Lackawanna Cutoff Passenger Service Restoration

The RVL route does not serve Morristown or Montclair however, except for via a circuitous routing. I'd think both would be useful.

ryanov wrote:The RVL route does not serve Morristown or Montclair however, except for via a circuitous routing. I'd think both would be useful.

That was my thought. They can connect at Dover or take the Boonton line. The NS Lehigh line is busy in morning. I don't know if they'd like to be waiting, especially 21M. Either way, given today's financial climate,we aren't going to see either option exercised any time soon.......if ever.

How much would it cost to extend this line to binghamton? Binghamton to ithaca or elmira? I feel this as a far more useful route than proposed route to scranton alone.

Till a deal can be worked out to increase estimated rider numbers & station stops i see no future in this line, and thats coming from a huge advocate of expansion of passenger service. This was an express route to buffalo, not a commuter line serving nyc & NJ waterfront areas.

The same problem with extending service to Scranton exists with extending service to Binghamton only more so: $$$. I don't know that there is an estimate of what a Binghamton extension would cost but I would guess it would push the cost of the project from the current estimate of about $600 to $700 million to over $1 billion.

Six years ago NY Senators Clinton and Schumer and PA senators Casey and Spector did get Amtrak to do a formal study on extending service to Binghamton. Amtrak is still interested in operating a Binghamton service and would also be amenable to operating the New York/Hoboken-Scranton service as well. The problem is, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would have to agree to subsidize the New York/Hoboken-Scranton service so most people agree, it would probably make as much sense to have NJ Transit operate it. Below I'm pasting an excerpt from an article that appeared last year in a Scranton newspaper, the Times-Tribune.

Amtrak studied extending its service from Syracuse, N.Y., through Binghamton, N.Y., down to Scranton and across New Jersey, but never went ahead with anything...Joe McHugh, vice president for government affairs and corporate communications for Amtrak... said Amtrak is interested in extending its service through Scranton, but has no money for adding tracks on railroad right of ways it does not own and it does not own any of the proposed Scranton-to-New York City route. The federally owned passenger railroad would be willing to operate the Scranton-to-New York City service, something it does in several other states, but only if Pennsylvania and/or New Jersey agree to cover any annual financial losses, he said. Link

Again this year Amtrak was asked if they are still interested in operating the New York/Hoboken-Scranton service and they said yes. Why wouldn't they be interested, that's what they do: operate passenger trains. Below is an excerpt from the Scranton Times-Leader article I linked on the previous page.

Pennsylvania congressman Matt Cartwright [said] Amtrak executives also were interested in the project as a possibility to expand the federally funded railroad’s markets. Amtrak operates the Keystone Service commuter line between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. “If a decision was made to move forward with such an initiative, Amtrak would be interested in operating the [Scranton] service,” spokesman Craig Schulz said. But NJ Transit likely would be the operator, even in Pennsylvania. Link

It's about money. It's always about money. I think the history here is, it might be possible to get Amtrak to operate a New York/Hoboken-Scranton-Binghamton service but the initiative will have to come from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania put a lot of money into the Keystone Corridor, and continues to do so, so it is conceivable they could eventually decide to fund a Scranton service but I would think it'll probably be many years before we see anything happen.

well nothing happened since 1979 so far and no Amtrak won't open a second corridor, congress would hand them their ass cause even to them its all about money.
so far we got 1/2 mile of new track with a shitload of ALP-44's parked and no progress.

I know someone who is involved with PennDot in the Philadelphia area. PennDOT is funding a lot of improvements for some of the local passenger stations along the Keystone Corridor that are also served by Septa. The local ridership has really grown at several of the stations -- I think one of the busiest now is Exton -- and he said PennDOT is aware of the fairness issue. That they have funded a lot of passenger rail improvements in Southeastern Pennsylvania and have done virtually nothing in Northeastern Pennsylvania. (Although they have made investments in privately-operated rail freight service in NE Pennsylvania.) So in fairness, they should be willing to make some investment in the Scranton service -- and they are -- they just can't find a source of funding.

The problem is Pennsylvania is a conservative state. It's hard to get big projects through the legislature. There's a lot of resistance. I think one of the most difficult issues is the need, once the line was operating, to provide an annual operating subsidy. That part of it turns off a lot of legislators. If you build it and, once it starts operating, it would pay for itself, I think we'd be a lot closer to seeing this happen. Only that's not reality. Like most of these services, it WON'T pay for itself. But no one's giving up.

U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright turns 52 years old in a couple of months and acknowledges he could spend the rest of his working life on a project that soaked up plenty of Larry Malski's life. The way the first-term congressman tells it, re-establishing a passenger train between Scranton and New York City is his Holy Grail, except that Mr. Cartwright sees himself actually succeeding. "Putting our area back into the northeast passenger rail corridor of this country is a hugely important long-term goal of mine," Mr. Cartwright said. "It may take my entire time in Congress to achieve that. But I'm here to tell you, I'm a stubborn man. And if there is a path to victory on this issue, I will find it."

Mr. Malski, executive director of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, was there when the last passenger train rolled through Scranton in 1970. He turns 61 this week and has watched the idea travel from local concept in the early 1990s through study after study to partial reality. Link

DutchRailnut wrote:well nothing happened since 1979 so far and no Amtrak won't open a second corridor, congress would hand them their ass cause even to them its all about money.
so far we got 1/2 mile of new track with a * of ALP-44's parked and no progress.

I was wondering WHY they didn't want the route 35 years ago ? Had to be reasons besides money. They could have gotten it a heck of a lot cheaper then than now.

First of all, as referenced in the news article, the last passenger service over the route was in January 1970 when Erie Lackawanna discontinued the final two trains. In 1979, when Conrail wanted to take the route out of service, there were people who wanted Amtrak to take the line and resume passenger service. Amtrak ran an inspection train. Bill Shepherd (from EL, whom some of you know or know of) was on the train, part way on the locomotive. The problem was the same as now: no money.

In 1979 Amtrak was in the midst of being forced to cut routes by the Carter Administration. The Administration was willing to support Amtrak, but they wanted a scaled-down version. Amtrak wasn't going to be able to get money to add a new route. NJ Transit didn't exist yet as an operating railroad. There was no one else to operate a passenger service. A private group was then interested in acquiring the Cutoff to operate freight service. It would be an intermodal service with a terminal in Port Morris. Trailers would move by road between Port Morris and the New York City Metropolitan Area. Conrail wasn't too enthusiastic about it and the group couldn't get financing. (Some of the people involved wound up involved with the Susquehanna stack train service that started a year or two later, using the Port Jervis line.)

That was pretty much it. I believe Conrail sold off part of the line to a private investor, years later New Jersey bought it back. In the meantime, there was a small group of people in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who never gave up advocating for a return of passenger service. Some of them work for NJ Transit. Some of them work for the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, which is a state agency. The Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority has been able to keep a good portion of the line in Pennsylvania in service, operated for freight service by the Delaware Lackawanna Railroad.

Gradually the advocates WERE able to get people in government interested. By 2000 NJ Transit and NJDOT supported a resumption of service and began buying back the parts of the line that Conrail had sold. NJ Transit in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority came up with a formal plan, including an EIS, to resume passenger service. The problem was money, getting money budgeted to build it. In 2009 the Senators from New York and Pennsylvania tried to get Amtrak to take over the project. Amtrak was willing, but Amtrak couldn't finance it either. Around the same time Pennsylvania tried to get a grant through the High Speed Rail program but they were turned down.

That's where we are now.

The portion between Scranton and Binghamton is operated by CP and is quite active, so infrastructure on that segment wouldn't be as much of a problem. The line is mostly modern welded rail and in great shape with active maintenance. There probably wouldn't be much need for intermediate stops, but the problem would be coordinating with the freight traffic.

As long as we're on the subject, I'd bet that the only intermediate stops worthy of the time and investment would be Hallstead and possibly one in Clark's Summit. There's really very few population centers anywhere along the line aside from those locations. Maybe...maybe a stop could be justified where the old Montrose Branch left the main line.

But this is getting way ahead of reality. We can't even slap down an 8 mile extension of very limited value without years and years of delays.

The railroad must be built with an eye toward protecting endangered species and our water supply. Nothing gets "slapped down" thankfully without environmental reviews and public comment, and we all benefit.

My intent was not to insult the environmental review process. I think I am well to the left of the mainstream when it comes to environmentalism and fully support environmental impact studies, though I think most people (no matter thier political leanings or views on environmentalism) can agree that the process is sometimes hijacked by interest groups and is often times quite convoluted. Either way, the process is (without question) poorly understood, is even more poorly defined and defended by those of us who support it, is often maligned, and is popularly viewed, whether rightly or wrongly, as standing in the way of progress.

I was attempting to state that any discussion concerning service to Scranton, Binghamton, and beyond is premature as we have yet to finalize (or slap down) a short, 8 mile, questionably beneficial segment of rail line in Jersey.

Sorry if my wording was ambiguous.

Dcell wrote:The railroad must be built with an eye toward protecting endangered species and our water supply. Nothing gets "slapped down" thankfully without environmental reviews and public comment, and we all benefit.

Therein is where excess costs are incurred. Only tree-hugging NIMBYs benefit.Sorry, I am not PC and if that means getting tossed off here, so be it.

CNJ Fan 4evr wrote:

Dcell wrote:The railroad must be built with an eye toward protecting endangered species and our water supply. Nothing gets "slapped down" thankfully without environmental reviews and public comment, and we all benefit.

Therein is where excess costs are incurred. Only tree-hugging NIMBYs benefit.Sorry, I am not PC and if that means getting tossed off here, so be it.

If you owned the property next to the right of way about 90% of the EP Reg. would not be used.

Dcell wrote:The railroad must be built with an eye toward protecting endangered species and our water supply. Nothing gets "slapped down" thankfully without environmental reviews and public comment, and we all benefit.

The railroad was built decades ago. A rebuild would not hurt the environment it runs through, bottom line; it may even enhance environmental protection even as currently "defined". This is merely government obstruction to raise costs for the benefit of special interests. The environmental impact statement with respect to the desert tortoise, needed for the restoration of Amtrak service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, found that the no-build situation would actually be a detriment to said tortoise (the same animal that the Bureau of Land Management is now culling because there are too many of them in their arbitrary estimation). There is even less real concern when it comes to the Cutoff.