It is an insult to current riders and potential passengers to have to ride up to DC in order to go to Florida
on Amtrak from New Orleans and points west (and to New Orleans and the west from Florida).
The rails between Jacksonville and New Orleans have been replaced since the hurricane in 2005 and the
service by freight train long since reorganized. What are the states of LA, MS, AL and FL doing to help
Amtrak service resume?
Well, 7deuceman, you've just hit on the problem. Those states are doing absolutely nothing and won't commit a dime.
When the states which host the services are supportive advocates of the service (as with Montana and North Dakota for the Empire Builder, or West Virginia for the Cardinal), Amtrak will really make great efforts to run the service. When the states show absolutely no interest, Amtrak seems to start losing interest as well.
Most of the surviving long-distance trains run through a lot of country where most of the politicians have been strongly supportive of those particular trains. Even on the Southwest Chief, the small towns along the Raton route rallied to save their route (though they haven't found the money) and mere rumors of the route moving caused Amarillo to start planning to rebuild its train station. The LSL has intense support from Illinois and New York, if not Ohio and Indiana; the Silver Service has intense support in Florida, and from North Carolina northward. Denver cares about its California Zephyr (especially since Ski Train stopped running), and so do the towns in Iowa, which have spent a lot on station improvements.
The most blatant exceptions to the rule of local support are Sunset East.... and Sunset West. Only Tucson and San Antonio, and perhaps Beaumont, seem to be strong supporters, with no support from *any* of the state governments along the route.
What can the general public do to spur a discussion in order to get Amtrak service going again NOL to
JAX?
If you can get the state government of any one of those four states to start advocating for the service, to the point of being willing to chip in some money for it, then I think the situation might become more hopeful. Barring that, if you can get enough of the city governments along the line to kick in some money, you might see some improvement. I think this would be true even if the governments offered only capital improvement funds, and left Amtrak to handle the operating costs.
Or if the US Senators or Congressmen/women for one of the states put federal money in as an earmark for the route, then you'd see it come back really quick.
But as long as the states and localities (and their Congressmen/women) won't put in any money at all, I think Amtrak isn't going to put in any money either.
This route in its current form unfortunately would almost certainly going to be a substantial detriment to Amtrak's bottom line, because it's substantially slower than the parallel highways; and it would perform even worse as a three-a-day route. It makes no sense for Amtrak to arrange to lose more money and tie up more equipment if the local politicians don't even care.
If the local politicians paid to signalize the line, speeding it up to highway speeds, and asked Amtrak to bring the route back as a daily route, I'm sure Amtrak would jump to bring it back.