Amtrak officials visit Scranton, Poconos, Jersey for passenger train research

Aug. 8—SCRANTON — An Amtrak executive and the railroad's technical staff toured potential station locations and other key landmarks Monday on the route of the proposed Scranton-to-New York City passenger train.

The Amtrak officials "wanted to eyeball what this route is going to be, so we spent the day with them," said U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-8, Moosic, who joined them on the tour.

"A lot of us hadn't seen the alignment with our own eyes. You see it on a plan or you see it on an aerial (photograph) and it's not the same," said Nicole Bucich, Amtrak's vice president of network development, while meeting with local media near the Lackawanna Transit Center in downtown Scranton.

The Scranton stop platform would be built behind the transit center if the Federal Railroad Administration decides to fund the train. Bucich said only detailed study will determine the project's construction challenges.

"Anything is doable. We just need the funding to do it," Bucich said.

Cartwright and another major local train advocate, attorney Larry Malski, and state Department of Transportation and Amtrak officials accompanied Bucich and other Amtrak staff on a car ride to key spots in northern New Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania. They visited the Paulinskill Viaduct in New Jersey; the Delaware River viaduct between the states; a bridge on Slateford Road in Monroe County; the Andover, New Jersey, train station construction underway to extend New Jersey Transit train service there; reconstruction underway on the Roseville Tunnel; and potential station locations in East Stroudsburg, Mount Pocono and Blairstown, New Jersey.

Along the way, they met with U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey congressman whose district includes part of the route, and New Jersey Transit officials.

The transit center was their final stop. Bucich portrayed the local project as "a tremendous opportunity" to connect the region to a heavily visited destination and "to take cars off the road."

She estimated the train travel time of three hours will be competitive with existing highway travel, but will mean new economic development.

"The automobile's always going to be a little bit faster. But what rail brings is productive time," Bucich said. "The entire time you can be on your tablet, you can be having a phone conversation. ... Just seeing all the potential station locations and what that could mean for the communities is really tremendous."

Bucich said Amtrak officials have visited other projects. She said the local project connects to Amtrak's northeast corridor, but sidestepped a question about whether the Monday tour means greater Amtrak interest in the local project.

"We are interested in bringing more trains to more people," she said.

Bucich acknowledged the Scranton-to-New York City project can happen faster because government agencies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania own the entire railroad right of way.

"It probably shaves a couple of years off of the development process, for sure," she said.

In late March, PennDOT applied for a federal corridor identification program that would unlock more planning money and give the project priority for construction funding. Cartwright said the railroad administration has promised a decision by Nov. 1.

"We have a lot of hurdles to get over, but this is a great way to start," said Malski, president of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, which owns the eastern Pennsylvania track where the train would run.

A $400,000 Amtrak study, paid for by the authority, says the train could start running by 2028, with more than 300,000 passengers and almost 500,000 only two years later. Amtrak has listed the project as one of more than three dozen possible new routes and its top officials have repeatedly expressed support.

The Corridor ID application argues the train will allow an underserved region to connect to Amtrak's national passenger rail network, remove traffic congestion from Interstates 80 and 380, provide "equitable access to economic and educational opportunities for rural, minority and low-income populations" and boost tourism and recreation.

Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.