New Cargo Airport in Eastern PA

Apparently there is a new cargo airport being planned for Hazleton, PA. They said this would have access to a rail link as well for transporting goods. Which railroad line is this near?

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/ge ... n/3236700/

Does it even matter what rail line this new cargo "hub" near? I see several problems with this. #1) Most cargo airlines are already set up at major airports like JFK, LAX, MIA, etc. If they are not there already or have an alliance they can work through, most of these airports have facilities that can handle more cargo traffic and will offer deals to the cargo airlines to go to their airport than some new one in the middle of nowhere. That brings me to my next point. #2) Who wants to ship goods/cargo to a Halezton, a hick town in the middle of nowhere (no offense to you fine fokes in Hazelton), when you can send it to the city wanted it to go to in the first place? I know that it may cost more to send a plane to a JFK or an LAX, but remember the key thing in business: Time is money! Why would you be shipping cargo to a place that has to be, quite frankly, shipped again!!! That's nothing but idiotic rationing. #3) Moon Twp, according to the a.net thread, has already shot down this idea. The locals don't even want it. Who wants to live next to an airport. That's why these people live in the country...to get away from these kinds of things. Its one thing if you move into a neighborhood next to an airport. Its another have an airport built in your neighborhood.
But, what do I know? I'm just some no name business man from NJ.

SecaucusJunction wrote:Apparently there is a new cargo airport being planned for Hazleton, PA. They said this would have access to a rail link as well for transporting goods. Which railroad line is this near?

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/ge ... n/3236700/

I believe Hazleton is served by NS and Reading & Northern.

Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but the UPS air hub in Philadelphia may need a new home some time in the future. Philadelphia International Airport wants the ground for future expansion. One site they were supposedly looking at was the Willow Grove Joint Reserve Base but don't think the local township will consider it when most of the military leaves this base.

dreese_us wrote:Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but the UPS air hub in Philadelphia may need a new home some time in the future. Philadelphia International Airport wants the ground for future expansion. One site they were supposedly looking at was the Willow Grove Joint Reserve Base but don't think the local township will consider it when most of the military leaves this base.

UPS' interest in the Willow Grove base is no doubt due to the fact that it has a major distribution hub less than two miles away and the current runways can handle pretty much anything that flies.

That being said, as a "neighbor" to Willow Grove, I can tell you that besides the local governmental opposition to any kind of commercial aviation at the base, the highway infrastructure as it exists today is already at capacity and would be hard pressed to support a major cargo airfield. Also, despite the fact that NS runs just a couple miles away, there's no place to run a branch to the field. Hazleton, with its' close proximity to I-80, I-81, I-476 and an active rail corridor is a much better choice.

Hazleton sits close to the junctions of I-80 and I-81 and is served by N.S.
and R&N railroads. If you havn't travelled I-81 south of Hazleton there are a lot of new major corporation's distribution centers along the interstate. Most of all there is a lot of available real estate at a more reasonable price than in New York, New Jersey and some other areas in Pennsylvania. The are some sights that are already leveled off and are ready for construction. If N.S. did not have sufficient traffic in the area I would think they would have sold or leased their lines to a short line or regional. A cargo airport may tie it all together.

I was at a regional transportation task force meeting about five years ago, when this idea was first proposed by Michael Marsicano, then Mayor of Hazleton and a commercial pilot. I found it interesting at the time, and since then my work has taken me (via automobile) to the major metro areas of NY/NJ and Eastern Pa where I have seen first hand the over-capacity of the highway infrastructure.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live next to it, but from a logistics standpoint, the site makes sense. And having heard the names of the politically connected principals involved in the proposed project, I have no doubt that it will become a reality.

How real this is, I don't know. How realistic it should be, I think is very.!

The local Wilkes-Barre paper, The Citizens Voice, has been covering the proposed new cargo airport. At this point, the next major step is getting FAA approval for the new flight patterns that are proposed. The FAA decision will be the deal maker/breaker.

Project is proposed to reclaim 1,500 acres of waste coalfields - so there would be an environmental benefit. A lot of small manufacturing and warehousing has been moving to the Hazelton, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton corridor recently to escape the high cost and traffic issues of the NY/NJ metro area. The proponents point to a new, similar facility in Texas that has been very successful, and note all the new jobs that would be created.

I am an Upstate New Yorker originally from north Jersey, but I think this plan makes a lot of sense for anybody who has to get into and out of both Philadelphia and New York City markets in particular, or anywhere within a hundred or so mile radius of Hazelton in general. It would be great for NS and RN in many respects but a bigger boon to short haul truckers. If NS and RN could build their own annex to the terminal, though, it would serve all parties well.

I'm a resident of Pennsylvania and this smells like a boondoggle, but I'll play along. If there are under-utilized airports in Harrisburg, Allentown and Wilkes Barre already, not to mention Trenton, NJ and Stewart AFB, New York, tell me again why starting from scratch makes sense.

Having grown up in Wilkes-Barre, this sort of wishful thinking is just another symptom of the overly optimistic (read deluded) leadership in Luzerne county. Most of the people involved with the gov't in this area havent spend much time out of the area, and that which they have theyve probably spent merely as tourists. This is just another project proposed to feed the egos of those in charge (I read one article where they compared the potential effect of this airport to that of the FedEx hub's on Memphis, the attributes of which Hazleton has none of) and probably pad the pockets of a few of their friends in the contruction industry. Theyll also be able to say theyve dragged more state and federal funds back to NEPA and reclaimed coalfields, but in the end they probably wont have accomplished much more than that even if they do manage to push this through. While airspace in the New York metro area will probably be exhausted eventually, it wont be economical to ship through Hazleton for some time, as one poster mentioned above time is money, and as the expense of air cargo usually relegates it only to time sensitive cargo, shippers probably would not want to deal with the problems and delays of shipping the last distance from Hazelton by land unless they absolutely had to.

glennk419 wrote: UPS' interest in the Willow Grove base is no doubt due to the fact that it has a major distribution hub less than two miles away and the current runways can handle pretty much anything that flies.

That being said, as a "neighbor" to Willow Grove, I can tell you that besides the local governmental opposition to any kind of commercial aviation at the base, the highway infrastructure as it exists today is already at capacity and would be hard pressed to support a major cargo airfield. Also, despite the fact that NS runs just a couple miles away, there's no place to run a branch to the field. Hazleton, with its' close proximity to I-80, I-81, I-476 and an active rail corridor is a much better choice.

Even though there would be more traffic on the surrounding roads, what are the alternatives for WGJRB? More housing with all the cars? I think that would be worse than the extra truck traffic. Another mall? More offices? Manufacturing? All have their problems... and the roads still are at capacity. Lets make it a park... but there's no income for Horsham twp.

Sorry...
I'm done my rant.
Returning to train talk.

G