Dcell wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2020 11:17 am
No offense to anyone, how did we get to steam train travel times? I’d like to focus on the here and now. Is the extension to Andover ever going to get completed? I ask because on NJTs schedule of upcoming contracts for the next 6 months, there is no project for rehabbing Roseville Tunnel or building a station and parking lot at Andover. That’s a fact because the list is posted on NJTs web site. Is this another unicorn project like West Trenton or MOM, hoped for and talked about it never to be realized? I’m hoping not but the rails installed in 2011-12 are rust coated and NJTs silence and inactivity raise doubts to me.
Assuming this is a genuine question and not an attempt to suddenly make this thread very active for no reason (seriously, why did this suddenly wake up over the past week or so?), the answer to your question was provided by NJT to another forum member and is quoted in full in
post 1534881.
photobug56 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2020 7:25 pm
The need, though, is quite real. Taking slow running buses is not fun. Not a good way to get from NYC (from the still scary PA Bus Terminal / homeless shelter) to the Poconos and back, or Scranton and back. And it's not just weekend passengers, people have long since commuted to NYC from Scranton or just east of Scranton. I respected Martz - having reserved seats on a decent bus helped, but I still dreaded the trip. Being stuck in a fairly narrow seat with nearby smokers, etc. not nice.
Sorry, nearby smokers? How many decades ago was this?
Unfortunately while you might think that the "need" is "real", the demographics show a different story. The population of Warren County has been dropping for the past two decades; it is the third-least-populous county in the entire state (losing out to just Cape May and Salem Counties). Scranton's population peaked in 1930 (!!!) and has been going down continuously since (even the "positive" 2018 census estimate puts it at just 1% above 20 years ago). The population of the Scranton—Wilkes-Barre—Hazleton, PA (MSA) is also down over the past two decades. The poverty rate is 20% higher than the rest of PA with a mean travel time to work of <23 minutes.
There is literally zero market for commuters to travel 2+ hours from this region and the population that exists is dwindling, not growing. Why on earth would NJT, or PA, sink any money into creating service there? Even Andover is dubious, but could at least be excused given that its population was actually continuously growing since 1930 and only started trending down after 2010. Guess when even that project started coming to a halt? Yeah…in the mid 2010s.
Paul Borokhov
Last RRPicArch addition –
NJ Railfan.
Moderator of the
NJT and
California commuter forums