December 18, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.