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Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025

Laying Tracks For the Future

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Mayor meets with the Louisiana Municipal Association

Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux travelled to Lake Charles last week to attend the Louisiana Municipal Association meetings.

The LMA is a statewide organization that advocates for its 303 member municipalities and two parishes to strengthen community development, according to its website. Arceneaux believes it is important to participate in the organization.

“I go to the district meetings and the state convention to let people know that I care about them, and their issues are important to me,” he said. “And I hope our issues are important to them.”

For Arceneaux, the LMA is all about connections.

“I try really hard with LMA to build relationships,” Arceneaux said last week before the event. “Very few big-city mayors participate in LMA, and it’s kind of noticeable to smaller (town) mayors. But LMA is a pretty effective voice for local government in the Legislature. I feel like if I am going to call on LMA leadership to help us with any particular issues, I don’t need to just show up during the (legislative) session.”

The LMA leadership includes Executive Director Barney Arceneaux. And while Barney and Tom are not related, Tom does make the most of his opportunities with Barney.

“Barney’s a very friendly guy,” the mayor said. “I try to get there and make sure I stay in touch and stay in a good relationship with Barney. He has been helpful on a couple of legislative issues, and the LMA lobbyists have been helpful, too.”

Arceneaux said the mayors of larger cities tend to participate more with another organization — the Louisiana Conference of Mayors. He said those meetings typically take place via Zoom, as opposed to the in-person LMA meetings. But both serve their purpose.

“There are differences in the perspectives and governance of smaller towns versus the larger cities,” Arceneaux said.

Regardless of the size of a town or a city, it is often common concerns that bring mayors together, he added.

“I have some relationships with people like (Mayor) Friday Ellis of Monroe and (Mayor) Ronnie Walker of Ruston that have to do with issues we have addressed together,” he said.

One of those issues is the prospect of passenger rail service across north Louisiana. Arceneaux has worked with Ellis and Walker to make that a reality.

“We’re continuing to work on grants for that,” Arceneaux said. “That’s how I became friends with Ronnie and with Friday.”

The mayor said that the project is advancing, with some potentially good news on the horizon.

“I think I saw that Union Pacific is about to merge with another carrier to have a global east-west deal,” he said. “I don’t know what impact that will have. When Canadian Pacific merged with Kansas City Southern, we got a little benefit, because Canadian Pacific is much more positive about passenger rail than KCS was.”

That is important because passenger rail has to share the track with freight carriers.

“When you share the track, freight has priority,” Arceneaux said. “It is something you have to pay attention to. Historically, Union Pacific has been a little less cooperative with passenger rail. I will be curious to see if this merger happens, what impact it might have.”

While Arceneaux and other local officials wait to see what happens with the rail carriers, they continue to advance their plans.

“We still have to get the route,” Arceneaux explained. “What we’d really like to do from Shreveport is go to Marshall. That’s a Union Pacific line. The KCS line goes up to Jefferson. They both end up in Dallas, but you have a better connection if you go to Marshall.”

Arceneaux said he is glad to see the process moving, even if it is slow.

“Railroads do not move at the speed of business,” he said. “Amtrak does not move at the speed of business. So we are continuing to plod ahead. We seem to be making the next step every time.”

He added that it continues to be a joint effort with all the cities and parties involved.

“We kind of help each other out,” he said.

“We make sure all decisions flow out of the Southern Rail Commission so we don’t end up with parochial concerns that would otherwise get in the way of the project.”

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