NJTRailfan wrote:At the very least money should be earmarked for the portion to East Stroudsburg. Beyond that PA can pay for the bill to Scranton and hammer out an operating agreement should they want to go to Scranton.
Enter the core problem of this route. It was built for trains going much farther west than scranton. This line has very few stations per mile of track, because the idea was to get through NJ as fast as possible. It was not built as a commuter line, but an intercity line. To put stations in woud mean huge earthmoving projects and road construction just to make space on the fill or cut.
This is why i said service to binghamton would make more sense than scranton, because you'd actually be serving a market that currently has to drive a ways to get to the port jervis line. In pennsylvania there are also efforts to get service restored from philadelphia north. If these two connected, it woud be a much bigger impact on travel options than one alone.
I don't see anything happening past andover till PA puts reviving its former passenger routes along the delaware river border counties as a priority.