Long before Amtrak secured billions in federal funding to dig the future Frederick Douglass Tunnel beneath Baltimore, the company made several potentially costly missteps, a government watchdog said this week.

Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General said the company in late 2022 initially assigned responsibility for the $6 billion rail expansion to a single person who lacked the resources to oversee a project of such magnitude. Amtrak officials told the investigators they should have moved faster in assembling a management structure to oversee the program as it was advancing through planning into construction.

The federally subsidized passenger rail company and its partners must now expedite aspects of the planning process before construction begins — or risk scheduling delays and significantly increased costs, according to the inspector general’s findings.

Amtrak representatives said this week they have made significant strides to address concerns in the report. They have hired a new assistant vice president to lead the program and added more than 100 professionals to the team since 2022.

“As always, we appreciate the OIG’s review of our important programs,” Amtrak spokesperson W. Kyle Anderson said in an email Wednesday. “As noted in the report, we’ve ramped up our capacity and matured our management capabilities to advance this important program and have already begun working to implement these further recommendations.”

The Frederick Douglass Tunnel is a hugely consequential project for Baltimore as well as Amtrak, which secured federal backing to fund the passenger rail service expansion to ease one of the worst bottlenecks along the Northeast Corridor by 2040. The tunnel would replace the more than 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel that runs beneath Bolton Hill and other neighborhoods.

The Frederick Douglass Tunnel is Amtrak’s largest infrastructure project to date and is funded in part with a mix of federal and state tax dollars. In February, Amtrak awarded a $1 billion-plus contract to Kiewit/J.F. Shea Joint Venture, a construction supergroup made up of two separate companies that will bore two new tunnel tubes underneath West Baltimore.

Buildings have already been demolished and the design for a new West Baltimore MARC Station has been released, despite a civil rights complaint filed by city residents who oppose the project. Some West Baltimore residents said they felt left in the dark about how construction would affect their communities.

Anderson said Amtrak has ramped up community engagement with a series of bimonthly community meetings where residents can learn more about the project and interact with project leadership.

“We will continue these efforts and incorporate lessons learned for all our projects as we safely, effectively and efficiently advance Amtrak’s capital program,” Anderson said.

Amtrak has said phase one of the tunnel project should be complete by 2035.

Baltimore Banner reporter Daniel Zawodny contributed to this story.