Lackawanna Cutoff Passenger Service Restoration

cjvrr wrote:uzplayer,

Even if a handfull of "large organizations" move to Scranton how many commuters would that add? If anything moving those businesses to Scranton would help the local economy in that region but wouldn't add anything to the Scranton to NJ or NYC commuter stream.

As far as NYS&W service. I am for commuter service on that line but not for ski trains. I was specifically referencing ski trains service and that alone is no justification for train service. I however disagree that this service should go to Vernon or even Sparta. End the service in Newfoundland or Stockholm. Freight train service takes 1 hour between Vernon and Stockholm with the current 40mph speed limit. With the curves and grades on the line I doubt you could have passenger train speeds much higher than that. It only takes 15-20 minutes to drive between Vernon and Stockholm.

And before anyone brings up the point that Vernon and points north and west are growing, the Highlands Act pretty much killed any new development within the Highlands Preservation Area. So the population (i.e. traffic) will grow much more slowly in those areas. Monmouth and Ocean Counties have no such restrictions.

You would be very surprised just how many commuters that would add to the line. People are placed at companies in Scranton and immediately get bored, wanting to move out because:

1. Scranton is a boring place to live (no insult intended to the many Pennsy people in this thread)
2. No access to New York City and other things unless you take a long car ride.

You would be very surprised at what train service of that kind can do in those type of situations. Plus you should look at the Scranton Chamber of Commerce Website, as there's already a rather large contingency of mid to large size organizations there already.

Regarding train service to Vernon, you are very misinformed:

1. The highlands act only applies to land where no development has occured. In other words, if a portion of a mountain has never been bulldozed, developers can't bulldoze it. If train tracks were put down through a segment of area, they can build there.
2. The redevelopment act (which I believe is still pending) cancels out a chunk of area designated under the Highlands Act including the area surrounding hidden valley and other areas within the town.
3. Obviously you haven't been to Vernon in a long time. If so, you would see just how many out of state plates (New York especially) there are speeding their way into the parking lots at Mountain Creek and Hidden Valley — all most likely from New York City. And 15 minutes between Vernon and Stockholm? Sure! If you leave your house at 5 am.

I said it was a quick read...I did not see the appendum. Still, there is not direct question concerning people abandoning their cars in favor of a train. And the increasing costs of fuel and the vehicles themselves has to be brought into the equation someplace. And it still uses statistics plugged in from NJT's outdate data base. But, I see and understand what this study says. And again, I am looking at it from a further distance standpoint than just a commuter service. Since NJ air cannot take anymore pollution, and that even a half hour delay once a week in any part of a commute is problematical for many, and there really is no more practical room to be appropriated for more highway space, then long term planning has to be put into an alternative mode of transportation. And until something really revolutionary and economical comes along, that has to be the train. Can you show me how $350 million invested in Interstates 80 and 78 or routes 206 and 23 will produce the same level of pollution and congestion abatement, be less physically intrusive, and accomodate as many more people as the train while being capable of further growth, and allowing for outside source input (passengers, users) from other places to pay for it?

cjvrr wrote:Well, I have got the answer everyone feared

No you don't. You have an "answer" from a biased study done for the benefit of a toll-collecting company. You're digging your hole even deeper.

Year 2025 NJ Transit forecasts for bus and train ridership were used to estimate the number of bus riders who would use the Lackawanna Cut-Off train

That's junk science and faulty math. Proves absolutely nothing, and certainly does not predict how many people would ride the train on any individual line. Of course, it's not surprising that the DRJTBC would be anxious to put out biased figures like this, no matter how faulty…

You and Irish have yet to sway me to think passenger rail service west of the Water Gap is needed, especially 20-30 years from now

Wanna be swayed? Move here.

You'd rather put your faith in studies that aren't even done by NJT nor for the benefit of commuters, but solely for the benefit of the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. I don't even know why you're participating in this thread, with all due respect.

Don't be like that, Irish. I have read and thought and looked for and found answers that I otherwise wouldn't have found and thought through if it weren't for Chris's input here. His material cannot be dismissed out of hand despite the bias if only because you have now met the thinking of the opposition and what they are using for ammunition. By documenting his position in an intellegent and honest presentation, its bias aside, is a lot better than debating someone shooting from the hip with no back up but an individual's thoughts. He has drawn his conclusions from his sources which he has been trained to interpret and accept. Conversley, I have drawn conclusions from his sources based on my sources and ways of interpreting. This discussion has been better than beating heads against a wall of mere emotional dissertations.

uzplayer,

Bringing large corporations to Scranton is great. It allows people that live in the area to work in the area and not clog roads to jobs in NJ or NYC. I just don't see how moving a handful of large corporations to Scranton would increase ridership on Scranton to NYC service. Just because the area is boring doesn't mean a person is going to take a 2-1/2 hour train ride to NYC for some fun and another 2-1/2 hour ride to get home.

Are these corporations centrally located near a possible train station. If they are you might have some type of need for local commuter service. My guess is that they are spaced all up and down the valley and you need to drive to get to them from any rail hub. Then it may just be easier to take you car door to door, (one seat ride) instead of taking 3 different seats to get there.

This should be in the other forum but the Highlands Act does impact development near the Cutoff project too;

Regarding train service to Vernon, you are very misinformed:

1. The highlands act only applies to land where **no development** has occured. In other words, if a portion of a mountain has never been bulldozed, developers can't bulldoze it. If train tracks were put down through a segment of area, they can build there.

2. The redevelopment act (which I believe is still pending) cancels out a chunk of area designated under the highlands act including the area surrounding hidden valley and other areas within the town.

3. Obviously you haven't been to Vernon in a long time. If so, you would see just how many out of state plates (New York especially) there are speeding their way into the parking lots at Mountain Creek and Hidden Valley -- all most likely from New York City. And 15 minutes between Vernon and Stockholm? Sure! If you leave your house at 5AM.

1. As far as the Highland Act. How many applications for Highlands Applicability Determination have you filled out? I have done four now in the last year. I am by no means an expert at it. You need to file for an "exemption" and pay a fee even to repave a roadway. If you are in the Preservation area and you bought your residential property after 2005 you can not cover more than 6% of the lot with impervious area. You can not disturb more than a 1/4 acre of property. You can not have a septic system installed on a new lot of less than 85 acres without obtaining Highlands approval. If the addition to your home is valued at over $100,000 you need to get Highland's approval. Construction of new structures on new lots is severely restricted. All of the restrictions have not been put in place yet. The Highlands Council members are fighting over how severe the restrictions will be. The 300' restriction from any waterway would further limit development, some members want it to be 1,000'. So it does not apply only to Virgin properties as most people, including yourself, assume.

2. The center of Vernon and the ski areas are in the Highlands Planning Area and the Town can either "opt in" or out of placing the same requirements on developers that the Persevation Area has. The redevelopment area for most towns had been set when the act was adopted. Local building codes still limit the amount and type of development that can occur. You aren't going to get a massive population explosion in Vernon, there just isn't enough viable land left for that.

3. What time would you have to leave Vernon to make it to a train in Vernon that will get to your place of employment on time? The train will easily take an hour between Vernon and Stockholm. Even if it takes 1/2 hour to drive between those points you still win by taking the car. While I agree that the new operators are expanding Mountain Creek (the old Vernon Valley ski area) still hasn't reached a point to warrant dedicated ski train service. The roadway between those points will be improved at some point regardless of train service.

To tie this in to the Cutoff topic, ski trains on any rail line are a novelty not a reason to spend $350,000,000.

Chris

Who paid for this study?? the study is biased to begin with! and besides studies are obsolete the min they're released..this thread is getting old..the cutoff whether cjvrr likes it or not will be coming back soon..lets hope that study and others are saved so we can prove them wrong when people do ride the trains..this stuff is archived right boys?
i've got the personality that will remember "these posts" and go back later and repost..ha..look at all of the naysayers of the riverline in south jersey..nuff said..

northjerseybuff wrote:Who paid for this study?? the study is biased to begin with! and besides studies are obsolete the min they're released..this thread is getting old..the cutoff whether cjvrr likes it or not will be coming back soon..lets hope that study and others are saved so we can prove them wrong when people do ride the trains..this stuff is archived right boys?
i've got the personality that will remember "these posts" and go back later and repost..ha..look at all of the naysayers of the riverline in south jersey..nuff said..

Yeah, what he said... Yeah, yeah yeah... Thats the ticket... Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk...

Who paid for this study??

I mentioned whom in one of my above posts. The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. IOW, one of the Cutoff project's worst enemies.

Don't be like that, Irish. I have read and thought and looked for and found answers that I otherwise wouldn't have found and thought through if it weren't for Chris's input here....

henry6;

I must admit that I am playing a little bit of devil's advocate and having loads of fun seeing your answers

I stand by the facts and figures that the DRJTBC. They have no reason to be biased against a train service that doesn't yet exist. Even if the service peeled another 300 cars off the road per peak hour there is still an excessive demand of 200 car per lane per hour on the bridge in 2025 going Eastbound and 400 cars westbound in the evening. This is per lane numbers. The sources they used are the same sources that will be used by NJT in their future work, I can almost guarantee that. Most Consultants look to existing available information to use in their reports.

So Irish by saying the report is biased, you have in fact stated that all the sources the Consultant used, including the local governments, NJT and others are all garbage. What will you say when NJT issues a new report using the DRJTBC report as a source?

And the DRJTBC is using the report from my cursory look to justify reversible lanes and moveable barriers not additional lanes. The report does go into other alternatives for tunnels, more lanes, etc. but they too know that is not a realistic possibility.

Irish, your last statement;

I don't even know why you're participating in this thread, with all due respect.

That statement just goes to show me you have a closed mind when it comes to facing facts. That is a darn shame. A simple dismissal of "The facts are biased" is not a valid answer. There are enough numbers and facts in the appendicies to swamp someone for a week. Since those are from so many different source you might find something viable for your side of the discussion. If you can debate the issue with FACTs I would be more than happy to change my mind. Even though I am a traffic engineer (boo hiss) not a planner, I am not against rail service if it is somewhat viable. This service at this time, is not. Spending $350,000,000 to service a total of 5,700 daily riders, or 2,362 people that switch from car to train, or reduces traffic by only 310 cars per peak hour is not.

Chris

northjerseyinthebuff wrote;

Who paid for this study?? the study is biased to begin with! and besides studies are obsolete the min they're released..this thread is getting old..the cutoff whether cjvrr likes it or not will be coming back soon..lets hope that study and others are saved so we can prove them wrong when people do ride the trains..this stuff is archived right boys?

So wouldn't the same be true for any study NJT issued about service on the Cutoff? Wouldn't they 'tilt' the number to make the service more attractive for potential funding sources? So if the DRJBTC is using the NJT report, wasn't the NJT slant automatically incorporated?

You guys want to but you can't have it both ways!

And again I must reiterate I am not against the Cutoff in NJ, but against the section to the hinterlands of PA (sorry Irish, I just like that word)

I'll be back at the computer in the AM tommorrow, lets see some fact and figures refuting the DRJBTC report! Com'on Irish, henry6 and all you other pro rail people, there must be some facts someplace out there you can use. I found some excellent commuter data in the census numbers from 2000 but it too does not back up the Pro PA rail service side of the discussion.

Chris, still shaking his head in dis-belief at the responses.

Chris wrote:Spending $350,000,000 to service a total of 5,700 daily riders, or 2,362 people that switch from car to train, or reduces traffic by only 310 cars per peak hour is not.

Let's use your numbers of 310 cars per peak hour. Say there are four peak hours a day, five days a week. That adds up to 1,240 fewer peak hour cars per day, or 6,200 fewer peak hour cars per week, or 322,400 fewer cars per year.

Let's be conservative and say that there would be ten fewer cars per non-peak hour for the remaining twenty hours a day and the forty-eight hours of the weekend. That would be 200 fewer cars per week day, or 1,000 fewer cars per weekday plus another 480 fewer per weekend, or 1,480 fewer per week, totaling 7,880 cars per week or almost 410,000 fewer cars per year (409,760). That would add up to 2,050,000 fewer cars in a five year period.

Consider the cost of maintaining the highway over that five years plus just the cost of pollution damage over that period, without figuring the increasing cost of fuel, etc., again the $350 million, lets say $400 million over five years without considering the income (be it positive or negative) from fares collected. The rail investment is looking mighty good financially, from here!

The problem I have with those traffic studies is that their accuracy only reflects what was determined during the actual period or days that they physically counted vehicles.

Ideally they are trying to identify how many physical vehicles actually passed their "counting point". And this is where the errors enter the system and start to increase exponentially.

The count is mostly based on axles that pass the count point (this has some minor errors due to physical methodology). Then they start applying guesstimates to account for multi-axle vehicles and trailers. From there, they apply a guesstimate as to how many people are in the supposed vehicle they just counted. I use the term "guesstimate" because the term "average" (i.e. 1.2 people per car) is not a true average. It was a number derrived from a much older study when someone actually counted people in a car (if they ever really did such a study in that particular area of the country).

So starting with an axle count, they supposedly can tell you there are "an average" of so many cars, buses, and trucks carrying X amount of people. To "fine tune" this particular data, they are backing it up with toll data which is based on how much money is collected and again using a pre-established average, calculate how many vehicles (and of what type) the toll money accounts for. Then all the data is put together and a compromised number is identified (compromised because none of the data reports will provide identical numbers so they need to select a number somewhere within the locus).

Now that the "current" data has been identified as containing a significant error associated with it, the survey company will then try to "project" how that number will change in the future based on observed trends (data collected in surveys conducted during much earlier time periods-1970 to 1975, 1980 to 1985 or other large "swath" time periods) which themselves were developed using erroneous data.

Now throw in the survey opinion polling data that is rarely conducted in a scientific manner (rarely are the questions phrased in a non-leading manner - just like the so-called political opinion polls). Think about who and where are these people questioned regarding whether they would use mass transit vs private auto, in a shopping mall? at a toll booth?, at a bus depot?

Now having said all the above, when a survey produces results like 310 cars per peak hour or 2,362 people, I have to laugh heartily. I did not see what error factor is acknowledged. It is probably similar to 2362 people +/- 2362. Anything more specific than terms like "some", "a bunch", "hordes" is absolute fallacy and I challenge anyone to prove their data. Forget projections, how about proving just the physical count of vehicles taken during the survey is accurate. Of course they can't because the only true accuracy would require stopping each and every vehicle to count them (like the US population census - house to house - and even that data is acknowledged to be flawed to a degree). In my world of engineering, we use the term tolerance to describe accuracy and tolerances exceeding +/- .01 inches can ruin the final product. So the level of tolerance inherent in these traffic studies make me balk.

Bottom line, it is not physically possible to conduct an accurate traffic survey, much less traffic projection, so all the above arguments boil down to cvrr claiming that only "some" people would use the Cut Off from Pennsylvannia and the rest of everybody else saying "uh-uh".

First of all let me say I'm all for restoring the cutoff, I'm from Wilkes-Barre and would definitely welcome a train ride over the 3 hour Martz bus to NYC, as well as the environmental impacts and the reduced congestion on I-80. Given the state of traffic 80 and 78 and the support this is getting from federal representatives from PA, I cant see how rail service wont be restored in the next 30 years. I also don't really thing Scranton is going to be the main source of riders anytime in the near future, the line is really gonna serve the stroudsburg area and monroe county PA. Anyone who knows anything about Northeastern PA knows that this area is gaining lots of population from NYC, i believe theyve had to split a few high schools in the past 10 years and I think I recall hearing somewhere that Monroe county is the fastest growing county in the state, but i could be wrong. Stroudsburg and Mt pocono will be huge stops, and i think eventually the population growth its going to spread into Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

Anyway, my point here is that Martz Bus, based in Wilkes-Barre, currently does pretty brisk business shuttling commuters from Stroudsburg to NYC, as well as serving Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Mt Pocono Hackettstown and other spots in northwestern Jersey. Currently they charge $104 weekly to go from Stroudsburg to Port Authority, which works out to about 20 bucks daily round trip and the trip takes an hour and a half. Service from Hackettstown on NJT currently costs $301 monthly to Penn station, which if we assume around 20 weekdays per month (a slightly conservative estimate), works out to about 15 bucks daily for a round trip, or its $224 to Hoboken which works out to about 11 bucks roundtrip, plus around 3 for the PATH train so 14. The trip takes about an 1 hr and 45 minutes to Hoboken (2 with the PATH added on) and 2 hours to penn station. We can probably assume they will add around a buck a trip if they extend to Stroudsburg, and at least a half hour, not to mention much more infrequent service (Martz Runs a 16 buses to PA between 4 am and 8 30 am, while NJT runs 3 trains from Hackettstown between those times). So my question is are commuters going to be willing to add anywhere between a half hour and an hour to their commute and more hassle (due to transfers to get to Manhattan and infrequency of trains) in exchange for saving 3 or 4 bucks a day and riding in a little more comfort?

i think you have a valid point, namely that a) more frequent service would be necessary and b) it needs to be at least relatively fast. but we must also remember that any sort of service will probably be some sort of express, with at most 3-5 stops in NJ (or at least i hope – otherwise it's going to be unbearably slow). my guess for logical stops would be dover, morristown, (possibly) summit, newark broad, hoboken.
consider this: current travel time hoboken->dover, with only two stops (newark broad and denville) is 1h 15m. travel time between dover and hackettstown is 40 min; my guess is that non-stop this would go to 20-25 min. if we take your half-hour estimate (i think 45 min would be more fair, no?), that total comes to just over two hours. i think two hours in a train is better than possibly an hour and a half on the bus, though that estimate is extremely generous and assumes that the bus is always moving at or above the speed limit.

I believe the plan is for the 5 PA stops, the 2 NJ Cutoff stops plus something like Dover, Morristown, Newark and Hoboken. A lot of PA riders will take the train to Morristown, NOT Manhattan.

As for the fines I spoke of earlier, as I said others can speak to that better.