by njtmnrrbuff
I have said this before but I will say it again. While it would be nice to have commuter rail service to the Poconos from the New York area, especially to accommodate those many Pocono residents who work in the city as well as other towns in Morris and Essex County, don't get your hopes up anytime soon. Much closer to NYC, you have the Amtrak infrastructure woes as well as a lack of track capacity beneath the Hudson River, major hurdles that prevent any new extensions with improved rail service. All parts of the Gateway Project are very important right now before we can get the train, even to E. Stroudsburg, which would be a good terminus because of the right of way having too many curves north of there. As others mentioned, Scranton's economy isn't in good shape, even in Downtown. Wilkes-Barre is in worse shape. Basically, a lot of that area isn't in the best shape. The Stroudsburg and Scranton areas are two different metropolitan areas and they aren't next to each other. Both E. Stroudsburg and Scranton are almost 50 miles apart from each other as the crow flies and it's pretty much a straight shot on 380, after you get off of 80. The excursion trains take about 2 and 1/2 hours to travel between Scranton and the East Stroudsburg area nonstop. Now imagine how long it would take for a NJT train to traverse the Pocono Main making the stops that Lackawanna trains used to make on the Pocono Main-it would take forever. Even in moderate traffic from NYC to Scranton, the car or bus would outpace the train. A Midtown Direct Local running between NYP and Dover, especially on weekends takes just over an hour and a half so imagine how long it would take to get to PA on that. Scranton might be too far for New Jersey Transit to operate. If I worked for NJT or the State of PA, I would probably strongly suggest saying just have NJT go as far as E Stroudsburg.